Historian, Writer, Midwesterner
How do you run an authentic, progressive, populist campaign that empowers grassroots activists across a state as geographically, occupationally, and (occasionally) ethnically diverse as Minnesota?
Go to Northfield to find the answer.
I joined the podcast “The Same, but Worse” to answer a few questions with burning relevance to modern American politics: What is “progressive populism?” How did Midwesterners respond to the economic challenges of the Farm Crisis and deindustralization in the 1980s? And, of course, which states are in the Midwest?
Continue reading “Is there room for left-wing populism in American politics?”
Travel to Des Moines, meet a politician you’re writing a dissertation about, visit the mecca of modern Midwestern marketing. It was a good two weeks.
Since I’m on this barnstorming tour for the remainder of 2017, I don’t need to live in Milwaukee until the spring, meaning I’m moving out of my apartment. That meant the unenviable task of cleaning it out but also provided the opportunity to use the Marquette University Archives, which play host to dozens and dozens of feet of relevant material from some of Wisconsin’s prominent politicians of the 1980s.
There are 2200 words ahead, click on if you dare.
Continue reading “Barnstorming the Midwest: Milwaukee, Part 1”
