How McDonald’s Convinced Us That Civil Rights Was About Black-Owned Businesses
Demonstrators walk on a street shouting slogans to protest the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in November 2014.Michael B. Thomas / Getty Images In August of 2014, all eyes were on Ferguson, Missouri. The city’s mostly Black residents flooded the streets in protest after the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown…
Are Democrats Finally About to Harvest the Iowa Farm Vote?
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., stumps at the Iowa State Fair in August 2019. John Locher/AP Photo In 2019, Iowa farmers endured catastrophic storms and their seventh straight year of low crop prices, a situation made worse by President Donald Trump’s export-killing trade wars. Will farm policy play a major role in the…
Waiter, There’s a Climate Surcharge in My Soup
Mother Jones illustration; Getty American restaurant diners don’t usually blink before adding an extra 15-20 percent tip onto their bills. In recent years, San Francisco’s eaters have even (mostly) grown accustomed to paying up to six percent extra for dinner to offset the cost of the city’s mandated healthcare program. Starting in January, at a…
Chicken, Waffles, and Smashing the Patriarchy
Fried chicken and waffles is a festive dish steeped in the history of the Great Migration, the 20th century fanning out of black people from the former slave-holding states the south into cities in the north and west. The combination delighted palates at nightspots like Wells Supper Club in Harlem during that neighborhood’s famous renaissance.…
Tech Company Free Meals Beget a Lot of Leftovers. Meet the Man on a Mission to Rescue Them.
Marisa Endicott I meet Les Tso on a corner in San Francisco’s SoMa district on a wet Thursday afternoon. He pulls his silver Isuzu SUV into an alley. “Today because it’s the first rain, people are going to be driving cluelessly—there are a lot of Uber and Lyft drivers that come from out of the…
Presidential Candidates Wouldn’t Touch This Radical Idea to Transform Agriculture—Until Now
Mother Jones illustration; John Minchillo/AP; Getty Food and agriculture policies have been at best a fringe issues during the last few Democratic presidential primaries. Candidates tend limit their agricultural appeals to “broad value statements” rather than dive into the policy specifics “that would indicate they’ve given these issues the attention they deserve,” says Sarah Hackney,…