This article focuses on how architecture, and aesthetic interventions generally, might be transformed from hegemonic to counterhegemonic in order to realign political forces in the production of culture and social life. In a prior REMARX commentary for "Rethinking Marxism", the authors critiqued the concept of "the political" as used in recent architectural discourse. They asserted their dedication to a critical, strategic and affiliated practice of architecture that tries to reorient subjectivities and affirm the oppositional cultures of social movements. Motivated by the will to root political theorizing as well as the practice of art-making within the history of culture and community--not the academy--the authors' desire is to actually make something in the social world. Here, the authors talk about local struggles of social movements situated in a global force field of power relationships. These social movements are antiracist struggles of the low-wage and no-wage working class, comprised predominantly of people of color oppressed as minority nationalities in the United States: in Los Angeles the authors examine a civil rights struggle for equity in transportation and in the distribution of public resources; while, in Cincinnati, they examine a community-based struggle for housing that fights against the racism inherent in privatization and gentrification. (Contains 8 notes.)