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21st Century Slaves

Eric Tsetsi February 22, 2006 Eric Tsetsi

In America there are disturbing trends emerging, which highlight the expanding inequality and shrinking class mobility of the country's people. Poverty has been steadily increasing since the turn of the century. Household income has decreased. Inflation consistently outpaces compensation gains; simultaneously, productivity expectations are increasing. Manufacturing and high tech jobs continue to go overseas and the prison population has reached its highest level in U.S. history.

Another Way Called Venezuela

Juan Carlos Vallejo February 21, 2006 Juan Carlos Vallejo

I thought that I would die without living and knowing a revolution. I came late to the Cuban Revolution, since I was born a few years after it. I witnessed the ephemeral triumph and then the drowning in blood and fire, by the government of Ronald Reagan and his "contras," of the Sandinista Revolution. I had wanted, like John Reed, to be in the middle of the explosion of the great revolutions.

WTO vs. Europe: Less – and Also More – Than it Seems

Brian Tokar February 20, 2006 Brian Tokar

In the late Spring of 2003, amidst the political fallout of "Old Europe's" refusal to support the US invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threw down a gauntlet that threatened to permanently aggravate transatlantic hostilities. As a political favor to its agribusiness allies in the Midwestern farm belt, the administration filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) seeking to overturn Europe's de facto five-year moratorium on approvals of new genetically engineered crop varieties. The governments of Argentina and Canada also signed on to the complaint; together these three countries grow roughly 80 percent of the world's genetically engineered crops.

Double Lives: The Dilemma of Education and Work under Capitalism

Matt Dineen February 16, 2006 Matt Dineen

"Whatever you do, just don't get stuck in a dead-end job." These words had a powerful effect on me and have occupied my consciousness over the past seven years. It was the summer after my high school graduation and this advice was given to me while I was working in the mechanized bakery of a large grocery store chain. My coworker had been there for over 20 years and now, in the midst of back problems and middle-age, she was unhappy with her life and urged me not to make the same mistake.

Social Security in Danger

Nancy J. Altman February 15, 2006 Nancy J. Altman

Breaking ranks with every former president, Republican and Democratic alike, President George W. Bush is engaged in a high-profile campaign to undo Social Security. He hopes to accomplish what has eluded his ideological brethren who fought for similar ends over the last 70 years. Like Representative Carl Curtis in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Bush seeks to curtail the benefits of all but the lowest-paid workers, so that all beneficiaries would receive meager, basically flat benefits, largely unrelated to earnings.

Grassroots Media Looks to Cover the Future of New Orleans

Brian Conley February 14, 2006 Brian Conley

Four and a half months since Katrina struck land, the situation in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast still leaves a lot of troubles and a lot of questions. Many of these questions are being asked by grassroots media activists. In the immediate aftermath New Orleans' coverage was grossly lacking. While CNN and local affiliates set up shop dozens of miles away in Baton Rouge, grassroots media activists both in New Orleans and elsewhere prepared to fill the gap left by the mainstream media's coverage.