The sale prices of existing homes in the Midwest and Northeast are falling as overall sales across the country are declining, according to the National Association of Realtors.  In the West, home sales are also down but sale prices remain roughly the same. Recent Commerce Department data shows that new home sales was up in […]

Thousands of Sacramento County workers in a coalition of labor unions went on strike on September 5.  The union coalition includes the local chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Service Employees International Union Local 535, Stationary Engineers Local 39 AFL-CIO, and the United Public Employees Local 1. Labor leaders and […]

“If we do not get control of our borders, by 2050 Americans of European descent will be a minority in the nation their ancestors created and built,” writes Patrick Buchanan in his new book titled State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America.  For him, border control is the key to the […]

The impact of the “Day Without Immigrants” boycott and marches across the U.S. on May Day is far-reaching.  Crucially, this mass action humanized undocumented migrants under economic and political attack. Significantly, their lives are moving from the margin to the center of the U.S. public mind.  Such social energy has a force of its own. […]

Many eyes are on the U.S. real estate market.  “During the past five years, home prices have risen at an annual rate of 9.2 percent,” according to the 2006 Economic Report of the President released on February 13. Was this growth normal?  We need the historical context of home price increases to answer this question. […]

Click on the image for a larger view. Rhonda Erwin and Her Allies, at the Capitol of Sacramento, Photo by Dale Crandall-Bear Rhonda Erwin is a mother who lives with her family in the city of Sacramento.  Some families there are facing an epidemic of youth violence.  Politically, the response to this crisis is police […]

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is no armchair theorist.  She was and is on the front lines of struggles for social justice at home and abroad.  An acclaimed author, Dunbar-Ortiz is also a professor of ethnic studies at California State University, Hayward.  Her substantial body of work includes Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the […]

THE LANGUAGE OF EMPIRE: Abu Ghraib and the American Media by Lila RajivaREAD EXCERPTBUY THIS BOOK Baltimore resident Lila Rajiva is the author of The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American Media (Monthly Review Press, 2005).  She has taught at the University of Maryland and is a prolific freelance journalist, whose work can […]

WORKING TOWARD WHITENESS: How America’s Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs by David R. RoedigerBUY THIS BOOK David Roediger, professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a scholar of critical whiteness studies, delivered a talk titled “The Dilemmas of Popular Front Antiracism: Looking at The […]

Scott Campbell lives in Oakland, California, and is an organizer with the San Francisco Bay Area Coalition to Fight the Minutemen.  He and 600 others protested on October 29 at the state Capitol in Sacramento against the Minuteman Project, which turned out 200 supporters. Mario Galván lives in Sacramento, California.  He has been working with […]

Two percent. That’s the percentage of U.S. blacks who approve of President Bush’s job performance, a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found. Blacks’ current two percent approval rating of Bush is down from 19 percent a half-year ago. Why is this? Hurricane Katrina and modern communication. Millions of African Americans watched TV coverage of the […]

Cindy Sheehan has breathed new life into the U.S. antiwar movement. The Vacaville, CA mother did so — alone then with others — by protesting outside the Crawford, Texas ranch of a vacationing President Bush, dubbed “Camp Casey” for her son who died in oil-rich Iraq. Sheehan’s demand to speak with Bush about the “noble […]

General Motors Corp. is losing market share and money. Basically, GM’s business downturn is being driven by UAW members having made more cars and trucks than can be sold in the marketplace. Thus, the company wants to re-open its four-year labor contract with the UAW to cut employee health-care costs, unilaterally if need be. GM […]

Kenneth Burt is the political director of the California Federation of Teachers. He has worked for a number of unions and elected officials, including former California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. He is a product of Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley, where he returned to be a visiting scholar. Burt has written […]