On March 30 of this year, the New York Times reported “the Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time.” Three weeks later, disaster hit Deepwater Horizon.

The neo-liberal transformation of New York City since the mid-1970s has meant increasing pain and social exclusion for working people, but especially for people of color.

Cindy Sheehan came to prominence in 2005 when she set up a protest camp outside of President Bush's ranch, waiting to ask him simply why he had to send her son to die in Iraq. In 2008 she ran for Congress as an Independent against the top Democrat Nancy Pelosi, winning an impressive 16% of the vote, beating the Republican, and coming in second place.

Europe is facing its biggest economic and political crisis in decades. Large state debts in a number of smaller European Union countries are undermining confidence in the euro, compounding the effects of the global downturn. To get out of this spiral of crisis, European ruling classes are demanding big cuts in living standards from workers. The danger they face is that the massive opposition to these cuts will grow over into open revolt.

In the largest nurses’ strike in U.S. history, 12,000 walked out of 14 Twin Cities (Minnesota) hospitals on June 10th, and are set to strike again. Prepared by months of big informational pickets, billboard ads, and internal organizing, the 24 hour strike was solid. The chants on the large and lively picket lines were frequently drowned out by honking cars showing the broad public support.

To effectively combat the anti-immigrant “law and order” rhetoric, the most essential point to popularize is that the American corporate elite have created a vicious cycle with their free-trade, imperialist policies against Latin America. Decades of military adventures, covert operations and systematic economic pressures have geared much of Latin America’s economy toward the profit needs of U.S.-based multinational corporations, no matter the impact to ordinary workers and farmers in those countries.

State legislatures nationwide have slashed billions of dollars from public education as they deal with revenue shortfalls brought on by the economic crisis. According to a report from the National Conference of State Legislatures, the 50 states must close over half a trillion dollars in deficits by 2013, which could include laying off an estimated 100,000-300,000 teachers this year.

Strikes by workers at Honda-affiliated factories in southern China’s Guangdong province have shaken the ‘sweatshop of the world’. The fighting example of the Honda workers, many in their teens or early twenties, has spawned a spate of copycat strikes across China as migrant workers at foreign-owned companies especially, slaving for notoriously long hours and low wages, demand pay rises, improved conditions and “restructured” trade unions.

In the largest nurses’ strike in U.S. history, 12,000 walked out of 14 Twin Cities (Minnesota) hospitals on June 10, and are set to strike again. Prepared by months of big informational pickets, billboard ads, and internal organizing, the 24-hour strike was solid. The chants on the large and lively picket lines were frequently drowned out by honking cars showing the broad public support.

The Democratic Party has continued to drift to the right with the Blue Dog Democrats in Congress setting the pace in trying to please their corporate masters, and Obama has betrayed even the most feeble promises of change, trying to be a “bipartisan” corporate politician. People demanded real change by electing Obama, but he has been beholden to both big business and the unnecessary “reaching across the aisle” to Republicans. This is due to the big business nature of the Democratic Party.

“Millions of unemployed Americans are suffering economic and personal catastrophes… This is not your ordinary dip in the business cycle. Americans believe that this is the Katrina of recessions. Folks are on their rooftops without a boat. The water is rising, and many see no way out.” -Economist Carl Van Horn

The right-wing populist, anti-government, anti-Obama Tea Party movement has kept making headlines over the past year. Tea party activists have been influential in the Republican Party’s drive to try to make gains in the 2010 mid-term elections. An April NYT/ABC poll showed 18% of the population identifying themselves as “supporters” of the Tea Party.

Words fail to fully describe the devastation in the gulf. Eleven lives lost, ecosystems destroyed, thousands of livelihoods are ruined, and the calamity continues. This will become the greatest environmental disaster in U.S. history.

Spring 2010 was a season of resurgence for the immigrant rights movement, with the largest demonstrations since the immigrant rights movement erupted in 2006. Anger was already building at stepped up ICE raids, deportations, and lack of action from Congress or Obama on comprehensive immigration reform. On March 21, 200,000 marched on Washington demanding reform.

Among the most advanced struggles for the future of education across the country is taking place in Chicago. For several years a new opposition caucus in the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) called the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) has organized and mobilized teachers, parents and students to confront the big business agenda for education in Chicago, dubbed Renaissance 2010.