The poor and working classes, once stalwarts of the Democratic Party, have been lumped in with the middle class in national political discourse, despite the fact that 55 percent of Americans would consider themselves working class.

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Governor Andrew Cuomo announced last Thursday the withdrawal of New York from the federal Secure Communities program.  Though created to help apprehend dangerous criminal aliens, the program has drawn criticism for detaining low-level criminals and non-criminals and deterring cooperation with law enforcement. more>

With 43.6 million Americans living in poverty and the real unemployment rate at 15.9 percent, many New Yorkers are turning to the informal economy to scrape by. Street vendors, bucket drummers and day laborers fill the cracks in the formal economy, as do canners. more>

Leonora Laboy has received a credit on her rent in the Mount Hope section of the Bronx for the last two years through help from an unlikely source – the Venezuelan government. more>

Would Silver and the Assembly Democrats be willing to stand up? They have suggested that they may not pass Gov. Cuomo's proposed property tax cap unless the Senate renews the rent laws and repeals vacancy decontrol. However, only the most naive would count on them sticking to it. more>

Juan Pablo Ramirez, president of the Jornaleros Project and an immigrant from Colombia, says employers sometimes threaten to call immigration authorities when workers ask to be paid. Now he expects they will just threaten to call the local police. That's because Rockland County, along with nearby Putnam County, has activated Secure Communities. more>

The Queens Center Mall in Elmhurst received $48 mil­lion in city tax breaks from 2004 to 2009 and is rated as one of the 10 most profitable malls in the country. It's bustling with activity again this holiday season, yet most of the 3,100 workers in the mall's 70 stores earn at or near the minimum wage. more>

Is it possible to opt-out of the controversial Secure Communities program that shares local arrest data with immigration agents? The public may know as soon as January. more>

New York City – home to more than three million immigrants, more than half a million of them undocumented – is on the verge of joining a program called "Secure Communities," which allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement to access arrest data from all local jails. more>

Intro 48 asks the City to conduct an annual census of vacant property so the community could better identify locations for affordable housing.  It has languished in the Housing and Buildings Committee since February. more>

This past July, Harlem workers and residents were hit with yet another blow in the ongoing assault on living standards for working New Yorkers when the 200-bed North General Hospital in Harlem filed for bankruptcy and closed its doors. more>

New York City's public school system is frequently depicted as underperforming, failing or dysfunctional. But inside that larger system is an elite core of schools and programs segregated by race, class and ability. more>

The Aug. 16 confrontation between a mother and DOE officials suggests that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein's experiment in running New York City's schools like a business will face increasingly aggressive opposition from an array of groups. more>

My stepson Yousif is 12 years old. He arrived from Baghdad to New York City in February 2009. He had been in the public school system for less than a week when the counselor at P.S. 163 in the Bronx suggested he should be placed in special education. She was fully aware he did not speak English.

AUDIO :: WNYC's Beth Fertig reports on one student's journey through the city's special education system. more>

With the 2002 Community Gardens Agreement set to expire on Sept. 17, advocates fear that the city's nearly 300 gardens will no longer be protected from land developers.

VIDEO :: The New York City Parks and Recreation Department held a public hearing August 10th regarding proposed rules to govern community gardens, Roger Clark of NY1 reports. more>

VIDEO :: Protecting 31 million schoolchildren enrolled in the National School Lunch program, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's "Safe Food for Schools Act" will be included in the "Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act" -- the re-authorization of the Child Nutrition Act. more>

People across Latin America and the United States are increasingly turning to community media as a tool of resistance. Now, Maka Muñoz, a Latin American radio activist and co-founder of Palabra Radio, is planning a cross-country tour to grow Spanish language, participatory radio in immigrant communities in the United States.

VIDEO :: The International Center for Journalists aims to build stronger and better-informed communities of Latin American immigrants by creating a corps of community radio reporters and citizen journalists who will develop and share higher-quality multimedia programming across stations and borders. more>

In a battle that has lasted for more than three years, the current and former employees of Shoe Mania and Mystique Boutique are not just fighting for legal restitution, but for workers' rights and economic justice for retail workers throughout New York City. more>

For South Bronx kids used to seeing chicken fried in a cardboard bucket, spending recess with 15 live hens is an unusual lesson. But with a funding shortfall of $1.5 million, the school and its environmental programs are in serious jeopardy. more>

" My eldest daughter doesn't want to wear hijab or scarf on the way to mosque, even in the car. They are scared someone will attack us or pull out a gun on us," Rahat said, a victim of racial harassment in Queens.

VIDEO :: In the wake of the recent terror raids in Flushing, members of a Muslim community are concerned over what they call racial profiling by law enforcement.

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Across the United States, thousands of kids are kicked out of their homes each year for being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT). In some cases, homophobic families dump them on the streets like litter. In other homes, kids run away in fear of retribution or as a result of ridicule.

VIDEO :: Gay kids become homeless and have even fewer places to turn than their heterosexual counterparts. This is a major issue in New York City. NYU students Lauryn Siegel and James West investigate further. more>

VIDEO :: Prior to the new regulations, the New York Civil Liberties Union protested recruiter access to New York City's high school students. more>

The 136 workers who ended their strike against Bronx-based Stelle D'oro Biscuit Co. in July could offer a test case of whether the public sector is willing to intervene on behalf of workers. With the United States facing its greatest rates of unemployment, the efforts of Stella D'oro workers and neighborhood members will not be enough to save these jobs.

VIDEO :: On July 15, 2009, Congressman Engel spoke on the House floor about the Stella D'oro threat to close their plant in the Bronx following their National Labor Relations Board defeat. more>

Having survived female genital mutilation when she was three years old in Senegal, Fatoumata does not want her four U.S.-born daughters to face the same violence. But as an undocumented immigrant at risk of deportation, the past Fatoumata fought to leave behind might be catching up to her children. more>

According to the Coalition for the Homeless, from July to November 2008, more than 1,300 new families entered New York City's shelter system each month, the highest monthly average since the city began recording this data 25 years ago. Among them are people who were middle class, had jobs, and who had no other options. more>

Tenants and housing rights groups are racing to get the New York State Senate to pass their rent-law reform agenda before the session ends June 22. more>

The New York Immigration Coalition estimates New York City area day laborers number 10,000, whose ranks are expected to swell as previously employed immigrants lose their jobs. more>

Over 280 pro-Palestine protests took place in some 117 cities across the U.S. marking a change from the previous lack of activism attributed to the post-9/11 era, during which a chill fell over the activities of the communities. more>

“The economy is really down. I’m making less than when I came to this country. It’s not enough,” Gabriel says. “I thought things were going to go well for me in this country, but I’m doing pretty badly.” more>

Again, the issue of ownership of public airwaves is before us; now corporate media is looking to buy up “white spaces,” which if kept public could connect millions of new people to the Internet for far less than what we now pay. more>

Both Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Paterson suggested that the 23 percent building increase in the last five years was not related to the 83 percent rise in construction accidents, accounting for 15 deaths this year alone. more>

A generation or two ago, Irish, Italians and Jews were bunched by those in power into the same congressional, legislative and city council districts to compete for the same scraps of political representation, while White Anglo-Saxon Protestants took the rest of the pie. The same has occurred in recent years as Blacks and Latinos – the two most solid Democratic Party voting demographic groups – have been shoehorned into increasing conflict. more>

An increasing number of abused immigrants are filing their own petition for citizenship as battered spouses of U.S. citizens, a right granted to them by the Domestic Violence Against Women Act. more>

When Ricardo Ramón and Natalia Evangelista immigrated to the United States from Santa Inez, a small, arid farming town in the southern Mexican state of Puebla, they didn’t imagine that they would be fighting displacement again. “We have the same problems we left in Mexico,” said Ramon. more>

If the city government devoted as much energy to enforcing the laws against rent-gouging as it does to arresting 40,000 pot-smokers a year, New Yorkers would have a much easier time finding housing they can afford. more>

Since President Clinton promised that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would help stem the tide of migrant workers illegally entering the country along the U.S.-Mexico border, “because more Mexicans will be able to support their children by staying home,” the number of immigrants living without legal status in the United States has skyrocketed. more>

In an attempt to curtail rent-gouging by landlords leaving the Mitchell-Lama program, the state’s housing agency has proposed eliminating a loophole in the law the “unique or peculiar circumstances” provision – which owners have used to escape rent regulations. more>

With East Harlem rapidly gentrifying, 16 community gardens face an uncertain future as advocates of affordable housing and urban green spaces press their competing visions. more>

Rush-hour traffic, careless pedestrians and speedy cab drivers are some risks food deliveryman Fernando Lopez faces while rushing around the city on his bike. As he has come to learn working at Flor de Mayo, a Chinese-Peruvian restaurant, being overworked, underpaid and mistreated are other hazards. more>

“I think if they put in GPS in my cab, I’m not going to do my job anymore,” noted Cisse Mohamed, who has been driving for a year. He added that since trip sheets would be digitally recorded, his opportunity to make off-the-books income would be limited. more>

Ever since House Democrat Charles Rangel introduced his first proposal to bring back the military draft in 2003, it’s been amazing to see how much amnesia there is on the subject, especially among some of those who consider themselves liberals or “progressives.” more>

The immigrant-led, community-based Movement for Justice in El Barrio (MJB) was founded on the example of the Black Panthers of 30 years ago. Its reference point and inspiration, however, is the indigenous-based rebel army in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. more>

The author contends that the Bush administration has dragged the world into three wars that have diminished U.S. power dramatically, causing the American Empire, already in decline, to crash even faster. more>