All articles filed in Critique & Essays

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.

From Issue 3: John Kazior cracks open the hermetic environments of the wealthy, who breathe air cleansed by luxury filtration systems—while the rest are exposed to carcinogens and climate change.

Lyta Gold examines the fairy-tale figure of the elf. Recurring in separate cultures—in fiction, in folklore, and in symbology—elves signify far more than the fantastical.

Why do trees reduce violence? How can urban design reinscribe—or alleviate—inequality? Amelie Daigle writes on the structural racism of infrastructure.

Alex Skopic reports on widespread attempts to ban books and shrink U.S. prison libraries. The carceral system is aiming to both further immiserate prisoners and set up corporations like Barnes & Noble to profit from them.

Sudip Bhattacharya reflects on life under austerity: amidst a built environment inscribed with inequality, a frustrated academic joins the gig economy to make ends meet.

Matthew Byrne offers a thoughtful reflection on the history of colonialism and militarism as expressed in three paintings by J.M.W. Turner and John Singer Sargent.

The actual extent of homelessness in the U.S., writes KJ Shepherd, is drastically underestimated—a result of flawed counting metrics, enabled by a broader refusal by power to admit its true, staggering scale.

This Halloween, Kim Kelly relates the history of gravedigger’s strikes. Underappreciated cemetery workers perform an essential social service, but only collective action can win them pay and job conditions that reflect their importance.

On the first anniversary of the massacre at Lekki Toll Gate, Okechi Okeke remembers Nigeria’s #EndSARS protests against police brutality, the violent government response, and the pain and inhumanity suffered by his family and so many others.