An independent, ad-free leftist magazine of critical essays, poetry, fiction, and art.

David Helps is a Ph.D candidate at the University of Michigan. His writing on policing, cities, and capitalism can be found in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Foreign Policy, Monthly Review, and more.
  • The “Here” of Magical Thinking: Palo Alto, by Malcolm Harris

    The “Here” of Magical Thinking: Palo Alto, by Malcolm Harris

    David Helps reviews Palo Alto, Malcolm Harris’s new critical history of Silicon Valley’s blend of California idealism and exploitation. The town has come to signify grotesque new tech wealth accumulated in the guise of free-market liberation.

  • The Politics of Concrete

    The Politics of Concrete

    Historian David Helps shares the story of Harbor Gateway in Los Angeles: where environmental racism met community resistance in an artery of L.A.’s global logistics leviathan.

  • Broken Homes of the Drug War

    Broken Homes of the Drug War

    Far from aberrations or mistakes, violent police raids like the one that killed Breonna Taylor knowingly target Black homes—in service of both racist aggression and real estate profit, writes David Helps.