All articles filed in Critique & Essays

Kim Kelly marks the one-year anniversary of her grandfather’s passing with a reflection on his life, and a condemnation of the workplace conditions that led to his death. This piece appears in our third print edition.

Caitlin Myers writes from Knoxville, TN: where hospitals shutter in record numbers, anti-maskers protest the Board of Health, and the self-described anarcho-capitalist county mayor is Glenn Jacobs, better known as WWE superstar Kane.

In “To Survive Snow Duty,” John Tormey reflects on his work clearing snow on the rail lines in a Massachusetts winter—what it means to labor daily in the punishing cold, to sacrifice the body to the demands of a job.

C.M. Lewis of Strikewave defines the strike and assesses its role in the modern-day labor field. How can we conceive of the strike more expansively to win lasting working-class power?

It’s long been recognized by researchers that the American system of standardized testing has inbuilt discriminatory effects. Its omnipresence in the education system only further inscribes inequality, writes KJ Shepherd.

by M.K. Anderson. There’s a meme going around based on the old philosophical thought experiment of the trolley problem. Instead of branching trolley tracks—one track with people tied to it, one without, and a man at the switch—it’s just one track with a trolley running over a long line of victims.

by C.M. Lewis. Even aside from the downballot electoral failures of the Democratic Party, the election revealed an unsettling truth: 70 million Americans voted for Donald Trump, having lived through four years of his vicious, proto-fascist sideshow, and many of them are increasingly concentrated in rural counties.

by Annie Levin. Liberalism, as it is observed in this nation, is an ideological void on whose surface any New York Times reader might see themselves reflected. So, the role of the writer is to burnish that void to ensure its polish is maintained.

by M.K. Anderson. I’m not the only disabled American who’s struggling. Currently, about one in four Americans have a disability, and they are far more likely to be poor; half of people in poverty have a disability. The pandemic won’t improve matters.