Canvassing & A Murder Trial

We have another packed list today, enough to keep you busy over the weekend. Besides a great true crime piece from Vanity Fair, I want to call out two pieces related to US elections today, both covering Pennsylvania. J.T. Price's writing about his week spent canvassing in Philadelphia in The Point Magazine is one of my favorite reads of this election cycle. The Economist piece from Wendell Steavenson is also excellent and is less about the election than the workers in an area that has been struggling for a while now. If you read them, I hope you'll agree with me including them, despite my general aversion to including election stories.

Featured Articles

Hello in There

The Point Magazine • 31 Oct 2024 • ~5550 words • Archive Link

J.T. Price writes about his week canvassing in Philadelphia, interacting with a diverse range of voters.

It is draining to throw yourself to the randomness of who will and who will not open a door, of who will and who will not choose to engage, and how, and in what manner. Of having to do a minor self-reinvention at each door, perform the sort of public-minded fiction than can lead, however roundaboutly, to concrete change. The Affordable Care Act. The investment in green energy represented by the Inflation Reduction Act. The end of the war in Afghanistan, however botched the exit was in the offing. But the changes, it seems—in our social media-driven age of instant satisfaction and exigency—can never come fast enough.

Karen Read Tells Her Story: A Murder Trial in Massachusetts

Vanity Fair • 29 Oct 2024 • ~13650 words • Archive Link

After John O’Keefe was found, near death, in the snowy front yard of a fellow Boston cop, his girlfriend was arrested. As Karen Read’s second murder trial looms, she’s ready to talk about what she says really happened. Part 2 of the story is here (Archive Link)

“Other than feeling wrongfully persecuted and prosecuted, I feel incredibly violated,” Read tells me. Police have visited her home three times, seized her phones twice, subpoenaed her family’s financial records. Her private text messages—her most intimate thoughts—have been presented to the world, dissected and debated by the public. Her personal tragedy is many people’s true crime entertainment. And even though the second trial, scheduled to begin January 27, will offer more of the same humiliations and intrusions, and plunge her deeper into seven-digit debt, she’s pushing forward.

Recommended Articles

Why aren’t Harris and Trump listening to Pennsylvania’s steelworkers?

The Economist • 1 Nov 2024 • ~3100 words • Archive Link

It’s already powering remarkable visual innovations, like in the new movie “Here.” But boosters think that’s just the beginning.

Opposing the deal is one of the few things the candidates agree about: in an election year, neither wanted to be accused of lacking patriotism. Yet no one appears to have asked the steelworkers what they want. . . . In September the chief executive of US Steel said he would close the Mon Valley mills if the deal fell through. “I don’t think they understand,” said Stephenson, referring to the politicians from both parties at national and state levels who had come out against the deal. The steel industry is at the heart of the area’s economy, and lots of businesses rely on it. “If Mon Valley steel goes away, that’s 4,000 jobs, but you’re looking at 30,000 people out of work.”