Tracie McMillan, Author at Tracie McMillan

How One Company Is Making Millions Off Trump’s War on the Poor

January 22, 2025January 1, 2019

Mother Jones, The Wayne Barrett Fund at the Investigative Fund
Jan/Feb 2019

ONE NIGHT LAST MARCH, Sue Fredericks ran into trouble. She had been watching snow accumulate for hours from her post at a 24-hour gas station. Busy stretches on her overnight shift were rare, on account of the size of the town in which she worked; with a few thousand residents an hour from Indianapolis, it is small and quaint, surrounded by corn and soy fields and featuring a shuttered Walmart. March marked Sue’s eighth month on the job, and she was earning $8 an hour. Around 4 a.m., Sue (who asked that I change her name) consolidated the trash into two bags, propped the door open, and, hands full, walked outside. Somewhere near the dumpster, her foot hit a patch of ice. Sue’s leg flew out from under her, and she landed on her right ankle. “I heard it snap and all,” she said later, but “I didn’t break it to where my bone was sticking out.”

What I Hear When You Say: Welfare

April 1, 2024May 4, 2018

In this engaging web series, PBS explores hot-button phrases and what they really mean.

Menu of the Future: Insects, Weeds, and Bleeding Veggie Burgers

January 22, 2025March 8, 2018

National Geographic • March 8, 2018

Peer into the future of what we eat, and you will encounter many questions about what will happen to our meals. As the world’s population climbs above 9 billion by mid-century, our food needs will grow by 70 percent. How do we meet them without mowing down every forest or without resorting to industrial agriculture, which the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has cited as the most significant contributor to climate change? How do we maintain soil health, and keep it from washing away, so that crops can thrive? These questions get into murky territory. But here’s one thing that’s clear: Dinner in 50 years won’t look much like dinner today.

How China Plans to Feed 1.4 Billion Growing Appetites

January 22, 2025January 23, 2018

National Geographic magazine • February 2018

Watching Jiang Wannian and Ping Cuixiang harvest a sixth of an acre of daikon seed in the north-central province of Gansu feels a little like traveling back in time.

In a dry valley ringed by dusky mountains, on a brick-paved lot, Jiang drives a rusted tractor over a hip-deep mound of dried plants. As they crush down, Ping, Jiang’s wife, plunges a homemade pitchfork into the straw and arranges it for another pass. Eventually Jiang and Ping work side by side, wiry figures with tawny skin. It’s hot, but they are swaddled in clothes to protect themselves from the dust and the sun. They have handsome faces, taut and lined from years of laboring outdoors, and they turn them skyward as they throw fine chaff up and watch ruddy seed rain down. This rhythm continues for hours. In a singsong voice Ping encourages the wind, murmuring, “Blow, blow!” Machines can do this work in minutes, but they are too expensive for Jiang and Ping. Instead they still thresh the daikon by hand, just as farmers did centuries ago.

Restaurant Workers Say #MeToo

April 1, 2024December 1, 2017

Mother Jones’ Tom Philpott writes up our discussion of sexual harassment and #MeToo in America’s restaurant industry

When the Kitchen Isn’t Safe for Women

January 22, 2025October 30, 2017

New York Times
October 30, 2017

In 2010, I took a job at a New York City Applebee’s. I said I was considering culinary school and wanted to get some experience in a real kitchen, but I was actually there to write about the experience for a book. I had grand plans to take a genre steeped in machismo and tell a woman’s story instead.

I got what I was after, though not in the way I had hoped. My kitchen stint included sexual harassment so common that it became background noise, and a sexual assault, which did not.

Who Do We Think Of as Poor?

January 22, 2025July 8, 2017

New York Times Sunday Review • July 9, 2017

Several years ago, during a harsh Detroit winter, I swallowed my pride and applied for food stamps. I wasn’t sure I’d qualify, but I knew three things. I had little money in the bank, little chance of quickly earning more and I needed to eat. So I tried my luck with the government.

Logan Symposium on Investigative Reporting 2017

April 1, 2024May 3, 2017

It was a huge honor to be included on a panel on undercover reporting last week at the Center for Investigative Reporting’s annual Logan Symposium on Investigative Reporting. Post-panel, I had a lot of (strong!) thoughts about race and gender when it comes to that kind of work, which I shared on Twitter — and … Read more

Semi-Rant RE: Race, Gender and the Problem with “Undercover” Reporting

December 16, 2023May 2, 2017

via Twitter • May 2, 2017

Thrilled to have been in conversation w/ @UCBerkeleyIRP @Shane_Bauer @sukisworld @ailsachang @jamesjonestv at #LoganSymposium2017. But…
Also wish we dug deeper about complexities re: race/gender w/ @UCBerkeleyIRP. Tagging some thoughts with #LoganSymposium2017.
- Typically, “undercover” = swashbuckling white dude (SWD) doing something dangerous. Is there a role for this kind of work? Sure.
- But SWD-as-default makes it seem like SWD=“authentic” truthteller. Both “white” and “dude” parts are crucial.
  Read more

Undercover Reporting: Behind the Scenes

April 1, 2024April 28, 2017

Logan Symposium • April 28, 2017 It was a real honor to share the stage with Ailsa Chang (“Planet Money”), Suki Kim (Without You, There is No Us), Shane Bauer (Mother Jones), and James Jones (Frontline) to discuss the complexities of undercover reporting at the Logan Symposium on Investigative Reporting hosted by the Investigative Reporting … Read more