Spain’s bishops lined up to attack the center-left Socialist government of Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. They spoke of a “great social menace” created by a secular administration and its support for abortion as well as gay marriage and “express divorce.” read more »

While Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continue to spar for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, a hidden conflict over uranium mining and radioactive waste dumping is simmering, pitting the two candidates, other prominent politicians and Wall Street financiers against many indigenous and non-native American communities. read more »

The subject, of course, recalls Steel Magnolias. Caramel is on a smaller scale, but the two films have a crucial perspective in common: They both celebrate the bonds between and among women—and they both decline either to challenge the place of those women in the world, or to examine any political questions facing them. read more »

“How do you get the stories you want in to the paper?” she questioned. “This is a universal issue.” read more »

The New York City Council will vote on Feb. 27 on Intro 627-A — a tenant anti-harassment bill. Intro 627-A would be the first law on the City’s books to penalize tenant harassment. read more »

While real estate developers dream of luxury high rises, many harlemites worry that massive redevelopment of 125th street could change their neighborhood forever. read more »

The social movements in Mexico are enduring a repression that we have not seen in many years. Felipe Calderón practically militarized the nation. There are roadblocks everywhere. read more »

The Great Debaters, Honeydripper and American Gangster are all about African-Americans, and movies about African-Americans don’t win Oscars — nor, by and large, do the black actors appearing in them. read more »

The Elizabeth Detention center and its owner, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), are part of a growing trend of incarceration being used as a solution to the “immigration problem.” read more »

Unlike the case for much of No Rio’s history, the problem this time was not a hostile city government but the need to raise a huge amount of money. read more »

Although informal housing discrimination and segregation has a long history in the United States, it formally began in 1935 when the Federal Home Loan Bank Board helped create “residential security maps” to indicate the level of risk for real estate investments in 239 cities. read more »

Critics of the plan say that the redesign of the park is unnecessary and fear that the Parks Department’s renovation will restrict space for political protest, and change the demographics of the users of the park. read more »

Born in the Bronx to a family of Italian immigrants in 1914, DiGia spent the WWII years in federal prisons as a secular conscientious objector, engaging in hunger strikes to integrate the prison dining halls. read more »

Recently hip-hop historians have taken the culture’s battle ethos to the realm of revisionism, with claques from such unexpected locales as the American South (!) attempting to stake increasingly dubious claims as the birthplace of rap music. Granted, hammering out a definitive history of hip-hop’s birth is like trying to hold onto a fistful of sand. read more »

Vigorous and dedicated, World War 3 has frequently been ahead of the political curve, but its many dismal portrayals of political subjects and us-versus-them narratives often work to its detriment. read more »

The DOE brought on the rally by slashing the citywide school budget by $180 million in mid-year, at the orders of Mayor Bloomberg. The budget cuts happened overnight, literally. read more »

I think it is great that this paper supports education reform groups, but with your rhetoric of “breaking the stranglehold of our youth” it is to the right of Republican idol, former Gov. George Pataki. Pataki’s Commission on Education Reform advocated for a $4 billion a year increase in New York City public school funding. —NEA read more »

SUN MAR 2 CONFERENCE: 5TH ANNUAL NYC GRASSROOTS MEDIA CONFERENCE: Speaking Truth to Power: Media Justice in Our Communities. Hunter College, 68th St & Lexington Ave http://www.nycgrassrootsmedia.org/conference 917-523-1045 read more »

The emerging reality is alarming: whoever controls water will control life on the planet. After years of quiet maneuvering by powerful business forces, much of that control is in the hands of the corporate world. read more »

It took a lot of effort during Betrayed, a new drama at The Culture Project about Iraqi interpreters working in the Green Zone, not to shout at the American characters to stop mistreating their closest Iraqi allies. read more »

Neither watching the war on TV, nor reading newspaper stories about it, achieves anything approximate to the works in the exhibit, Testimony to War: Art from the Battlegrounds of Iraq. read more »

The precious raw material around which Ezra revolves is the fighting force of Sierra Leone’s children, claimed by revolutionary warlords whose agenda of power and greed matches that of the government they oppose and the white representatives of capitalist hegemony they court. read more »