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This Week in People’s History, May 7–13, 2025

Portside
Cartoon of Herbert Hoover staring glumly at the ashes of John Parker's Supreme Court nomination
A Racist, Anti-Worker Judge? Not This Year (1930), Curtains for Smallpox (1980), Covid Kills Jobs, Too (2020), The Road to Revolution (1775), A Bad, Bad, Day in Augusta (1970), Even a King’s Word Is Not Law (1215), Red-Baiters Go Home! (1960)

Why Motherhood Is Harder in Some Countries Than Others

Eleanor J. Bader Ms. Magazine
Eleanor J. Bader explores with Four Mothers author Abigail Leonard how national policies and cultural norms in Finland, Japan, Kenya and the U.S. shape the first year of motherhood—and redefine what it means to parent in vastly different societies.

As Aid Ends, Empire Endures

Marjorie Namara Rugunda Africa is a Country
Western donors are cutting budgets, but the aid model they built—rooted in control and dependency —still shapes Africa’s development. As aid shrinks, the work ahead is not just to survive the cuts, but also to refuse the system that made them matter.

Ryan Coogler’s Road to “Sinners”

Jelani Cobb The New Yorker
The film represents a departure for the “Black Panther” director, and a creative risk; it grapples with ideas about music, race, family, religion—and vampires.

Learning From the 1990s Labor Party

An interview with Mark Dudzic Carl Rosen Jenny Brown Howard Botwinick Jacobin
As capital ratcheted up its assault on labor in the 1990s and Democrats embraced a neoliberal agenda, some labor unions launched their own political party.