A private shipbuilder received millions in ‘location incentives’ to save an abandoned naval yard in South Philadelphia. What did the city get in return? Originally published in Mother Jones. PHIL ROWAN WAS CALLED OFF his construction site one crisp October afternoon and told to get himself down to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. It was an invitation to […]
Silence in the Fields
The U.S. government is allowing farmers to fill thousands of jobs with foreign ‘guestworkers.’ The conditions are hardly hospitable—and those who speak out can be sent straight back home. Originally published in Mother Jones. THE GREYHOUND PULLS UP TO A TWO-STORY METAL WAREHOUSE in the tiny town of Vass, North Carolina. Efrain Madrigal gets off the bus. […]
Academic Apprentices: Still an Ideal?
With hundreds of Ph.D.s competing for every available faculty position, the apprentice model that sustained generations of silversmiths and printers seems to fall apart at the university level. Originally published in Duke Magazine. THE APPRENTICE IS ONE OF AMERICA’S most enduring icons. Whether it’s Paul Revere silversmithing at his father’s shop or fifteen-year-old Horace Greeley knocking on […]
Spiritual Union: A Case Study
How a community of Guatemalan immigrant poultry workers triumphed in one of the fiercest anti-labor corners of the nation. Originally published in The Nation. Morganton, North Carolina THE CHOIR LOFT SWELTERS. It’s 5 o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, and all the heat from a summer day in the North Carolina foothills seems to have refracted through the stained-glass […]
No Ways Tired
Click here for “No Ways Tired,” Southern Exposure, Summer 1996. Opens as a PDF.
