Rustoration: How the Rust Belt Can Show America What it Really Means to be Great
By G. M. Donley Americans sure love to vote for celebrities: Shirley Temple, Ronald Reagan, Bill Bradley, Jack Kemp, [...]
Sorry, So-called Blue States, You Don’t Get to Walk Away
By Tim Carmody In 2016, I voted in my hometown, a Detroit suburb called Madison Heights. (It’s where the [...]
Refugees In The Rust Belt
While the USA wrestles with the politics and policies of immigration and refugees, Belt presents nine moving essays about refugees living throughout the Rust Belt…
In Southwest Michigan, many aren’t shrugging off the march
On Saturday, January 21, the New York Times deployed a dozen reporters far and wide to report on the women’s marches happening across the country.
In Cleveland (2016)
Filmmaker Ian Mantgani traveled from London to Cleveland in July to join Belt for the Republican National Convention. Here, just in time for Thanksgiving weekend, is the stunning result. Trump, Tamir, hope, despair, casual racism and potent rage: it's all here. Enjoy.
THE RUST BELT WILL REMAIN THE NATION’S POLITICAL BELLWETHER
By Edward McClelland As a camera panned down Saginaw Street in Lansing, Mich., past an empty-windowed storefront and a [...]
Who Failed The Rust Belt?
As the media searches the postelection rubble for answers, Belt founder and publisher Anne Trubek breaks down some truths about both [...]
Poppin’ The Rag: from Louis Stokes’ The Gentleman From Ohio
When I was twelve years old my paper route took me all through the area around Sixty-Ninth and Cedar in the heart of Cleveland's black neighborhood, where my younger brother Carl and I lived on the first floor of a rickety old house with our mom, Louise, and our grandmother, Fannie Stone.
Visiting Gritty South Bend & Glitzy Notre Dame, Two Sides of the Rust Belt
By Matt Altstiel If you’ve ever watched Parks & Recreation, you’re familiar with the dichotomy between run-down yet plucky [...]
A Little More on Pokemon Go and Tamir Rice
Two weeks ago an article started making the social media rounds in Cleveland and beyond -- a Belt article, about the curious online text that marked the west-side gazebo where 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed in 2014.
Among the Alt-Racists
I’m eating an Isaly’s chipped chopped ham sandwich on a bench outside a convenience store in Pittsburgh. A racist sits across from me. We are both from the Midwest, yet thousands of miles distant in terms of worldview.
Feeding RNC Resistance
By Anna Limontas-Salisbury Two members of Food Not Bombs were pulling a faded Little Tikes wagon with just a few [...]