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A McDonald's worker handing a bag of food to someone in a drive through.
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What Harris Talking About Her McDonald's Job Reveals

Harris' rhetoric about working at McDonald's shows how Democrats have rethought their 1990s emphasis on fast food jobs.
by Alex Park via Made By History on September 24, 2024
People protesting with signs to secure welfare rights.

The Welfare Rights Movement Wanted Society to Value the Work of Child-Rearing

The welfare rights movement of the 1960s and ’70s resisted invasive policies. Their animating vision: that society treat every mother and child with dignity.
by Annelise Orleck, Sasha Lilley via Jacobin on August 17, 2023
Ruby Duncan standing and addressing a group with Jane Fonda seated behind her on the eve of a protest in 1971.

When the Welfare Rights Movement Was a Powerful Force for Uplifting the Poor

The War on Poverty comes to life in a new book that explores how welfare mothers in Las Vegas built an organizing juggernaut that transformed lives.
by Eleanor J. Bader via The Indypendent on July 10, 2023
The Freedmen’s Bureau drawn by A.R. Waud, 1868.

Social Welfare and the Politics of Race in the Post-Civil War South

The politicized rhetoric linking race and welfare has a long, ingrained history.
by Ryan W. Keating via Black Perspectives on May 24, 2023
Exhibit

Social Safety Net

How Americans through the years have approached the thorny questions of identifying who the government is obliged to help and how such assistance should be funded and distributed.
A mug shot of Linda Taylor

COVID-19 and Welfare Queens

Fears about “undeserving” people receiving public assistance have deep ties to racism and the policing of black women’s bodies.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via Boston Review on April 17, 2020
Ken Cuccinelli
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How President Trump’s New Immigration Rule Could Erode the Social Safety Net

The new rule dramatically expands the meaning of public charge.
by Salonee Bhaman via Made By History on August 14, 2019

The Myth of the Welfare Queen

The right turned Linda Taylor into a bogeyman. But her real life was much more complicated.
by Bryce Covert via The New Republic on July 2, 2019

Forgotten Feminisms: Johnnie Tillmon's Battle Against 'The Man'

Tillmon and other National Welfare Rights Organization members defied mainstream ideas of feminism in their fight for welfare.
by Judith Shulevitz via New York Review of Books on June 26, 2018

Hyman Minsky’s Views on the “Welfare Mess”

The intellectual father of the job guarantee movement saw it as a replacement for the social safety net.
by Matt Bruenig via People's Policy Project on May 13, 2018

States With Large Black Populations Are Stingier With Government Benefits

States with homogenous populations spend more on the safety net than those with higher shares of minorities.
by Alana Semuels via The Atlantic on June 6, 2017
Protest of welfare reform in front of the White House, with the sign, "HEY BILL HOW MANY KIDS DID YOU IMPOVERISH TODAY?"
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Welfare and the Politics of Poverty

Bill Clinton’s 1996 welfare reform was supposed to move needy families off government handouts and onto a path out of poverty. How has it turned out?
via Retro Report on May 1, 2016
A group of two women and one child watches a military procession pass.

How the US Military Became a Welfare State

Long in retreat in the US, the welfare state found a haven in an unlikely place – the military, where it thrived for decades.
by Jennifer Mittelstadt via Aeon on September 21, 2015
Linda Taylor walks out of a courtroom with her attorney.

The Real Story of Linda Taylor, America’s Original Welfare Queen

In the 1970s, Ronald Reagan villainized a Chicago woman for bilking the government. Her other sins were far worse.
by Josh Levin via Slate on December 19, 2013
Diagram of a movement experiment studying abnormalities in walking

The Making of the American Culture of Work

Building the assumption of work’s meaningfulness happened across many different institutions and types of media.
by Max L. Chapnick via Commonplace on April 22, 2025
A drawing of a variety of social movements protesting.

Peaceable Revolutions

Linda Gordon argues that social movements are vital partnerships that, by challenging the status quo, are indispensable to the health of the nation.
by Brenda Wineapple via New York Review of Books on March 20, 2025
Three members of the Wages for Housework campaign running a table and handing out pamphlets.

Home Is Where the Unpaid Labor Is

A new history traces the development and influence of the global Wages for Housework movement from its founding to present day.
by Hannah Rosefield via The New Republic on March 19, 2025
Nora Kenworthy's book: "Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare".

Crowded Out: The Dark Side Of Crowdfunding Healthcare And Its Historical Precedents

The moral terrain of crowdfunding is fueled by two persistent social ideologies: the dual, and intertwined, myths of meritocracy and the “deserving poor.”
by Nora Kenworthy via HistPhil on July 12, 2024
Hand throwing crumpled dollar bills into pile

Extravagances of Neoliberalism

On how the fringe ideas of a set of American neoliberals became a new and pervasive way of life.
by Melinda Cooper, Benjamin Kunkel via The Baffler on May 13, 2024
American Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, Hartford, Connecticut.

What Was Psychiatric Deinstitutionalization?

An interview with sociologist and historian of psychiatry Andrew Scull about the history and legacy of psychiatric deinstitutionalization.
by Andrew Scull via Damage on April 22, 2024
Book cover of Counterrevolution by Melinda Cooper.

A Tax Haven in a Heartless World: On Melinda Cooper’s “Counterrevolution”

Why should taxpayers fund schools that violate their own values, the Moms for Liberty wonder? A new book traces how this kind of thinking about public spending came to be.
by Sarah Brouillette via Los Angeles Review of Books on April 15, 2024
A U.S. Border Patrol vehicle in front of a section of the U.S.-Mexico border fence near Ocotillo, Calif., on Sept. 13.
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The Myth of ‘Open Borders’

Even before the United States regulated migration, states did. Here’s why.
by Anna O. Law via Made By History on March 23, 2024
Photo of a homeless person sleeping on the street wrapped in a blanket on top of cardboard.
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A Blueprint From History for Tackling Homelessness

During the New Deal, the U.S. knew that economic recovery depended upon housing.
by Jonathan van Harmelen via Made By History on November 2, 2023
Illustration of someone walking up stairs made up of the working class.

How the War on Poverty Stalled

The study of poverty has flourished in recent decades. Why haven’t the lives of the poor improved?
by Kim Phillips-Fein via The New Republic on August 28, 2023
Signs at bus stops in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, telling residents about the availability of the SNAP program.
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SNAP Work Requirements Are a Triumph of Politics Over Evidence

Decades of evidence reveals that work requirements for food assistance leave people hungry and hurt the economy. But supporting them remains good politics.
by Lindsay Drane Amaral via Made By History on June 6, 2023
Framed photograph of an African-American soldier in Union uniform with wife and two daughters, circa 1863–1865.

Means-Testing Is the Foe of Freedom

After Emancipation, Black people fought for public benefits like pensions that would make their newly won citizenship meaningful.
by Matthew E. Stanley via Jacobin on April 17, 2023
Black and white photo of Pruitt-Igoe buildings being destroyed.

Pruitt-Igoe: A Black Community Under the "Atomic Cloud"

In the 1950s, the U.S. military conducted unethical radiological experiments on Black communities, including the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via Protean on November 28, 2022
Buckingham Palace [photo: flickr.com/lorentey/]

American Higher Education’s Past Was Gilded, Not Golden

A missed opportunity for genuine equity.
by Elizabeth Tandy Shermer via Academe on October 14, 2022
School lunch comprised of a hamburger, brussel sprouts, cantaloupe, potatoes, and milk.
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The Failed Promise of Free, Universal School Lunch

Masks and social distancing are largely gone, but just as consequentially, a less visible pandemic intervention is ending: universally free school meals.
by Marcus B. Weaver-Hightower via HNN on August 28, 2022
Joe Biden signing a document
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Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act Exposes Our Allergy to Taxes

The rise of a new tax politics has made it harder to address our problems, and now it threatens democracy, too.
by Molly Michelmore via Made By History on August 19, 2022
President Bill Clinton laughs after delivering remarks on welfare reform.

How the Democrats Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Free Market

In the 1990s, the New Democrats trusted corporations to do the right thing. The results were disastrous.
by Maia Silber via Jacobin on July 18, 2022
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