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Lainey Newman then joins, diving right into her research methods compiling and analyzing archival, interview, and ethnographic data exploring the political evolution of the Rust Belt’s “union-man” archetype – also touching connection to the region. Next, Newman dives into her exploration of the influence of unions as third places and integral parts of community infrastructure in the Rust Belt, tackling the role they played throughout much of the 20th Century, playing host to community events, local organizing, religious affairs, as well as disseminating important news and political developments, alongside its role as a collective bargaining unit. Moving forward, Lainey walks Sam and Emma through the disappearance of this third-place over the second half of the century, with the collapse of steel regulation and rise of neoliberalism obliterating the union jobs and general population of the Rust Belt, and thus killing the major progressive counterweight to conservative community institutions and third places.