Where I work among the homeless on the street, I see the infinite degradation experienced by those discarded by capitalist society and barely surviving on its margins. There were always those who live on the edge. Karl Marx was describing the lack of transparency in social relations: what appears to be a free decision to sell your labor is nothing of the kind. Yet people stay away from thinking about how all labor, even paid labor, is forced labor.
On July 8, 60 residents and activists rode bikes from Skid Row to City Hall to protest the lack of bike lanes in their neighborhood, despite the large number of bicycle riders living there.
From the July-August 2014 issue of News & Letters
New York—When new Mayor Bill de Blasio was campaigning, his pledge was to end the “two cities” here, one of the rich and one of the rest of us. And a major component of that was to address the housing problem. Some may contend that [=>]
New York–I have been actively involved in the tenant movement since 1997, when rent laws actually expired, albeit temporarily. Many tenants woke up then and a massive demonstration took place in front of then-Governor Pataki’s office. The stage was set for even bigger demonstrations, but tenant groups (closely allied with the Democrats) decided not to [=>]
