Vinyl & Verses

 In recent news, Amazon has announced that the company is planning to cut over 14,000 corporate jobs due to an increased use of AI technology in the workforce. This is certainly scary and even threatening to the survival of the common working class citizen. In fact, I find a rather interesting connection between the events of today and the economic crisis of 2008 which just so happens to be the primary setting of  Sweat  by Lynn Nottage.  The economic crisis of 2008 was a huge problem for the working class. Due to a large stall in the economy, local workers who devoted their lives to a certain company were being laid off. This is powerfully demonstrated in Sweat when we see characters like Tracey and Jason facing job insecurity due to large budget cuts and less company revenue at the mill. In modern companies, we are seeing the very same insecurity but for very different reasons. For example, Amazon is making budget cuts but not because they are making but because th...

If you were to travel to New York in the 1920's you would be met with a experience like no other: a city booming with culture, opportunity, and diverse taste. However, at the heart of this all the cultural richness you would most definitely find the neighborhood of Harlem: a community in Upper Manhattan which experienced an explosion of African-American culture in the 1920's being known as the Harlem Renaissance. From literature and music to new foods and behaviors, the Harlem Renaissance brought much needed life and representation to a lower income part of New York and African American culture. However, with cultural rise, there must also come a fall. Shortly after the Harlem Renaissance came the Great Depression in 1929, followed by a period of economic rebuilding. This is a prime example of a gentrification; economic rebuilding brought in rich people from many different cultures to compensate for the loss of jobs and housing during The Great Depression. Although this brought...