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A worker entering the U.S. Steel Clairton Works in Clairton, Pennsylvania.

A Rust Belt City’s New Working Class

Heavy industry once drove Pittsburgh’s economy. Now health care does—but without the same hard-won benefits.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via The New Republic on March 31, 2021
Postcard depicting the Montefiore Hospital in Pittsburgh

The Rise of Healthcare in Steel City

On deindustrialization, the care economy, and the living legacies of the industrial workers’ movement.
by Gabriel Winant, Nick Serpe via Dissent on March 18, 2021
A former coal miner works at a computer station at the Bit Source LLC office in Pikeville, Kentucky

The Rise and Fall of the Knowledge Worker

Knowledge workers, were supposed to be the beneficiaries of neoliberalism and globalization until AI and a hypercompetitive employment market.
by Vinit Ravishankar, Mostafa Abdou via Jacobin on July 10, 2025
Image of where the rust belt is located on a US map

Economic Mobility, Not Manufacturing Decline, Is the Real Rust Belt Story

A look at popular interpretations and actual labor fluctuations in the Rust Belt over time.
by Norbert Michel, Jerome Famularo via Cato Institute on June 12, 2025
Amon Msane speaks at a press conference outside the 3M plant in Freehold, New Jersey, surrounded by leaders of OCAW Local 8-760. Stanley Fischer (beard, sunglasses) stands beside Msane, 1986. (Courtesy of Stanley Fischer)

When South African Unionists Struck for US Workers

In 1986, black workers in apartheid South Africa walked off the job in support of New Jersey unionists; marking a rare moment of international labor solidarity.
by Jeff Schuhrke via Jacobin on May 20, 2025
Bethlehem Steel Mill.

The Steel Mill That Built America

Bethlehem Steel was the birthplace of skyscrapers, bridges, and battleships. What happened after the plant's furnaces went cold?
by Matthew Christopher via Atlas Obscura on February 25, 2025
The title card of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead.

George Romero’s Pittsburgh

City of the living dead.
by Victoria Timpanaro via The Metropole on February 20, 2025
Donald Trump stands in front of a microphone, holding a graph titled "Illegal Immigration into the US."

Trump’s Anti-Haitian Hate Has Deep American Roots

The former president’s grotesque demagoguery is just the latest in a long line of vicious attacks on residents and immigrants from the island nation.
by Jonathan M. Katz via The New Republic on September 16, 2024
People seated at town hall meeting.

What We Get Wrong About White Workers

Deindustrialization has helped create a right-wing turn in many Midwestern towns. Long traditions of labor militancy can explain why it hasn’t in others.
by Chris Maisano, Stephanie Ternullo via Jacobin on July 9, 2024
A newspaper article from the Inner City Voice in Detroit with the headline, "Black Workers Uprising."

Acid Rhythms

A look at the psychedlic-inspired music scene of Detroit.
by William Harris via n+1 on April 10, 2024
Joe Biden, with a nervous expression, campaigning in Wisconsin.
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How Trump Captured the Rust Belt—And What Democrats Can Do

History not only explains how the industrial Midwest became Trump country, but also how the area's politics may shift again.
by Stephanie Ternullo via Made By History on April 2, 2024
"Soulsville" mural in Memphis, Tennessee.

Capitalism and (Under)Development in the American South

In the American South, an oligarchy of planters enriched itself through slavery. Pervasive underdevelopment is their legacy.
by Keri Leigh Merritt via Aeon on April 2, 2024
A protest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray.

The Problem with Baltimore

The impact of the city's history with slavery.
by Anthony Smooth via Black Perspectives on March 22, 2024
Grant Wood’s sister, Nan Wood Graham, and his dentist, Byron McKeeby, stand by the painting for which they had posed, “American Gothic.”

Beyond the Myth of Rural America

Its inhabitants are as much creatures of state power and industrial capitalism as their city-dwelling counterparts.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The New Yorker on October 16, 2023
Nine yearbook photos, including Langston Hughes'.
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Class Production

A collection of high school yearbooks from Cleveland captures the rise, fall, and uncertain future of the American middle class.
by Alex Houston via JSTOR Daily on May 15, 2023
Photograph of glass factory, on glass, with man blowing glass behind it.

Unbreakable: Glass in the Rust Belt

Domestic glass manufacturing in the U.S. remains concentrated in the Rust Belt. But studio glassblowing is adding relevance to a long forgotten material.
by Dora Segall via Belt Magazine on March 29, 2023
Pew Research chart showing rising earnings disparity between young adults with and without college degrees

Pushing Everyone Into College Was a Policy Response to Other Policy

None of it happened by mistake.
by Freddie deBoer via Freddie deBoer on November 21, 2022
The Detroit Renewable Power waste incinerator

Dire Straits

A new history of Detroit’s struggles for clean air and water argues that municipal debt and austerity have furthered an ongoing environmental catastrophe.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via New York Review of Books on June 2, 2022
Robot with group of people at poker table

The Automation Myth

To what degree can we blame automation for deindustrialization and class decomposition?
by Clinton Williamson via The Baffler on April 6, 2022
American Civil Rights leader Jesse Jackson (center) participating in a rally, January 15, 1975 (Wikipedia Commons)

Black Mayors, Black Politics, and the Gary Convention

The National Black Political Convention of 1972 saw many national giants on the Black political scene.
by Brandon Stokes via Black Perspectives on March 22, 2022
A crowd watches a roller skater dance at block party in the Bronx.

The Stories of the Bronx

"Urban Legends: The South Bronx in Representation and Ruin" is a vibrant cultural history that looks beyond pervasive narratives of cultural renaissance and urban neglect.
by Emily Raboteau via New York Review of Books on March 17, 2022
Black Americans picketing for equal wages and improved working conditions during WWII.

We Need “CRT” to Understand the Midwest, Too

You can't tell the story of Midwestern cities like Toledo without being honest about their white supremacy problems.
by Bradley J. Sommer via The Activist History Review on January 13, 2022
View from the Empire State Building, August 1975.

A Crisis Without Keynes: The 1975 New York City Fiscal Crisis Revisited

An analysis of the factors that contributed to NYC's massive financial crisis in the 1970s, and the austere solutions that perpetuated it.
by Michael Beyea Reagan via The Gotham Center on August 12, 2021

The Myth of the Golden Years

Whether economic times are good or bad, the lament for the old days of factories and mills never changes.
by Tom Nichols via The Atlantic on August 4, 2021
Photographer Leni Sinclair in a crowd filming an event.

When Detroit Was Revolutionary

In the 1960s and 1970s, photographer Leni Sinclair stood at the center of a local scene where political and cultural ferment merged.
by Leni Sinclair, Billy Anania via Jacobin on July 7, 2021
Cartoon caricature of Jack Welch.
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Jack Welch Was a Bitter Foe of American Workers

The GE exec was known for his big personality. He should be known for the role he played in creating America's toxic corporate culture on a base of inequality.
by Erik Loomis via HNN on March 6, 2020

Building America

The making of the black working class.
by William P. Jones via The Nation on October 7, 2019
Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia
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How the Rise of Urban Nonprofits Has Exacerbated Poverty

While "meds and eds" have powered urban economies, they haven't been the gateway out of poverty that many hoped.
by Claire Dunning via Made By History on September 24, 2019

Mike's Big Ditch

The failed canal project that could have saved cities like Youngstown, Ohio.
by Vince Guerrieri via Belt Magazine on August 28, 2019
A broken key with a fist

The Road Not Taken

The shuttering of the GM works in Lordstown will also bury a lost chapter in the fight for workers’ control.
by Sarah Jaffe via The New Republic on June 24, 2019
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