The idea of racially diverse American cities ringed by mostly white suburbs is essentially flip-flopping, according to the Brookings Institution’s big new demographic report, “The State of Metropolitan America.” The report draws on 2002-2008 census data to find that young, educated whites are moving into cities in record numbers. At the same time, suburbs are [...]

More GRITtv Novelist, activist, journalist, internal security threat? Arundhati Roy joins us for a special conversation about her journey into the forest in the heart of India to talk to Maoist revolutionaries. Roy talks with Laura about resistance and struggle, war and colonialism, how you can’t fire bullets at an ideology, and why we should [...]

“You know,” DeLay said, “there is an argument to be made that these extensions of these unemployment benefits keeps people from going and finding jobs.” When CNN’s Candy Crowley described his argument as “a hard sell” to the public, DeLay replied, “It’s the truth.” Crowley followed up, asking, “People are unemployed because they want to be?” [...]

For people who cannot afford rent, a car is the last rung of dignity and sanity above the despair of the streets. A home on wheels is a classic American affair, from the wagon train to the RV. Now, for some formerly upwardly mobile Americans, the economic storm has turned the backseat or the rear [...]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwcKwGS7OSQ[/youtube] The Washington Post‘s Steven Pearlstein tells me on MSNBC that the American people shouldn’t expect Washington to be able to do anything about jobs because it’s the result of “imbalances” that have to be “worked out” and it’s going to take time and people just need to be patient and take their medicine. (Mrs. Alan [...]

With the power elite consumed with its incessant, discordant fiddling over health care, the economic plight of ordinary Americans, from the middle class to the very poor, got pathetically short shrift. And there is no evidence, even now, that leaders of either party fully grasp the depth of the crisis, which began long before the [...]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayAOqX4XWq0[/youtube] As the President continues to work on immediate job creation, he discusses his proposal for a new fee on the largest financial institutions to ensure that every cent of taxpayer assistance gets paid back. Saying that, “we’re not going to let Wall Street take the money and run,” he goes on to discuss the [...]

FDR said it and it holds 66 years later: There are benefits and opportunities every American should expect to enjoy. Let’s contrast ideal versions of the two approaches. In the ideal America of economic citizenship, there would be a single, universal, integrated, lifelong system of economic security including single-payer healthcare, Social Security, unemployment payments and family leave [...]

Over the last 20 years, an increasing percentage of hardworking families have been quietly and chronically eroded by a brutal economy while national and business leaders have accepted, even promoted, this kind of society. Such profound harm spreads much farther than the millions of low-income people on the front lines; it leaks into the lives [...]

Over all, an estimated 3.6 million out-of-work people have been uncounted since the recession began in December 2007. They include people who had not recently looked for work and those who would have entered the work force in normal times, like recent high school and college graduates, but remained on the sidelines as jobs disappeared. [...]