So much depends upon the conscience of people like Grace and Urvashi. I see these two women — one at the beginning of her life, the other having spent 30 years working for social justice — as moral examples to all of us. It is a privilege to witness their lonely stand for justice.

Do you remember voting to let an unelected group of wealthy property owners hire people to control our public spaces? Neither do I. Yet, the Block by Block program is expanding from coast to coast as a nonsensical response to poverty and the housing crisis. Public spaces should be for everyone.

The administration’s efforts to quash press freedom are in sync with its unrelenting persecution of whistleblowers. The purpose is to choke off the flow of crucial information to the public, making informed “consent of the governed” impossible while imposing massive surveillance and other violations of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

“The capacity of the government to engage in constant surreptitious monitoring of all civilians has been greatly enhanced by the commercialization of the Internet,” said media analyst Robert McChesney. “The commercialized Internet, far from producing competition, has generated the greatest wave of monopoly in the history of capitalism.”

Let’s demand a law that protects us from the rapacious investment schemes of the rich, and limits their investments in housing. The rich can go on speculating in the racehorse market, the art market, the market for big diamonds and fancy boats, but not our housing, which is a human necessity.