Economic Justice

It only takes six weeks without a deposit or withdrawal —accrued interest doesn't count — before the federal government and its fourth branch (the banks) can seize a person's funds. This is a practice that is unfairly targeting the elderly and children. At this point, is there any bullying from the banks that could be considered surprising?

Before Eliot Spitzer’s infamous resignation as governor of New York in March 2008, he was one of the fiercest champions against Wall Street corruption, in a state that had some of the toughest legislation for controlling the banks. It may not be a coincidence that the revelation of his indiscretions with a high-priced call girl came less than a month after he published an editorial admonishing predatory lending.

Shifting the burden of a major bank collapse from the blameless taxpayer to the blameless depositor is another case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, while the real perpetrators carry on with their risky, speculative banking schemes. The only way to truly prevent risky derivatives from blowing up in the economy's face is to prevent the risks in the first place, through regulation or, gasp, even bank nationalization.

More and more people are understanding that the government and the economy do not work for them, that we have to build a mass popular resistance that not only challenges what we oppose, but also builds an alternative economy and new systems of governance. But is it too late?

With the imminence of yet another affirmative action decision by the Supreme Court, the oft-misunderstood and always-controversial law deserves a fresh examination of its merit and importance for all of America. Unfortunately, the balance that affirmative action aims to bring to the American workforce is needed now, perhaps more than ever.

According to a new report, the number of low-income people living in suburbs increased 67-percent between 2000 and 2011, altering longstanding perceptions of a rising middle-class fleeing from cities to achieve the American Dream. It's now the poor who are being forced out by the cycle of gentrification to places where, more often than not, the safety nets aren't ready.

As multinational corporations continue a global stranglehold on international tax laws, the focus of every day citizens and their warranted angst are increasingly focused inwards at the individual other rather than the companies that skirt their patriotic duty.

“Ride for Respect,” the demonstration at Walmart corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, will be modeled on civil rights volunteers who rode buses into the South in the 1960s to protest Jim Crow racial injustice.

Upset with Wells Fargo’s foreclosure practices, protesters held a demonstration on May Day that briefly shut down one of the bank’s branches in downtown Los Angeles.

Although fundamentalist fanatics have been working for decades to turn the United States into a “Christian Nation,” they have not had much success along these lines. One reason for their failure is that religious minorities and non-believers have resisted. And another is probably that a large number of Americans want to preserve religious tolerance and avoid theocracy. But it might also reflect the fact that the United States is now firmly in the grip of a different religion: shopping.