Under the Radar

"Look, you know that new car smell? Well, that's formaldehyde, too. The stuff is in everything. It's not a big deal."

—Ron Mason, owner of a disaster contracting firm, on the notoriously toxic FEMA trailers that are now being used to house oil spill clean-up workers in the Gulf

"Given the depth of the nation's recessionary impacts on homeowners, a considerable number of customers will transition from homeownership over the next two years."

—from the June 24, 2010 congressional testimony of Barbara Desoer, president of Bank of America's home loan and insurance unit

Immigrant Rights Activism, Beyond the Mass Marches

While there has been much focus on the Arizona law SB1070 and the mass marches for immigrant rights, there has been no shortage of activism for immigrant rights on a more local level.

Last January, a collection of students began a fifteen-hundred-mile Trail of Dreams march to demand passage of the DREAM Act. The DREAM Act would grant residency to undocumented youth who graduated from U.S. high schools and have completed two years of work toward a bachelor's degree or served in the U.S. military. Approximately sixty-five thousand undocumented immigrants will graduate from U.S. high schools in 2009. Immigrant youth initiated a hunger strike in front of Senator Chuck Schumer's (D-NY) Midtown Manhattan office, demanding that he make the DREAM Act a priority.

In March, undocumented youth in several cities responded to a call to "come out of the shadows," by marching for immigration reform and publicly declaring their immigration status in front of the press. In the Chicago rally, they did so in the presence of nearby Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The organizers gave credit to the LGBT movement for this tactic.

In New Haven, Connecticut, a collection of community groups led a boycott of a bookstore that had forbidden employees from speaking any foreign language within earshot of customers. Circulating a petition among community members, and pointing out that the manager frequently spoke French in the store, the store reversed its policy.

Campaign Launched to "Seize BP"

While the oil giant BP and the U.S. government work to mitigate the Gulf Coast oil spill, the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history, a collection of community activists and left-wing organizations has proposed a more enduring solution.

They launched a "Seize BP" campaign, with coordinated protests in more than a dozen cities. Once it was announced that the spill would likely last into August, there were actions in fifty cities. The campaign's objective: the seizure of BP's assets (to hold in trust) and the provision of "immediate relief to the working people throughout the Gulf states whose jobs, communities, homes, and businesses are being harmed or destroyed by the criminally negligent actions of the CEO, Board of Directors, and senior management of BP."

"Seize BP" explained that the trust controlling BP's assets should include "representatives of the fishers, shrimpers, crabbers, unions, small business people and workers in the tourism and recreation industry, local elected officials, clergy, independent scientists, and environmentalists." The campaign also distinguished itself from a boycott, which it said "provides no relief," only helps competing Big Oil companies, and primarily hurts small business people who have received franchises to run gas stations.

Pro-Labor Democracy Movements Continue to Grow in Egypt

The April 6 Movement, a reform group focused on direct action and built around a dissident blog, has continued to grow. Focusing its ire on the renewal of the state's "emergency law" that has banned opposition parties and sharply curtailed civil liberties, the democracy activists rallied and clashed with police this past April. The number of detainees held under the emergency law is widely estimated to be between twelve thousand and fourteen thousand.

The April 6 Movement's Facebook group has around seventy-seven thousand predominantly young members, and is well-known for its dynamic debates. The co-founders of the group have been repeatedly arrested. The April 6 Movement itself was formed in 2008, in solidarity with the Egyptian cotton workers in the Delta area...