Base and Superstructure

Alienation, autonomy, and ideology

Category: Iowa (Page 1 of 16)

A visual representation of two feet and lower legs, with the right ankle highlighted in a warm orange tone to represent an injury.

A Foot Injury

May 25, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Seeking out a mid-morning snack, I descended the stairs with my laptop opened and propped on my right hand. I was watching a YouTube video as I worked the stairs. As I reached the third step, I stretched my right foot a bit too far, overstepping the fourth and landing badly on the fifth.

Uh-oh.

Had I landed cleanly, it would’ve been no problem at all. In fact, I’ve done that a dozen or more times with no discernible issue. But this time, my luck ran out. My right foot turned inward as I landed, tucking awkwardly into the wooden step on our 100 year old American Foursquare home.

As I brought my weight down on the foot, I knew right away something had gone wrong. My body stumbled forward, and I miraculously managed to brace my body and keep the laptop in my right hand. This prevented both my body and my laptop from tumbling two steps below onto the landing at the middle of the staircase.

But my right foot wasn’t so lucky. It took no more than a couple of seconds before I felt a pain radiating through the foot. Something had gone wrong.

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This is a map of all 50 states of the United States with traditional Big 10 college towns and their states highlighted in blue (Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania) or green (Nebraska).

Iowa City vs. Bloomington

May 18, 2026 / / 0 Comments

After last week’s post on the changes in Iowa City, I wanted to compare Iowa City to another college town. And since I used to live in Bloomington, Indiana, that’s my choice!

When I moved to Iowa City (from Bloomington) in August 2007, I saw Iowa City as a bit of a step down. Bloomington felt like a slightly larger city with a slightly larger university in a slightly larger state. I thought I would spend a few years in Iowa City before moving on to a larger city.

On top of this, I saw Bloomington through rose-colored lenses. Hailing from the middle of nowhere in rural southern Indiana, Bloomington stood out to me as an oasis in a barren wasteland. Surely Iowa City couldn’t match any of that.

But 20 years later, I’ve reconsidered my views on all of this. Maybe Bloomington isn’t quite the place I saw as an 18 year old. And perhaps Iowa City can more than hold its own.

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This is a photo of an Iowa corn field with a barn in the background.

Iowa After (Almost) 20 Years

May 4, 2026 / / 0 Comments

I moved to the purple state of Iowa in 2007. It had a Democratic governor and an ideologically diverse state legislature and political discourse. And it soon became the launching pad for the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, our first black president.

Iowa was never perfect. My politics always sat well to the left of anyone who held office in 2007. But having moved here from Indiana, I found it a breath of fresh air. Compared to Indiana’s four decade long decline into hard conservatism, Iowa practically felt like California.

It doesn’t feel like California now. Looking back two decades later, I have to ask: what happened?

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An artistic silhouette of a city hall building with city hall written on the front and a flag on top.

Can Local Government Lead Us?

April 6, 2026 / / 0 Comments

In 2025, we uncovered reasons for optimism about the potential for local government to drive leftist political change. Zohran Mamdani’s election in NYC, in particular, brought together a promising electoral coalition: leftists, young people, working class people across racial lines, the economically and politically disaffected, and progressives of all racial groups.

We even saw a local version in Iowa City. Electorally, Oliver Weilein won a city council special election, becoming likely the furthest left candidate ever elected to city office anywhere in the state of Iowa. But it’s not just about Weilein’s election. We also see potential in moves toward social democracy in our policy discussions. From fare free transit to permanent supportive housing, public debate shifted to approaches friendlier to leftist goals.

It did so against the backdrop of far right advance at the state and federal levels.

These are good things. But there’s a tension in that, or so I’ll argue. I want to balance the good with a note of caution. The shifts in local government remain partial, incomplete, and subject to sharp limits. While affirming the optimism many of us rightly feel, I’ll say a word in this post about those limits.

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A banner for the Louisville Tenants Union, established 2022, with two hands pressed together holding apartment keys.

An Activist Legacy?

February 23, 2026 / / 0 Comments

When I turned 40, I wrote a post contemplating retirement from activism and activist work. More than anything else, I identified 40 as a crossroads. It’s a point where a person should step back and reconsider what they’re doing, especially in a college town with so many people in their 20s.

Nearing my 43rd birthday, I’m ready to check back in on the topic. I’ve definitely changed how I do activist work in the past few years. But even more so, I’ve thought about the legacy I might want to leave.

Let’s talk legacy.

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