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American Politics

Robert Moses! Jane Jacobs! Robert Moses! Jane Jacobs!

Robert Moses! Jane Jacobs! Robert Moses! Jane Jacobs!

What else was going on in the city, or the world, that might have enabled a figure like Moses to do what he did for decades?

Pinning the blame on Moses, or celebrating Jacobs, or vice versa is a way out of a big question that neither the political left or right in the United States has many clear answers to: how to resolve the tension between the benefits and pitfalls of large-scale planning and local control.

Mating

Mating

Dispatch from the Kansas Lek Treks Prairie-Chicken Festival

The birds unveiled themselves slowly, first by sound and then by sight. Despite what you might expect from the term, the “booming” call of the greater prairie chicken sounds, in reality, more like a mournful coo. When several chickens let out the call at once, they meld together into a swirling, plaintive chant.

Florida in Philadelphia

Florida in Philadelphia

The Temple University strike’s template for organizing the public university

The strike at Temple, therefore, was not just about material benefits for graduate workers: it was also about the long-term structural nature of what the contemporary university will be. It was about exposing the precarity of everyone—not just graduate workers but also adjuncts and even TT faculty—under academia’s current system.

The Road to Auto Debt

The Road to Auto Debt

Our cars, no matter how much we cherish them, hold us in social and economic custody

For most of us, our cars, no matter how much we cherish them, hold us in social and economic custody. As more and more vehicles are financed, and with higher loans and interest rates, creditors exert a carceral pull over our ability to earn a sustainable livelihood. Perhaps the most telling evidence of this servitude is that, in times of financial stress, households will prioritize their monthly car payments over all others, including basic necessities. Surely it is the mark of our perverse civilization when food, medical care, and housing have to take a back seat to our need to keep wheels on the road.

It Is Happening Again

It Is Happening Again

Industrial toxicity without industrial employment

How many times have we seen this drama play out in the last several decades? Every presidential administration wants to fix America’s “crumbling infrastructure” until they discover the business interests profiting from disrepair.

Corky Lee and the Work of Seeing

Corky Lee and the Work of Seeing

“Minorities Unite! Fight for Democratic Rights!”

There is a symmetry between Corky Lee’s passing and the rise of Stop Anti-Asian Hate: the departure of Asian America’s greatest documentarian and its most visible recent efflorescence. Years earlier, the brief window of postwar Asian American radicalism seemed to have already swung shut. Today, our most notable figures are corporate CEOs and conservative politicians, the eponymous Asians rich and crazy, so the artists, revolutionaries, and workers preserved in Lee’s prints can feel as elusive as their author. No matter how distant an Asian American poor people’s movement may seem, his prints still vibrate with radical temporality and potential.