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POLITICS
Cleveland After Serial
The podcast highlighted issues in the city's criminal justice system. Where do residents go from here?
Cleveland After Serial
The podcast highlighted issues in the city's criminal justice system. Where do residents go from here?
Featured Stories
HISTORY
Rebel Girl of West Ridge
From the Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook.
PERSONAL HISTORY
Akron’s Vietnam
How the war touched one Northeast Ohio neighborhood.
CULTURAL STUDIES
Alternate Ending
"In this version no one has to wear a wig to senior prom/because of chemo. No one’s car is set on fire."
FROM THE ARCHIVES
The Rebirth of a Regional Library
After a long period of disinvestment and decline, Chicago’s first regional library is returning to prominence.
The Rebirth of a Regional Library
After a long period of disinvestment and decline, Chicago’s first regional library is returning to prominence.
Independent, context-driven regional writing. Support Belt Magazine today. »
More Stories
Can a Community Water Lab Restore Trust in Flint?
The Mckenzie Patrice-Croom Water Lab, which opened to the public last year, wants to change the relationship between people and water in Flint.
Great Dams on the Land
"When my son rides the Switch Back Gravity Rail over coal lines in Jim Thorpe, I hope to God the mountains are His and my boy might believe in his ancestor clans."
John Edgar Wideman and Writing to Save Lives
Re-reading Wideman's "Writing to Save a Life" in an era of racist violence.
When the Federal Theatre Project Came to Gary
The program's director wrote that "no federal money was better spent" than on a children's theatre program in Gary, Indiana.
Why is the City of Flint Allowed to Waste Away?
It’s February in Flint, Michigan and children will / make paper heart valentines."
Jobless and Struggling in Pennsylvania
Pandemic unemployment benefits are a lifeline for more than four hundred thousand Pennsylvanians. But payments stalled this year.
Except for the Cancer I’m Fine
"Is disease something we’re born with and prone to, or the result of a life lived in a place that can make anyone sick?”
Labor Lessons from the Flint Sit-Down Strike
The strike, which helped guide the UAW to prominence in the twentieth century, provides a blueprint for better working conditions and a revival of the middle class.
How Racism Makes the Weather in Cleveland (and Elsewhere)
A 2020 study found that formerly redlined neighborhoods are hotter than other areas in the same city. Here’s why.
An Ordinary Day in Charlottesville
Excerpted from "Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia."
Why Pittsburgh Needs the Paris Agreement
On the city’s long history of industrial pollution, and how Ted Cruz gets it wrong.
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From the Archives
Preserving Black Artists’ Legacies in Pittsburgh
A photo and interview series exploring how black artists living in a rapidly-changing Pittsburgh see themselves and their work.
Rightsizing Thanksgiving in the Rust Belt
As the jobs have vanished, as education and employment have lured our young people out-of-state and overseas, our holidays have been transformed as well.
Belt News
Welcoming Belt Magazine’s Newest Team Members
Njaimeh Njie and Raechel Anne Jolie join the editorial staff.
Call for Submissions: A Sioux Falls Anthology
Belt Publishing will be compiling an anthology of essays about Sioux Falls in 2021/22 as part of its City Anthology series.
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