Living Off the Grid in California’s Coastal Waters By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Living off the grid isn’t just for landlubbers.
Zuckerberg’s Trash Is a Subculture’s Treasure By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight An entire subculture of Bay Area residents survives by reselling wealthy residents’ trash.
The American Worth Ethic By Bryce Covert Feature Like so many of our lofty ideals, the “American Work Ethic” is actually two different standards — one for the wealthy and one for the poor — with two different interpretations of what work looks like.
Honey Bees, Worker Bees, and the Economic Violence of Land Grabs By Melissa Chadburn Feature Melissa Chadburn challenges her own belief that environmental justice issues are reserved for people of privilege.
Class Dismissed By Alison Stine Feature When she attends an elite private college on scholarship, Alison Stine discovers that education isn’t quite the equalizer she expected it to be.
The Indignities of Poverty, Compounded by the Requirement to Prove It By Longreads Feature In an excerpt from her debut memoir, Stephanie Land recalls being poor, and moving with her young daughter from a homeless shelter to transitional housing.
When a Missing Nickel Makes All the Difference By Krista Stevens Highlight “Yet money was a lie—pieces of paper and metal suggesting prices for goods, services, labor, and human beings themselves in a way that often had more to do with profit than with true value.”
Living with Dolly Parton By Jessica Wilkerson Feature Asking difficult questions often comes at a cost.
It’s a Small Paycheck After All By Katie Kosma Highlight Disneyland’s painfully low wages make for an unmagical kingdom.
Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth By Longreads Feature “There’s an idea that laborers end up in their role because it’s all they’re suited for. What put us there, though, was birth, family history — not lack of talent for something else.”
Not Quite Not White By Longreads Feature Sharmila Sen grew up understanding distinctions between castes and religions, between the educated and the illiterate. Race was a distinction she didn’t understand until she came to America.
Defined by Want By Michelle Weber Highlight Three meals a day don’t erase the scars of a childhood marked by hunger, violence, and loneliness.
Pay the Homeless By Bryce Covert Feature It’s time to end the pernicious myth that giving money directly to panhandlers won’t help them.
The Section 8 Cannabis Eviction Problem By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Although many states legally allow the use of medical marijuana, federal law still prohibits its possession in federally subsidized housing, so many residents live in fear of eviction.
Dorothy Allison on how Shame Defines Class By Krista Stevens Highlight “What seemed to me life-saving was that I couldn’t lie. I couldn’t put a candy-coated gloss on anything.”
When Financial Privilege is Mistakenly Assumed By Sari Botton Highlight Lilly Dancyger speaks out about her humble upbringing.
Is This the Most Crowded Island in the World? (And Why That Question Matters) By Alex MacGregor Feature An amateur geographer travels to an undocumented island off the coast of Haiti after stumbling upon it on Google Earth.
Who Benefits from Homeless Relocation Programs? By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Many American cities offer the homeless free bus tickets to move somewhere, but do these relocation programs do vunerable populations more harm than good?
The Human Cost of the Ghost Economy By Melissa Chadburn Feature Melissa Chadburn goes undercover as a temp worker.
From Ghost Town to Havana: Two Teams, Two Countries, One Game By Rick Paulas Feature Two baseball teams — one from the tough streets of West Oakland and the other from Havana — decide to play each other. When they meet in Cuba, a Berkeley documentary filmmaker captures it all.
Plasma For Sale (Used) — $20 a Pop By Krista Stevens Highlight Sarah Smarsh’s brother has sold his plasma for the last decade to make ends meet under mounting credit card debt and student loans.
Grenfell Tower: London, England’s ‘Katrina Moment’ By Krista Stevens Highlight How gentrification, apathy, and government negligence failed the residents of Grenfell Tower.
The Boy With the Coin-Filled Cellophane Cigarette Wrapper, and Me By Amber Leventry Feature Meeting an apparently less fortunate child in her daughter’s kindergarten class transports Amber Leventry back to her own painful youth.
Poor, Gay, Black, and Southern: America’s Hidden H.I.V. Crisis By Krista Stevens Highlight If you have H.I.V in New York or San Francisco, you can life a long, healthy life. Not so if you live in the Southern United States and you’re poor, black, gay and/or bisexual.
Rich Teeth, Poor Teeth: Life Along the Dental Divide By Erin Blakemore Reading List Recent reporting on dental care in America shows that small problems can have enormous medical consequences.
Dorothy Allison on How America Devalues Those Who are ‘Other’ By Krista Stevens Highlight Dorothy Allison on how American culture “inherently devalues the poor, the working class, the darks, the queer, the other.”
Unlocking the Genetic Code of Poverty By Michelle Weber Highlight The emerging science of epigenetics argues that poverty can change our genetic expression.
Who Says Healthy Food Can’t Be Accessible and Affordable? By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Daniel Patterson, and the challenges of bringing fast healthy food to the impoverished neighborhoods trapped in food deserts.
I’d Gladly Pay You Tomorrow For a Hamburger Today, If Only My Debit Card Weren’t Frozen By Michelle Weber Highlight Ubiquitous digital payments: harbinger of a glorious future, or smokescreen for powerful interests that want to control (and undermine) choice and capitalism?
