Author Paul Street spoke at the Wealthy Street Theatre in Grand Rapids on the issues presented in his most recent book, Empire and Inequality." A frequent columnist in Z Magazine, Black Commentator, and other magazines, Paul Street has closely monitored the deterioration of civil liberties since 9/11. In his new book, Street challenges the widely accepted notion that "everything changed" on 9/11 and argues that instead the terrorist attacks provided a windfall opportunity to accelerate pre-existing trends towards greater global and domestic hierarchy, inequality, and repression.