Trump’s election was just one of a global turn rightward. Anti-democratic, illiberal, proto-fascist political movements were gaining ground internationally. Even still, eight years later, the Midwest and the Rust Belt are regarded as at the center and engine of the neo-reactionary and radical right-wing movements today.
A song by Woody Guthrie.
May Day isn’t just an estimably American holiday, it’s a particularly Rust Belt holiday, forged in the cauldron of Chicago’s streets and factories, born from the experience of workers in the mills and plants of Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland.
Lewis had a way with language that spoke to the unlettered and unread—the key of which lay in slang and vulgarity.
If a focus on workers tied Vanka with New Deal artists, he diverged by drawing on Catholic spirituality and forcefully critiquing capitalism.
“By the hoboes, for the hoboes, of the hoboes.”