poverty & class Archives - Tracie McMillan

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

December 16, 2023January 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.”

Explaining White Resentment to a Black Audience

December 16, 2023February 3, 2017

Taking my first (public) stab at explaining white resentment to a predominantly black audience

White Resentment on the Night Shift at Walmart

December 16, 2023December 18, 2016

New York Times Sunday Review • Dec. 18, 2016

Seven years ago, I joined the night shift at a Walmart in rural Michigan. For $8.10 an hour, I spent four or five nights a week filling shelves with the flour and sugar and marshmallow fluff that residents of the local county, which in 2008 voted for Barack Obama, needed to get through the holidays. Four years ago, the county went with President Obama a second time, though by a thinner margin. But this past November, the county, like the state, turned red.

Was Stone-Age Wine a Drink of the People?

December 16, 2023May 23, 2016

“The Plate,” National Geographic • May 23, 2016

Think about wine in the ancient world, and chances are you’ll picture chalices, feasts and rituals: The stuff of elites. But ruins in Greece suggest that wine may have roots that are more populist than we typically think—even as far back as the Stone Age—according to a new study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Is Healthy Living Only for the Rich?

April 1, 2024July 30, 2015

Zócalo Public Square and The California Wellness Foundation • July 28, 2015

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Americans are eating healthier, smoking less, exercising more, and living longer than ever before–but only if they can afford it.

Stateside with Cynthia Canty

December 16, 2023December 8, 2014

Michigan Radio • Dec. 8, 2014 When Whole Foods opened in Detroit, there were questions on whether or not the vast majority of Detroit could afford the upscale grocer. Goals were set into place to make the grocer more accessible to the citizens of Detroit. The results, however, have been a mixed bag. Here, I … Read more

HuffPost Live: Can Whole Foods Feed the Poor?

April 1, 2024November 21, 2014

HuffPost Live • Nov. 21, 2014

“Is it Whole Foods’ job to help poor people eat well?” they asked me on HuffPost Live.

“Only when the CEO starts saying it is,” says I.

Can Whole Foods Change the Way Poor People Eat?

December 16, 2023November 19, 2014

Slate; Food and Environment Reporting Network

Nov. 19, 2014

(1) “Everybody Was Talking About It”

A couple of years ago, as winter gave way to spring, Toyoda Ruff began to think about changing how she ate. Ruff had always been heavy, but her son, Tarik, a freshman honor student, had recently crossed the 300-pound mark, prompting Ruff to ferry him to appointments at a children’s weight loss clinic, 11 miles away in Detroit’s Midtown neighborhood, and to document everything he ate for two months. At 270 pounds, her husband, Jermaine Harris, wanted to slim down, too. Ruff was beginning to see her family’s weekly fast-food habit and visits to Golden Corral’s all-you-can-eat buffet as a problem.

As Ruff mulled over these changes, a friend cajoled her into joining a healthy cooking class at their church. Ruff was on medical leave from her job as a probation officer due to an injury, and the break gave her time to consider her meals. The more she thought about eating healthy, the more intrigued she was by a new store: Whole Foods, which had just opened in Detroit. “It was on the news. People were talking about it at church,” Ruff said. “Everybody was talking about it.”

Why class, and poverty, are the biggest problems with food

April 1, 2024October 28, 2014

At the James Beard Foundation Food Conference this week, I argued that addressing poverty was not a marginal concern for anyone interested in changing our food system, but a central one. But upon reflection, I realized I’d left something important out: Lower-income Americans matter for the food movement in an integral way, because it’s their concerns—not those of elites—that can give food advocates political weight. To push food into a political issue instead of a lifestyle change takes numbers—and there are way more low-income people than there are wealthy.

Food, Health and Place: Why Equity Matters

April 1, 2024October 28, 2014

James Beard Foundation Food Conference • October 28, 2014

At this year’s James Beard Foundation Food Conference, “Health and Food: Is Better Food a Prescription for a Healthier America?” I had the pleasure of moderating a panel on Food, Health & Place: Why Equity Matters, with leading experts in food and equity.