Joshua Brown introduces a critical retrospective on creator David Simon’s five-season (2002–8) HBO series, The Wire, with its riveting portrayal of blue-collar life in postindustrial Baltimore.
Contributing editor Nancy MacLean sits down with the remarkable union organizer Andrea van den Heever.
This issue’s Contemporary Affairs section is a roundtable discussion of the Occupy Wall Street movement, held in Washington, DC, in December 2011.
Joan Mazza, “Self-Portrait as a Microbiologist”
Robert D. Johnston, “The Madison Moment: Labor Historians as Public Intellectuals during the Wisconsin Labor Crisis”
Christopher Phelps, “Port Huron at Fifty: The New Left and Labor: An Interview with Kim Moody”
Dennis Deslippe, “On the Importance of Affirmative Action: Labor Liberals and the Recasting of “Contract Unionism””
Paul Moreno, “Union Job Protection Equals Discrimination”
Ava Baron, “Affirmative Action and the Unhappy Marriage of Union Rights and Equality Rights”
Joseph A.