Venezuela is undergoing a modern day revolution. Workers, small farmers and the poor consistently vote for socialist President Hugo Chavez. Economically better-off citizens denounce the president as a communist who is destroying the country, but even some on the left criticize Chavez.

This June, thousands of grassroots activists converged on Detroit, Michigan to attend the 2010 United States Social Forum. We were there and on this edition of Making Contact, we’ll bring you some of the local and international voices we found.

It’s been decades since the U.S. has had a powerful labor movement and recent efforts to revive it have mostly fallen flat. But there is hope for a new labor movement that goes beyond the unions.

For many people in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community, the struggle to legalize gay marriage across the U.S. remains the priority political battle. But others in the LGBT community disagree. They question whether gay marriage should be the central issue of their movement.

This June, the US Social Forum will be held in Detroit, Michigan.  We look at how Domestic Workers got organized at the last US Social Forum and we ask, what can we learn from the fall and rise of one of America’s great industrial cities?