News stories by Matthew Cardinale, page 7

With civil society gearing up for the 2010 World Social Forum, and later this summer, the 2010 U.S. Social Forum in Detroit, Michigan, activists here say new alliances created at the first USSF in 2007 are going strong.

National progressive groups are gearing up for the 2010 Congressional elections by targeting centrist Democrats in the U.S. Congress and supporting their more left-leaning opponents.

The number of housing units affordable to extremely low-income (ELI) families in the U.S. has declined over the last year, even as the number of families needing those units has increased, according to a new report by the National Low-Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC).

Since a federal judge ruled earlier this month that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was responsible for the devastating 2005 levee breach at the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina, some legal scholars believe that millions — or even billions - could be owed to additional Hurricane Katrina victims.

While most U.S. public schools are responding to new high-stakes testing requirements by teaching more math and English to the neglect of social studies and civics, a very small minority of schools are pushing forward a different agenda.

Activists from the U.S. and Colombia are targeting the World of Coca-Cola museum, located near its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, accusing the company of 'union busting', paying its workers 'poverty wages', and engaging in environmentally destructive practices.

Two recent police raids of gay bars in Atlanta, Georgia and Fort Worth, Texas have sparked mass protests in the two cities and led activists to question whether equality for persons of all sexual orientations in the U.S. has come as far as some would like to believe.

With most U.S. cities facing a severe shortage of affordable housing, more and more are beginning to turn to so-called inclusionary zoning (IZ).

Environmental groups across the southeast United States, from Georgia to the Appalachia region, are stepping up their opposition to a controversial but widespread practice by coal companies of removing the tops of mountains with explosives.

Despite statements by U.S. President Barack Obama that he wants to see the world reduce, and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons, the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration continues to push forward on a programme called Complex Modernisation, which would expand two existing nuclear plants to allow them to produce new plutonium pits and new bomb parts out of enriched uranium for use in a possible new generation of nuclear bombs.