They're rights that should be endemic to any democracy. The right to a free quality education, from elementary school right through higher education. The right to have a decent social wage. The right to a decent job. Political rights; the right to vote. These are all parts of the social contract, from the New Deal onwards, that never went far enough.

The loan crisis and the increasing slashing of funds for students, coupled with the astronomical rise in tuition, represent an unparalleled attack on the social state. The hidden agenda here is that when students graduate with such high debts, they rarely choose a career in public service; instead, they are forced to go into the corporate sector, and I see these conditions, in some ways, as being very calculated and as part of a larger political strategy to disempower students.

Justified by the war on drugs, the United States is in the midst of a prison binge made obvious by the fact that since 1970, the number of people behind bars... has increased 600 percent.

We need to get rid of the growing army of temporary workers now filling the ranks of academy. This is scandalous; it weakens both the power of the faculty and exploits these workers.

It is important to note that Edward Snowden was labeled as a spy not a whistle-blower - even though he exposed the reach of the spy services into the lives of most Americans. More importantly, he was denounced as being part of a generation that unfortunately combined being educated with a distrust of authority.

The issue should not be, we're going to tax you more to give you the services you want. The issue is, this is the wealthiest country in the world, and we're going to use that wealth to service human needs and not to service a military industrial corporate surveillance state.

The rise of globalization, the rise of finance capital, the elimination of the manufacturing base, the decimation of the working class, particularly in terms of those who had some comforts that approximated what the middle class had.