Poverty
What Turned Poor White Counties Red?
Arlie Russell Hochschild blames an emotional blindness to facts, erasing the Democrats’ deep failings.
Salvation Now
Fifty years ago, religion met Marxism in the liberation theology movement. Its message still serves.
My Revolutionary Inspiration, Barbara Ehrenreich
The late author of Nickel and Dimed played a major role in women’s liberation and U.S. socialism.
Detroiters Are Not Waiting to Be Saved
Inspired by the work of James and Grace Lee Boggs, many young Detroit activists are turning to forms of mutual aid to meet the needs of their communities.
Probation Profiteering Is the New Debtors’ Prison
We must end the widespread practice of funding government budgets by extorting poor people apprehended for minor offenses.
Reclaiming the Power of Rebellion
Derecka Purnell interviews historian Elizabeth Hinton about her new book and how talk of “riots” discredits Black political demands.
U.S. Politics is Failing Children
Everyone agrees that child poverty is a problem. Why are Democrats and Republicans so bad at addressing it?
From Restraining Orders to Assassinations, the Dangerous Work of Saving the Monarchs
Monarch butterflies may be gone in thirty years. Saving them seems apolitical, but environmentalists have landed in the sights of drug cartels, illegal loggers, Trump supporters, and even clandestine avocado farmers.
Tearing Down Black America
In the mid-twentieth century, city governments, backed by federal money, demolished hundreds of Black neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal.
What 30 Percent Unemployment Looks Like
As we know from South Africa's crisis, political and social fault lines will shape the contours of joblessness.
Deaths of Despair
Boston Review talks with Nobel Prize-winning economist Angus Deaton about COVID-19, the relationship between culture, financial hardship, and health, and why capitalism’s flaws are proving fatal for America’s working class.
COVID-19 and the Revival of the “Welfare Queen” Myth
Conservatives have long been sounding the alarm about “undeserving” people receiving public assistance.
What a Solidarity Economy Looks Like
Despite President Bolsonaro's COVID-19 denialism, a small Brazilian city has one of the most ambitious responses in the world.
Should There Be a COVID-19 Rent Strike?
While the government and some banks have announced mortgage moratoriums, they have not insisted that rent relief be passed on to tenants. Many renters don’t know what they will do come April 1, let alone May 1.
The War Against the Poor Knows No Borders
The Trump administration’s sanctions against Iran and cuts to SNAP benefits are two sides of the same war that the rich are waging against the global poor.
American Bottom
Designed as a working-class suburb of St. Louis, the nearly all-black town of Centreville now floods with raw sewage every time it rains.
Perpetual Debt in the Silicon Savannah
Kenya’s poor were among the first to benefit from digital lending apps; now they call it slavery.
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