Hunger and Hope in Haiti

Hunger and Hope in Haiti

Amy Wilentz on Haiti, Mia Birdsong on poverty, and Kate Aronoff and Michael Kazin on socialism.

Start Making Sense and Jon Wiener
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

It’s been 10 years since Haiti was devastated by the earthquake that killed more than a hundred thousand people. Amy Wilentz, who has been reporting on Haiti for three decades, returned to the island and found the country oddly calm, despite deepening poverty, violence, and corruption. She also found “little sprouts of possibility everywhere.”

Also: We have a lot of experts on what to do about poverty—academics and policy-makers. Mia Birdsong has been working with a different sent of experts: poor people themselves. She’s a senior fellow of the Economic Security Project, and her TED talk “The Story We Tell About Poverty Isn’t True” has been viewed almost 2 million times. Now she has a new four-part podcast at The Nation—it’s called More Than Enough.

Plus: Democratic socialism, American style: Kate Aronoff and Michael Kazin talk about socialism in America today—they are co-editors with Peter Dreier of We Own the Future, which includes chapters on sports, banks, work, health care, campaign finance, immigration, and families.

Hold the powerful to account by supporting The Nation

The chaos and cruelty of the Trump administration reaches new lows each week.

Trump’s catastrophic “Liberation Day” has wreaked havoc on the world economy and set up yet another constitutional crisis at home. Plainclothes officers continue to abduct university students off the streets. So-called “enemy aliens” are flown abroad to a mega prison against the orders of the courts. And Signalgate promises to be the first of many incompetence scandals that expose the brutal violence at the core of the American empire.

At a time when elite universities, powerful law firms, and influential media outlets are capitulating to Trump’s intimidation, The Nation is more determined than ever before to hold the powerful to account.

In just the last month, we’ve published reporting on how Trump outsources his mass deportation agenda to other countries, exposed the administration’s appeal to obscure laws to carry out its repressive agenda, and amplified the voices of brave student activists targeted by universities.

We also continue to tell the stories of those who fight back against Trump and Musk, whether on the streets in growing protest movements, in town halls across the country, or in critical state elections—like Wisconsin’s recent state Supreme Court race—that provide a model for resisting Trumpism and prove that Musk can’t buy our democracy.

This is the journalism that matters in 2025. But we can’t do this without you. As a reader-supported publication, we rely on the support of generous donors. Please, help make our essential independent journalism possible with a donation today.

In solidarity,

The Editors

The Nation

Start Making Sense Start Making Sense is The Nation’s podcast, hosted by Jon Wiener and coproduced by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes each Thursday.  


Jon Wiener Jon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.


Ad Policy
x