A Fragile Answer to the Question of “Whose Streets?”
A city is a big thing—big enough that, typically, we must manage them in chunks: as a string of favorite neighborhoods, a well-worn subway line, a local park. These personalized territories are small...
View ArticleDon’t Support The New York Times
One can only describe what unfolded at The New York Times last week as an outright shitshow. Following the publication of an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton that advocated for military crackdowns in cities...
View ArticleThe Real Snowflakes on the Op-Ed Page
For years, conservative and centrist columnists have been depicting college campuses as if they were the settings of horror movies. A virus is incubating and spreading. Every year, more and more people...
View ArticleThe Disappearing Backlash to Black Lives Matter
Over two weeks after the protests against the killing of George Floyd began, America remains firmly in the year 2020. 1968, with its sustained chaos and broad white backlash, is still a distant memory...
View ArticleReactionary Unions Don’t Just Back Police. They Also Back Fossil Fuels.
Labor unions throughout history have worked toward multiple goals. While striving to represent and protect workers through collective bargaining, they also function as part of a broader movement aiming...
View ArticleTwilight of the Cop Consensus
“I’m sorry,” the Vox writer Zack Beauchamp tweeted last week, “but ‘abolish the police’ seems like a poorly-thought out idea that’s gotten popular with shocking speed.” A short thread of similar tweets...
View ArticleThe Black Wage Gap Matters
The police killing of George Floyd has prompted a stunning increase in the public’s receptivity to the Black Lives Matter movement (which has picked up eight percentage points in public approval since...
View ArticleThe Police’s “Sheepdog” Problem
Derek Chauvin learned how to be a cop from the Department of Defense. For eight years, Chauvin served as a military police officer in the Army Reserve, and though he never rose above the rank of E-4—a...
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When Mr. Sloan Went to Washington
In 2013, for reasons that remain unclear, the Supreme Court of the United States changed its rules to forbid non-lawyers from arguing before the Court. The shift stripped away a right that had been in...
View ArticleNow Do Lincoln
Running along the southern border of North Carolina, U.S. Route 74 stretches from the state’s mountains in the west all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. And as numerous green signs reminded me while...
View ArticleAmerica’s Top General Isn’t That Sorry
Mark Milley is sorry. For the photo op, not the invasion of American streets with soldiers.Milley—the four-star Army general who, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has made a franchise of...
View ArticleShirley Jackson and the Horrors of Marriage
In 1938, the writer Shirley Jackson, along with her husband, Stanley Hyman, attended a séance at the home of their good friend Jay Williams, an actor, musician, and occult enthusiast. Williams claimed...
View ArticleThe Preachers of the Austerity Gospel Are Back
There was something of a twist in last week’s monthly jobs report: In May, the unemployment rate in the United States had seemingly declined by a few percentage points, hinting at the start of an...
View ArticleI Helped Turn an Empty Hotel Into a Shelter. Then the Owner Evicted Us.
I am a citizen of Red Lake Nation, but I was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. My grandparents raised me from the time I was six months old, and my grandad, who I call my dad, was a citizen of...
View ArticleThe Fall and Rise of the Guillotine
Chanting; red, white, and blue banners waving; crowds infuriated; a guillotine carried through their midst: A scene reminiscent of eighteenth-century Paris played out in Puerto Rico on a Tuesday night...
View ArticleBook Publishing’s Next Battle: Conservative Authors
Before 2024—or, God forbid, 2028—Tom Cotton will almost certainly publish a book. The Arkansas senator’s first book—Sacred Duty, published by HarperCollins’s William Morrow imprint in 2019—was a...
View ArticleSpike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods Takes On the Black Trauma of Vietnam
In the final shot of the 1989 civil war movie Glory, the corpse of Private Trip (Denzel Washington) rolls down a sand dune and comes to a stop under the armpit of his equally dead commander, Colonel...
View ArticleOne Quick Trick for Curbing the Fossil Fuel Industry’s Political Influence
We might never find out how much money the United States has handed to the fossil fuel industry under the guise of pandemic stimulus. As reported in Politico, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin plans on...
View ArticleDemocratic Veepstakes in a Time of Protest
The shortlist for the Democratic vice presidential nomination is getting shorter. “Democrats with knowledge of the process said Biden’s search committee has narrowed the choices to as few as six...
View ArticleWhy Conservatives Believe a Chinese Lab Created the Coronavirus
As the United States struggled to contain the initial onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic, a few conservatives peddled an outlandish theory to explain the origins of the disease. The virus, they...
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