Back to School in a Failing Society
School bells are ringing again as students are going back to their own daily grind behind the desks at the public schools. Cramming into over-crowded classrooms with insufficient resources, students are facing an uphill battle looking at their future. Parents have to watch their children go out the door into a more dangerous world with […]
The Origins of the Police
For most of human history, daily issues of society were settled by people themselves, in their communities. There weren’t always police on every street corner with the power to stop, search, and harass people in the name of the law. Police forces were introduced by governments controlled by the wealthy, not to protect people but […]
A Nation of Mass Incarceration
The US has the largest prison population in the world. With five percent of the world’s population, it has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners, half a million more than China, which has five times the population. There are about 2.3 million prisoners in the US and about seven million either locked up or on […]
Imagine If…
Imagine If… Today we know that the world is divided into the one percent and the 99 percent. While most people are struggling to survive, a small portion of the population is living in luxury. It doesn’t have to be this way. The problem today is one of maximizing our possibilities. Imagine if the 99 […]
Climate Change? No! We Need a System Change!
There have been five major extinction events on earth where most of the larger plant and animal species were wiped out. The last extinction killed the dinosaurs. An asteroid crashing into earth and drastically changing the climate caused that extinction. Now we are living in what could be the sixth extinction. But this time, our […]
Racism – A Cancer of This Society
We live in a society based on divisions. The main division, which is hardly ever discussed, is the division between those who control the wealth and productive forces of society, and those who do the work. Those in control of the economy determine what to produce, who will produce it and who it is produced […]
Women Hold Up Half the Sky…
But Don’t Have Half the Power or Half the Wealth The claim that the division between the sexes today is natural, or has always been this way, is not true. For most of human existence humans lived in small groups, worked together, shared the resources and took collective responsibility for the young and the old. […]
School – Education or Adaptation?
Almost everyone who is involved in education knows that it isn’t working the way it should be. School days can be spent racing from class to class with no time to think. Many just wait for the day to end. Both students and teachers can feel trapped in classes that seem boring or irrelevant. It […]
Capitalism – A System of Constant War
We live in a world ravaged by endless war. The estimated death toll from wars in the 20th century is over 187 million, not to mention the millions of people whose lives were left in ruins in the aftermath of these wars. The wars of the past century and of today cannot simply be explained […]
What Kind of World Do We Want to Live In?
The school year is beginning. This year is another opportunity to shape the path that your life will take. But as we get ready for the hard work of the school year, we should ask ourselves: what kind of society are we inheriting? Today, young people are forced to deal with the stresses of an […]
Our World is Full of Contradictions – Enormous Possibilities Wasted by Exploitation and War
We live in a world threatened by mass extinctions. Carbon emissions and other pollution have heated the planet almost past the point of no return. We live in a world at war. Corporations and banks rake in huge profits, while tens of thousands are killed, injured, and millions made homeless and turned into refugees. Factories […]
Our Solution Isn’t At The Ballot Box
Fox News staged the first Republican presidential debate last week. While there were differences in style among the candidates and they wanted to claim their own political territory, they all promoted pretty much the same messages. They attacked immigrants, especially so-called illegal immigrants – each trying to sound tougher than the next with their proposals […]
Summertime Should Be Easy!
The summer months are a time to spend with our families, visit relatives in other cities, and simply hang out and get some rest. But for workers, the family time and relaxation has to be squeezed into our schedules before we have to clock back in to work. Without a job all you have is […]
Evictions Can Be Stopped
During the depression of the 1930s as many as 35 percent of workers were unemployed. They had no unemployment insurance and quickly fell behind in their rent. But much of the time they didn’t get thrown out of their homes because large numbers of people stood up together against the police to block evictions. With […]
What Happened to Public Housing?
In 1937, in a period when workers were fighting all over the country for jobs, wages, housing and more, the U.S. Government began a program that promised to provide affordable public housing for low-income families. But the Government never followed through on this commitment. It wasn’t until the 1950s and 60s that most black families […]
The Bay Area – Too Expensive to Live
The average one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco is $3,200 – the highest in the country. Oakland and San Francisco had the highest year-to-year increase in home prices in the country – over an 11 percent increase since last year. Rents in San Francisco increased over 14 percent in one year, and 19 percent in Oakland, […]
New York: Making the Housing Crisis Worse
Rents are skyrocketing in New York City. In the last five years rents have climbed 55 percent while wages have fallen by four percent (when adjusted for inflation). In the last six months, rents have soared twelve percent, and most New Yorkers pay over 42 percent of their income in housing. For most working-class renters […]
Houses For Living – Not For Profit
About 3.5 million Americans sleep in shelters, transitional housing, and places not meant for living. Another 7.5 million Americans have lost their homes and are living doubled-up with family or friends. Over 580,000 people sleep on the street. Over eleven million households pay more than 50 percent of their income on housing, living on the […]
The New Housing Crisis
The U.S. media and the politicians like to pretend that the economy has recovered and is picking up again. If you are among the less than one percent who own the banks, the corporations, the land, the wealth of this country, this is true – in fact times have rarely been better for them. But […]