Metropolitics

“There Is No Excused Absence in Prison”

Tanisha Cannon & Dylan O'Donoghue — 2024-07-19T05:00:00Z

More than 150 years after the passage of the 13th Amendment, the fight to abolish forced labor in the United States continues. In this interview, Dylan O'Donoghue talks with Tanisha Cannon, organizer and managing director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, about her work campaigning for a California state constitutional amendment that would abolish slavery in prisons.
In fall 2023, Dylan O'Donoghue, a PhD candidate at Rutgers University–Camden, conducted an interview with Dr.

- Interviews / prison, labor, forced labor, prison labor, United States, California, slavery

Navigating Jefes Fantasmas in New York City's Urban Platform Economy

Jackson Todd — 2023-03-03T06:00:00Z

How has the “platform economy” altered urban life, infrastructure, and labor? Jackson Todd examines New York City's deliveristas and the coercive practices employed by food delivery applications. What is the future of labor rights in the new economy?
The logistics of the so-called platform economy have reshaped our cities and communities. Urbanites can now get everything from groceries, toiletries and pet supplies to prescription medications, flowers and fast food delivered to their doors in

- Essays / work, labor, tech economy, tech sector, new economy, precarity, New York, United States, trade unions, food

Making Routes on the Sea

Natasha N. Iskander — 2023-02-24T06:00:00Z

Natasha N. Iskander reviews Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula by Laleh Kalili, which elucidates the labor, power, and politics of international trade routes from the vantage point of the sea.
Ninety percent of the world's goods travel by ship. This is the statistic with which Laleh Khalili opens her magisterial foray into the making of the trade routes that crisscross our oceans and seas. We depend on these routes, and on the tankers and ships that

- Reviews / capitalism, Arabian Peninsula, Middle East, trade, shipping, labor, politics, power play