Katie J. Wells

Thanks so much for including our @rooseveltinstitute.org work on gig nursing. A fav project w/ the brilliant @fundaustek.bsky.social.

please join me in being a day 1 supporter. she is the dc we need.

Brian Goldstone appears on a PBS News Weekend, speaking from a room lined with bookshelves. A lower-third caption reads: “BRIAN GOLDSTONE — Journalist and Author, ‘There Is No Place for Us.’”

"Homelessness today isn't just the person sleeping outside a Walmart. It's often the cashier or worker stocking the shelves inside."

I joined @pbsnews.org to talk about There Is No Place for Us and the staggering rise of the "working homeless":
www.pbs.org/newshour/sho...

The gift we all need. Subscribe. Support truth-making. It's free.

❤️❤️❤️

For context on the (private equity- and silicon valley-powered) assault on the nursing industry, "Uber for Nursing." rooseveltinstitute.org/publications...

“We’ve tried to not have to do it, but we've got direct orders,” the masked ICE agents told them www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/i...

we're going to win

In a 2020 research project code-named “Project Mercury,” Meta (META.O), opens new tab scientists worked with survey firm Nielsen to gauge the effect of “deactivating” Facebook, according to Meta documents obtained via discovery. To the company’s disappointment, “people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and social comparison,” internal documents said.

Rather than publishing those findings or pursuing additional research, the filing states, Meta called off further work and internally declared that the negative study findings were tainted by the “existing media narrative” around the company. Privately, however, a staffer insisted that the conclusions of the research were valid, according to the filing. “The Nielsen study does show causal impact on social comparison,” (unhappy face emoji), an unnamed staff researcher allegedly wrote. Another staffer worried that keeping quiet about negative findings would be akin to the tobacco industry “doing research and knowing cigs were bad and then keeping that info to themselves.” Despite Meta’s own work documenting a causal link between its products and negative mental health effects, the filing alleges, Meta told Congress that it had no ability to quantify whether its products were harmful to teenage girls.

"Meta shut down internal research into the mental health effects of Facebook after finding causal evidence that its products harmed users mental health, according to unredacted filings in a lawsuit by US school districts against Meta and other social media platforms." www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

Disrupting D.C.: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City by Katie J. Wells, Kafui Attoh, and Declan Cullen

Now available in #paperback, Disrupting D.C. by @katiejwells.bsky.social, Kafui Attoh, and Declan Cullen is a panoramic account of the urban politics and deep social divisions that gave rise to Uber.

Learn more and order yours: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

#Uber #Sociology

Screenshot from NPR's 2025 Books We Love list: There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America Brian Goldstone In this paradigm-shifting, immersive book, journalist and anthropologist Brian Goldstone follows five families in Atlanta who, despite working full time, struggle to stay housed amid gentrification, a lack of tenants’ rights and low wages. These families, all Black, fall into a “shadow realm” – they are not considered officially homeless by the federal government, but lack a fixed living place as they double up with friends and family, sleep in their cars, or pay exorbitant rates at extended-stay hotels. Woven throughout their stories is a trenchant exploration of how America’s disinvestment in public housing and relentless pursuit of free-market growth have fueled housing insecurity for poor working families.

THERE IS NO PLACE FOR US made NPR's Books We Love list!

It's described as a "paradigm-shifting, immersive book" and "a trenchant exploration of how America's disinvestment in public housing and relentless pursuit of free-market growth have fueled housing insecurity for poor working families."

Pls share: Applications open for Summer Institute in Economic Geography, Toronto, 5-10 July 2026

Featuring: Lars Coenen, Karen Lai, Devika Narayan and Stefan Ouma

Early career economic geographers (broadly defined) are welcome to apply. Stipends available. www.econgeog.net/Toronto2026

Brett Christophers · Assume the worst: Where our waste goes Just as Big Oil has repeatedly failed to deliver on pledges to begin decarbonising, so too the promises of plastics...

‘As with climate change, the focus on consumers deflects scrutiny that should be directed towards industry. Not only do companies help establish false representations of consumer wastefulness, they are themselves waste creators on a gigantic scale.’

Brett Christophers:
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Woman deported from Maryland shown on video being dragged in Ghana Rabbiatu Kuyateh was detained this summer at her annual ICE check-in, her son said. She moved to the D.C. area 30 years ago as she fled civil war in Sierra Leone.

A woman deported from Maryland after fleeing Sierra Leone 30 years ago says she reported to an ICE check-in and was flown to Ghana in shackles. In a country her family said she had no ties to, video shows her being dragged. www.nbcwashington.com/investigatio...

Behind this important reversal is a member of the Coast Guard who saw what was happening and had the courage to leak it to the press. That person deserves serious praise.

RI judge intervenes after ICE mistakenly detains Superior Court intern A teenager was nearly taken into federal immigration custody in Providence Thursday afternoon before a Superior Court judge intervened, according to the Rhode Island Judiciary.

#BREAKING: A student intern at Rhode Island Superior Court was briefly taken into custody by ICE this afternoon before a judge intervened, 12 News has learned. Story by @jusolyn.bsky.social and @timwhiteri.bsky.social: ⤵️

The Trump admin weaponized Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to attack DEI programs, protections for trans people & freedom of speech at our universities.

We took the Trump admin to court over this in AAUP v. Trump and WON.

AAUP General Counsel Veena Dubal discusses what prompted the lawsuit👇

Man detained by ICE found dead, hanging with hands and feet tied—attorney The Chinese national died in Pennsylvania in August, but his family's requests for answers from DHS have gone unmet.

"A Chinese immigrant was found dead in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention, with his hands and feet tied behind him, an attorney has alleged."

www.newsweek.com/ice-detainee...

Can We Blame Private Equity for Everything? Did PE firms make the world worse? Or was it something else?

A new piece for @thenation.com on everyone's favourite industry -- private equity; in conversation with one of the many new books on PE, by Megan Greenwell.

Here:

Phone lines immediately down. Hundreds lined up for hours in the cold. Funding slashed from $27 million to $9 million.

This is supposed to be DC’s lifeline for low-income tenants who fall behind on rent.

Instead, we get this.

Screenshot of text: “[We] at The Washington Post will continue to remind you that one of our colleagues in the not-so-distant past was murdered," Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post’s director of press freedom initiatives, told NPR on Tuesday. "That’s not something we can just wipe under the rug or forget about.” Trump offered a chummy welcome to Mohammed in the Oval Office, grasping his hand and wrist while mocking former president Joe Biden for offering a fist bump to the crown prince in 2022 because he did not want to shake hands with a man whose human rights record had been blasted by the U.S. intelligence community. “Trump doesn’t give a fist pump. I grab that hand. I don’t give a hell where that hand’s been,” Trump said, calling the crown prince “one of the most respected people in the world.” Trump called the inquiry about Khashoggi from ABC News reporter Mary Bruce a “horrible, insubordinate and just a terrible question,” adding that “I think the license should be taken away from ABC, because your news is so fake and it’s so wrong.” His anger came minutes after he praised his and Mohammed’s openness and willingness to answer any and every question.

Hey authors! Check to see if Anthropic stole your book to train their slop generator on. You’re entitled to $1500 per stolen Work.

Look up your work, and if you’re in the database, file a claim
secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup/

This article is not about Bryan but it does offer a glimpse of what is going on in DC, the capital of the land of the free. Anyway, thanks to those who have shared the Gofundme link and please continue to do so.
wapo.st/4r2L70A

D.C. leaders oppose patrols with DHS. Are they powerless to stop them? The arrest comes as some D.C. residents have expressed mounting frustration with city officials over the level of police cooperation with immigration officials.

Sadly, this MPD-ICE arrest is a nearly daily occurrence in DC now.

The DC police officers we pay with our tax dollars are being used to disappear our own neighbors and rip them away from their families.

All while our so-called leaders lie and pretend they are powerless to stop it.

When the employed are pushed into homelessness Despite working full-time, many families are locked out of the rental housing market, due to low wages, soaring rents and poor credit, and have been pushed into homelessness.

there are some things right in this world, and those things include @brian-goldstone.bsky.social. and the stories he shares about the kind of world we've chosen to build. thank you, brian. www.cbsnews.com/news/when-th...

Judge Orders Trump Not to Threaten University of California’s Funding

“Dubal…said…she was “kind of in tears” after the ruling. “This represents saving higher education, saving public research and the standing up of faculty and staff and students,” said Ms. Dubal, who is also a law professor at the University of California, Irvine.”
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/14/u...

One of the most chilling things about this story is that some did not even know it was ICE.
They thought it was “an attack on the school” i.e. a school shooter.
Think on that for a minute.

poster for walking tour

screenshot of NYRB webpage

three people sitting and talking in a bookstore

walking tour of dc

a few pics of the highlights:

thanks, austin. holding onto these gentle wins in a sea of despair.

Here's to the next 19 & more reviews like this gem from Washington Informer: “Wells et al are a trio of unabashedly left-wing academics, the type of people who talk about ‘neoliberalism’ LIKE IT'S A BAD THING, and no conservative or centrist will change his entire worldview after reading this book.”