Project MUSE®: Dissent - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/464
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Dissent.daily12026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 52 (2005) through current issueLatest Articles: DissentTWOProject MUSE®Dissent1946-09100012-3846Latest articles in Dissent. Feed provided by Project MUSE®The Child-Care Challenge
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980254
<p></p>
Zohran Mamdani visits pre-K students in Brooklyn on November 13, 2025. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)Like playgrounds, changing tables, and choking hazards, day cares are easy to ignore until a baby shows up. Then, as the cliché goes, everything changes: when you’re a parent, child care becomes the organizing principle of your life, along with playgrounds, changing tables, and choking hazards.Unlike these other things, child care is not simple. In New York City in particular, the way we take care of kids is less a system than a patchwork of very expensive solutions glued together with Band-Aids, popsicle sticks, and prayers.This presents a massive challenge for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has pledged to make
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980272">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/464/image/coversmallThe Child-Care Challenge2026-01-22text/htmlen-USThe Child-Care Challenge2026-01-222026TWOProject MUSE®172772026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-22Mamdani’s Digital Machine
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980255
<p></p>
The excitement generated by Zohran Mamdani’s successful campaign for New York City mayor jolted political consultants and pollsters, especially those looking for quick ways to generate enthusiasm for Democratic candidates. Perhaps this could be a silver bullet?Since last June, a crop of candidates has sprouted up across the nation with a familiar aesthetic: man-on-the-street-style interviews, kinetic shots, strict message discipline, and slick campaign ads. We don’t yet know the results of these campaigns, but the style may prove to mean little without the substance. They ignore a crucial aspect of Mamdani’s approach that extended beyond the realm of social media. Throughout a year of campaigning, Mamdani was
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980272">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/464/image/coversmallMamdani’s Digital Machine2026-01-22text/htmlen-USMamdani’s Digital Machine2026-01-222026TWOProject MUSE®162832026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-22A New Vision for Public Lands
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980256
<p></p>
Americans learn about public lands in history class, but if you live east of the Mississippi, you probably haven’t thought about them much since. You might know about the Homestead Act, which encouraged westward expansion by allowing settlers to make claims on land and take ownership after five years of residence. You could possibly recall the Taylor Grazing Act or the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act, which together changed the government’s approach from disposal and privatization to holding and management. But unless you’ve recently gone on a Western road trip, you’re unlikely to have noticed that the federal government still owns more than a quarter of the land in this country and that the Bureau of Land
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980272">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/464/image/coversmallA New Vision for Public Lands2026-01-22text/htmlen-USA New Vision for Public Lands2026-01-222026TWOProject MUSE®340392026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-22The Kerala Consensus
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980257
<p></p>
The Left Front, a coalition of parties led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), was elected in my home state of West Bengal in 1977 and stayed in power for thirty-four years. When I was growing up, its permanence seemed no less solid than the stars and the moon. As late as 2004 Communist parties held fifty-three of 545 seats in the Indian parliament. Twenty years later, in the 2024 election, the three Communist parties together won eight seats. As their vote share shrank, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party rose, and the center-left Congress became largely indistinguishable from the BJP on economic questions. Both parties worked to privatize state assets, remove licensing restrictions on domestic
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980272">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/464/image/coversmallThe Kerala Consensus2026-01-22text/htmlen-USThe Kerala Consensus2026-01-222026TWOProject MUSE®139892026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-22Could Democrats Regain the Rural Vote?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980258
<p></p>
On a recent drive from Washington, D.C., to western Michigan, I passed by a white semi-trailer in an open field, perpendicular to the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Blue hand-painted text along the bottom of the trailer read, “USA, God, Prolife, Guns, Coal, Oil, No Socialism,” and above it all, painted in red, was “TRUMP.” I wonder whether Suzanne Mettler and Trevor E. Brown passed the same sign as they were writing Rural Versus Urban over the last five years. They traveled thousands of miles across America’s rural counties, analyzing and collecting data spanning roughly five decades and conducting interviews with local Democratic and Republican Party chairs and former elected officials, in order to get beyond the surface
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980272">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/464/image/coversmallCould Democrats Regain the Rural Vote?2026-01-22text/htmlen-USCould Democrats Regain the Rural Vote?2026-01-222026TWOProject MUSE®206172026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-22The Bronx Still Burns
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980259
<p></p>
Last summer, the Bronx was burning. In July, as a heatwave smothered the Eastern Seaboard, the temperature in New York City’s poorest borough reached a record-setting 100.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Extreme heat kills over 500 New Yorkers each summer, when crowded, shadeless neighborhoods become furnaces and pressure-cookers. No borough is more vulnerable to heat-related deaths than the Bronx, where residents—85 percent of whom are Black or Hispanic—suffer from higher rates of asthma and diabetes, are more likely to work outdoors, and have less air conditioning access than people living in other boroughs.A hundred miles east, in the Hamptons, the climate crisis has also arrived for New York’s ultrarich. Rising sea
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980272">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/464/image/coversmallThe Bronx Still Burns2026-01-22text/htmlen-USThe Bronx Still Burns2026-01-222026TWOProject MUSE®209662026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-22Can Unions Strengthen Their Political Muscle?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980260
<p></p>
Kamala Harris speaks to an IBEW Local 890 member during a campaign rally in Wisconsin in November 2024. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)As the Trump administration has attacked pillar after pillar of civil society, including unions, two puzzles for the labor movement have grown in importance: Why did so many union members vote for a documented union buster? And what can unions do to sustain member mobilization against that union buster’s increasingly authoritarian regime?As scholars of labor and democracy, we’ve been studying these questions in ongoing surveys and interviews with union members and leaders. These questions are also personal to us, since one of us served in the Biden administration’s Department of Labor.
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980272">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/464/image/coversmallCan Unions Strengthen Their Political Muscle?2026-01-22text/htmlen-USCan Unions Strengthen Their Political Muscle?2026-01-222026TWOProject MUSE®183082026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-22The Dignity of All People
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980261
<p></p>
“Socialism is the name of our desire,” Dissent’s founders stated in 1954. It was an ethical and moral demand, a compass rather than a map. It was a “vision,” they wrote, “that gives urgency to . . . criticism of the human condition in our time.”One purpose for Dissent was to rescue the idea of socialism from those who claimed it for authoritarian ends. And that points to a problem with our vocabulary. Across the globe, a few big concepts define political orientations: liberalism, socialism, capitalism. But each of these categories contains multiple meanings, including internally contradictory ones. There are struggles between ideological camps, of course, but there are also struggles within them over how to define
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980272">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/464/image/coversmallThe Dignity of All People2026-01-22text/htmlen-USThe Dignity of All People2026-01-222026TWOProject MUSE®81432026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-22The Demise of Conflict Studies
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980262
<p></p>
Ethiopia’s Tigray, Sudan, Gaza. In the 2020s, civil wars and counterinsurgencies have caused death and displacement on a scale not seen since the Cold War. Yet the academic field dedicated to studying such wars has never been less relevant to their resolution. Conflict studies is the child of a bygone era: a world in which Western scholars studied wars in faraway places, and Western states intervened in those same wars.Just how closely the study of violent conflict was linked to the unique international moment that gave rise to it has only become clear since that moment passed. In a world where the UN rarely brokers settlements and Western states’ role in enforcing them is reduced to the Trump administration’s
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980272">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/464/image/coversmallThe Demise of Conflict Studies2026-01-22text/htmlen-USThe Demise of Conflict Studies2026-01-222026TWOProject MUSE®305182026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-22Amazon’s Robot Revolution
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980263
<p></p>
In 2018, Garfield Hylton became a picker at Amazon’s BHX4 warehouse in Coventry, a city in the English Midlands. BHX4 is the first stop in a product’s journey through Amazon’s distribution network. It’s a holding facility close to ports and railyards; workers there break down bulk shipments to be distributed to fulfillment centers, where orders are stored, picked, packed, and shipped. Hylton was one of about 2,000 workers at the warehouse, supplying tens of millions of items each year to the United Kingdom and Europe.The facility, less than ten miles from two major highways and the Birmingham Airport, had once been an auto manufacturing plant—a Jaguar factory that closed in 2004, resulting in the loss of 2,000
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980272">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/464/image/coversmallAmazon’s Robot Revolution2026-01-22text/htmlen-USAmazon’s Robot Revolution2026-01-222026TWOProject MUSE®276432026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-22Partyism Without the Party
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980264
<p></p>
Zohran Mamdani at a dinner with supporters in March 2025 (Jack Califano)When was the last time being on the left was fun? Even in the best of times, supporting socialism in America can feel like performing a grim duty in the face of almost certain disappointment. The chapter titles in Burnout, Hannah Proctor’s investigation of the emotional landscapes of leftist militancy, are revealing: Melancholia, Nostalgia, Depression, Burnout, Exhaustion, Bitterness, Trauma, Mourning. One of the many virtues of Zohran Mamdani’s remarkable campaign for New York City mayor was that it never felt this way, not even when he was sitting near the bottom of the polls. It was a year-long act of collective joy. Real joy—not the brief
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980272">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/464/image/coversmallPartyism Without the Party2026-01-22text/htmlen-USPartyism Without the Party2026-01-222026TWOProject MUSE®236532026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-22More Than Sewers
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980265
<p></p>
Milwaukee Mayor Daniel Hoan in 1930 (San Francisco Examiner/Wikimedia Commons)How should we look back at the history of the “sewer socialists” of Milwaukee? This question has taken on renewed urgency following the elections of Seattle’s Katie Wilson and New York City’s Zohran Mamdani, who has said that “the example of sewer socialism is one that I think of often.” Most historians of the left in the United States have regarded Milwaukee’s three socialist mayors as minor historical figures or neglected them altogether. But attention to the city’s history of socialism increased markedly with the rise of Bernie Sanders, himself a former socialist mayor, and even more so following the decision to hold the Democratic
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980272">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/464/image/coversmallMore Than Sewers2026-01-22text/htmlen-USMore Than Sewers2026-01-222026TWOProject MUSE®188532026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-22If You Want Me to Pay My Taxes
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980266
<p></p>
Americans tend to imagine that aversion to taxation is deeply rooted in our national political culture. Didn’t the founders rally behind the slogan “no taxation without representation”? Don’t all Americans—even those favoring regulation and a strong social safety net—always prefer lower taxes? Isn’t this why we can’t afford to have nice things?Not so fast, Vanessa Williamson argues in her new book, The Price of Democracy. Williamson finds that taxation recurs as a major subject of political contestation throughout U.S. history—but not because Americans won’t pay. At issue in these conflicts, she argues, are fundamental questions about what the nation is, and what democracy, freedom, and equality mean. Public
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980272">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/464/image/coversmallIf You Want Me to Pay My Taxes2026-01-22text/htmlen-USIf You Want Me to Pay My Taxes2026-01-222026TWOProject MUSE®185572026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-22The Heaven of Train Travel
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980267
<p></p>
Alaska Railroad train Ultra Dome car in Denali National Park. (Richard Horne/Wikimedia Commons)The Silver Meteor pulls out of Miami’s Amtrak station on time at 8:10 a.m. It rumbles past the sun-bleached industrial landscape, and the large car window is lit up by the low-lying autumn rays. “Have a Safe and Productive Day” reads a squat white wall, directed at the train cars and framed by palm fronds and power lines. I do the opposite: close my laptop, close my book, and remember Robert Louis Stevenson’s words—“And ever again, in the wink of an eye, / Painted stations whistle by”—as my co-passengers and I zip past Hollywood, then Fort Lauderdale, then Deerfield Beach. The fluorescent lights illuminate an interior of
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980272">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/464/image/coversmallThe Heaven of Train Travel2026-01-22text/htmlen-USThe Heaven of Train Travel2026-01-222026TWOProject MUSE®158542026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-22The Left Needs Bureaucrats
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980268
<p></p>
With Zohran Mamdani’s ascent to Gracie Mansion, a democratic socialist is now chief executive for the largest municipal bureaucracy in the United States, meaning that he oversees the daily activities of roughly 300,000 employees. Most of these employees are what the political scientist Michael Lipsky called “street-level bureaucrats”: the teachers, firefighters, cops, bus drivers, and others whose jobs put them into direct and regular contact with civilians. But they also include the urban planners, economists, analysts, and administrators who operate behind the scenes and at the higher echelons of city government: the people who help write the city’s budget, study traffic patterns, and run grant and incentive
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980272">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/464/image/coversmallThe Left Needs Bureaucrats2026-01-22text/htmlen-USThe Left Needs Bureaucrats2026-01-222026TWOProject MUSE®194942026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-22City Limits
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980269
<p></p>
Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo rides the city’s new electric bicycles in September 2018. (Chesnot/Getty Images)Since becoming mayor of Paris in 2014, Anne Hidalgo has transformed the city. Paris is greener, easier to cross on a bike, more pedestrian friendly. Large swaths of land that were once given over to cars are now open to people on foot, most notably the banks of the Seine. Parks have expanded, trees have been planted. Hidalgo has pushed forth a wide range of plans in order to fulfill her vision: new social homes, better healthcare, new monuments to women forgotten by history. Her push for social housing and against gentrification has won her praise around the world. This summer, the Seine opened up for public
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980272">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/464/image/coversmallCity Limits2026-01-22text/htmlen-USCity Limits2026-01-222026TWOProject MUSE®171102026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-22Zohran’s Promise
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980270
<p></p>
Zohran Mamdani first became visible to me and many others just over a year ago, when he posted a video where he spoke to working-class New Yorkers in the Bronx and Queens about why some of them voted for Donald Trump. In that video, which subsequently went viral, Mamdani swept aside the superficial argument about whether support for Trump was motivated by racial and xenophobic animus or economic anxiety. He simply asked people and listened to what they said. Mamdani advanced his mayoral candidacy on a few clear propositions demonstrated that day. Ordinary people are worried about their material and social standing as they try to build their lives in one of the most unequal and expensive cities in the world.
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980272">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/464/image/coversmallZohran’s Promise2026-01-22text/htmlen-USZohran’s Promise2026-01-222026TWOProject MUSE®185432026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-22After Eviction
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980271
<p></p>
A homeless encampment is bulldozed in Chicago in December 2024. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)Last May, California governor Gavin Newsom called on local governments across the state to bar tent encampments on public land, offering a model ordinance that would allow cities and counties to “resolve” encampments “with urgency and with humanity.” This push came a year after a U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding a local law in Grants Pass, Oregon, that barred camping on public land, which effectively criminalizes homelessness. Numerous mainstream Democratic leaders supported the move, arguing that they needed camping bans to keep public spaces safe and to better serve homeless people who refuse services like shelter beds.
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980272">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/464/image/coversmallAfter Eviction2026-01-22text/htmlen-USAfter Eviction2026-01-222026TWOProject MUSE®199982026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-22Capital of the American Century
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980272
<p></p>
Nearly three decades have passed since the historian Mike Wallace published Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, cowritten with the late Edwin G. Burrows, to much renown. A second volume, Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919 (written by Wallace alone), followed in 2017. With the publication of the third and final installment in this panoramic history, Gotham at War: A History of New York City from 1933 to 1945, it is possible both to view the project as a whole and to look afresh at one of the most transformative eras in the history of New York, the United States, and the world.There are roughly three faces of New York that run through Gotham at War. The first is the city as a
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/980272">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/464/image/coversmallCapital of the American Century2026-01-22text/htmlen-USCapital of the American Century2026-01-222026TWOProject MUSE®223202026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002026-01-22