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Fiorello La Guardia.

How Mayor Fiorello La Guardia Transformed New York City

Zohran Mamdani’s campaign is questioning what a socialist might accomplish as mayor of NYC. To answer it, it’s worth looking back on Fiorello La Guardia.
by Joshua B. Freeman via Jacobin on April 23, 2025
Wilmington after the massacre.
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The Troubling Consequence of State Takeovers of Local Government

State efforts to usurp local government power over schools, elections, and police tend to diminish Black political power.
by Domingo Morel via Made By History on October 25, 2024
Congressman Phil Burton and State Assemblymen Leo T. McCarthy, Willie L. Brown and Art Agnos.

How San Francisco’s Democratic Political Machine Led to Kamala Harris’ Presidential Campaign

Kamala Harris is the heir to a political lineage that dates back to a chain-smoking, hard-drinking mastermind elected to Congress from San Francisco in 1964.
by Lincoln A. Mitchell via The Conversation on August 9, 2024
Broward County sheriff Walter R. Clark.

The Peculiar World of American Sheriffs

The history of sheriffs suggests we need to pay attention to what our local sheriffs do, vote in local elections, and choose our sheriffs wisely.
by Cindy Hahamovitch via Process: A Blog for American History on August 6, 2024
Collage of Stop Cop City protestors and Coca Cola products.

No Atlanta Way

Stop Cop City meets the establishment.
by Sam Worley via The Drift on June 28, 2024
Student watching smoke emanating from the student center after 1969 protests.

The CUNY Experiment

The City University of New York has long stood at once for meritocratic uplift and for civil disobedience.
by Kim Phillips-Fein via New York Review of Books on May 23, 2024
DC Map

Fifty Years Of Home Rule In Washington, DC

After Congress robbed Washingtonians of local and federal representation, decades of activism -- slowed by racist opposition -- finally succeeded in 1973.
via The Metropole on December 20, 2023
A ballot from Ireland’s 2020 general election.

Avoiding the PR Mistakes of the Past

The proportional representation (PR) vs. single transferable vote (STV) battle in local elections.
by Jack Santucci via Democracy Journal on September 12, 2023
Wood engraving of streets and buildings in a city scene.

The World That Municipal Socialists Built

Urban socialists blazed a path toward social democracy. Leftists who want to reclaim this tradition face a whole new set of obstacles.
by Justin H. Vassallo via Dissent on September 5, 2023
A Bank of America branch in San Francisco.

Bond Villains

Municipal governments today hold around $4 trillion in outstanding debt. The growing costs of simply servicing their debt is cannibalizing their annual budgets.
by Clark Randall via Boston Review on August 16, 2023
Ron DeSantis

DeSantis, Trump and The History of Treating D.C. Residents Like They Aren’t Americans

A history as intertwined with race as with partisanship.
by Gillian Brockell via Retropolis on August 8, 2023
Painting of Milwaukee

Milwaukee Socialists' Triumph & Global Impact

On April 5, 1910, the world was stunned by socialists’ victory at the ballot box in Milwaukee.
by Shelton Stromquist via Public Books on April 5, 2023
Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King.

The Night James Brown Saved Boston

The city might have gone up in flames after MLK's assassination, if not for the quick actions of a DJ, a city councilor, and The Hardest Working Man In Show Business.
by Dart Adams via Medium on April 5, 2023
A soldier standing guard on the corner of 7th & N Street NW in Washington D.C. with the ruins of buildings that were destroyed during the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
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After April 4: The 1968 Rebellions and the Unfinished Work of Civil Rights in DC

When the smoke cleared in D.C. following the 1968 riots after the assasination of MLK, the city's black communities organized to rebuild a more equitable city.
by Kyla Sommers via HNN on April 2, 2023
A painting of an old gas station with modern police units in the forefront.

Organized Plunder

In the absence of tax dollars, American cities like Baltimore are now funding themselves by fining the poor instead of taxing the rich.
by Elias Rodriques, Clinton Williamson via The New Inquiry on July 27, 2022
A Vietnam veteran greets supporters and press outside District Court in Concord

The Second (and Third) Battle of Lexington

What kind of place was the town I grew up in?
by Bill McKibben via The New Yorker on May 1, 2022
Formal portrait photo of Destin Jenkins.

Public Thinker: Destin Jenkins on Breaking Bonds

“What if we identified the politics of municipal debt as circumscribing political horizons and futures?”
by Destin Jenkins, Hannah Appel via Public Books on December 13, 2021
Advertisement during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.

Political Accountability and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic

Why do some political incumbents adopt aggressive measures to slow the spread of infectious diseases while others do not?
by Yuri M. Zhukov, Jacob Walden via Broadstreet on December 10, 2021
Black Lives Matter Protesters.

The Atlanta Way

Repression, mediation, and division of Black resistance from 1906 to the 2020 George Floyd Uprising.
by Sarah Abdelaziz, Kayla Edgett via Atlanta Studies on October 4, 2021
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
Police shoot pepper spray at demonstrators during a protest
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The Hidden Obstacle to Police Accountability

The police are an insulated political institution within cities empowered to enforce a racialized social order.
by Max Felker-Kantor via Made By History on April 16, 2021

Evanston, Ill., Leads the Country With First Reparations Program for Black Residents

The $10 million initiative will provide housing and mortgage assistance to address discrimination.
by Mark Guarino via Washington Post on March 23, 2021

The Murder Chicago Didn’t Want to Solve

In 1963, a Black politician named Ben Lewis was shot to death in Chicago. Decades later, it remains no accident authorities never solved the crime.
by Mick Dumke via ProPublica on February 25, 2021
Two people clinking their bottles of beer together.

Let Us Drink in Public

Open container laws criminalize working-class people and make public life less fun. We need to legalize public drinking.
by Miles Kampf-Lassin via Jacobin on August 4, 2020

Tearing Down Black America

Policing is not the only kind of state violence. City governments have demolished hundreds of Black neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal.
by Brent Cebul via Boston Review on July 22, 2020

When Conservatives Called to Freeze Police Budgets

The loudest opponents to police funding were once fiscal conservatives.
by David Helps via The Metropole on July 22, 2020
A photo of a woman wearing a mask standing on a subway platform in Times Square.

Rethinking the Solution to New York’s Fiscal Crisis

We are at the end of an era, as choices made in the 1970s have created a society that seems unable to cope with a crisis such as that posed by the coronavirus.
by Kim Phillips-Fein via New York Review of Books on July 16, 2020

An Attempt to Resegregate Little Rock, of All Places

A battle over local control in a city that was the face of integration shows the extent of the new segregation problem in the U.S.
by Adam Harris via The Atlantic on October 22, 2019

Sanctuaries Protecting Gun Rights and the Unborn Challenge the Legitimacy of Federal Law

Who gets to decide what the Constitution really means?
by John E. Finn via The Conversation on October 15, 2019
Political cartoon of people reaching toward a woman symbolizing Milwaukee who herself is reaching toward socialism.

When Socialists Swept Milwaukee

Democratic socialists attending the 2020 Democratic Convention won’t be out of place in a city with a long history of socialist governance.
by Lindsey Anderson via Belt Magazine on May 21, 2019
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