the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Apr 30, 2018
State-wide teacher strikes are rolling across the country. What started in West Virginia has spread to Kentucky, Oklahoma, and now Arizona and Colorado. In every one of these states, all or most of the school districts in the state have been closed for periods of up to nine days. Tens of thousands of teachers, support personnel, and other school workers have descended on the state capitals in massive demonstrations of determination and solidarity.
In every one of these states, the teachers have made it clear that they are not just demanding pay raises or pensions for themselves. The fight has included demands for pay raises and protections for all school employees and even other public sector workers.
And in every state, the fight has included demands for increased school funding to improve the quality of education for the students. Striking teachers and other school employees have reached out to the students, the parents and the communities, making it clear that this is a fight of ALL working people for a better education and a better life.
These revolts follow two decades of nationwide attacks against public education. George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” was followed by Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top”–programs that scapegoated teachers for the low quality of public education, and penalized teachers and schools whose students did not score well on standardized tests.
And especially after the financial melt-down of 2008, the federal government and state legislatures passed massive tax breaks for corporations, gutting state budgets across the country. They cut pay for public workers, and cut school budgets. This was nothing more than a way to make working people pay the price–not only government employees, but everyone who relies on government services, from roads to sanitation to, yes, public schools. All of these services were slashed.
Much of the blame has been placed on Republicans, but in fact these attacks have been pushed and passed by Democrats as well.
Now, after 20 years of these attacks and this deterioration of public school systems, educators, parents and students are finally saying, enough is enough!
Their strikes have been successful, to the extent that they have forced administrators to give what they previously refused to consider. West Virginia teachers and public sector workers got 5 percent raises and an increase in the state school budget. Oklahoma teachers got a 6,000-dollar raise, while other public workers got 1,200 dollars; and the school budget increased by 50 billion dollars, partially paid for by small increases in corporate tax rates.
Arizona teachers were offered a 20 percent raise over several years, but turned it down–because the promise of a school budget increase was much too small, and much too vague. Colorado teachers are fighting for the same thing–raises in pay, plus increases in the funding for public schools.
Of course, when compared to what teachers have given up, all of the concessions made by administrators are nowhere near what they need to be. It will be a hugely difficult fight to get restitution because it can’t just be gleaned out of new taxes or shifts in state budgets. Wall Street banks and corporations will have to be forced to give back money they have taken.
But these fights show that the way for workers to successfully fight is massively–and collectively. Across borders, across professional boundaries, whether in a union or not–the most successful fights have been the ones that have included all workers. Because that’s where the power of the working class lies.
So these five statewide strikes are a good beginning, showing the way forward for workers everywhere.
Apr 30, 2018
Two 23-year-old black men went into a Philadelphia Starbucks and sat down to wait for a business associate. One of the men asked to use the rest room and was told he could not. Then they were arrested.
Anyone who has watched the video can see the crazily disproportionate, armed response to two people who clearly pose no threat. The two men calmly answer the cops’ questions–yet the police bring in backup, and the men are led away in handcuffs, minutes after they arrived at the Starbucks. They were accused of “trespassing,” though Starbucks is a public place, famous for being one of the only public spots left where people can sit and talk.
Starbucks has apologized, instituted “racial sensitivity training” for its workers, and it has moved the manager who called the cops. But this problem goes way beyond Starbucks.
Like many cities in this country, Philadelphia has a large black population–but there are some areas of the city where black people are treated as if they are not welcome.
The Starbucks in question was in Rittenhouse Square, one of Philadelphia’s richest neighborhoods. On VisitPhilly.com, Rittenhouse Square is listed as “the heart of Center City’s most expensive and exclusive neighborhood.” And, here exclusive means ... predominantly white. While 43 percent of the people who live in Philadelphia are black, they make up only 3 percent of the residents of Rittenhouse Square.
Yet despite the small number of black people who live there, according to the ACLU, 67 percent of the people stopped by the police in that neighborhood since 2011 were black!
Almost every city in this country has a Rittenhouse Square. Segregation might not be the law any more–but it is alive and well, and enforced by the police throughout this country.
Apr 30, 2018
This is an enormous museum—seven floors—covering more than 500 years of history and culture. It requires more than one day to see everything. This review is divided into two parts. The second part will be in the next issue of this newspaper.
This museum was a long time coming and was long over-due. The fact that the museum has been open since September of 2016 and still requires timed tickets, attests to its popularity.
The TransAtlantic trade in human beings profoundly affected every continent on the planet in ways that impact every person and every country still today. Millions of Africans were forced out of Africa to the Americas and Europe. Massive amounts of wealth were generated by this trade and by the work of enslaved Africans. That wealth was a game changer. It was an important factor in making the United States the most powerful and wealthiest country on earth while at the same time impoverishing Africa.
The exhibit begins by tracing events in Africa and Europe that gave rise to the global slave trade.
Several factors played into the development of the transAtlantic slave trade. Europeans had developed technology that allowed them to create large commercial navies.
For example, triangular sails were much better for controlling ships than square sails. And they invented a special kind of compass which allowed them to navigate with no shore in sight. And thus, they were able to arrive at and colonize the Americas. Colonies meant they needed lots of cheap labor.
But Europeans were not able to independently enter the West and Central African interior to capture Africans and force them onto ships to the Americas. They needed help from Africans.
European kings and queens relied on African kings and queens to organize the capture of people on the African mainland and move them to the coast where they could board the slave ships from Europe. Since there was already slavery and a slave trade in Africa, the means for the African rulers to do this already existed. This allowed European rulers to amass more wealth without having to invest in an infrastructure in Africa.
The museum shows how the European economy was based on the transAtlantic slave trade. In fact, the enormous wealth made in the slave trade underlay the development of capitalism in Europe. The crowns of Europe, including the royal families of the Netherlands, France, Great Britain, Portugal and Spain, made much profit. Profit was made on the buying and selling of enslaved people as well as on their labor. By 1700, trade in enslaved Africans was more valuable than trade in gold and spices. Keep in mind that roughly 12 million Africans were forcibly removed from Africa and brought mostly to the Americas but also to Europe.
The museum also pointed out that Africans did not think of themselves as African but rather identified with their tribe. The same can be said of Europeans. Not only were they not Europeans, they didn’t even think of themselves as French, for example, but as “Norman” or “Angevin.” “White” and “black” are concepts that appeared with this new kind of slavery.
The museum shows how slavery transformed the U.S. into a world power. The wealth which New England merchants made in the slave trade was the fuel that poured into the development of industry. Later, cotton, produced by slave labor in the South, fed Northern textile mills, for example. Slavery generated profits in the North and in the South. Twelve of the first 18 U.S. presidents were slave owners.
This review continues in the next issue of the SPARK with black peoples’ resistance to the resulting oppression.
Apr 30, 2018
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has been under attack for his lavish personal use of taxpayer money. But he is also now proposing an important rule change in writing environmental regulations. The change would allow the use of only those studies where the underlying data is made available publicly.
Pruitt and corporate supporters of this proposed change say it will be an advance for “transparency.” But most scientists and public health groups warn that the rule will make it impossible to use the findings of important studies on the effects of air pollution and pesticide exposure, because such studies often involve the use of confidential personal or medical histories, or proprietary information.
For example, former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy says that if the kind of disclosure of information that Pruitt wants now had been required in the past, it would have stopped the government from using an early study that linked leaded gasoline exposure to neurological damage, and another study that linked fine-particle air pollution to premature deaths.
“The best studies follow individuals over time...”, McCarthy said. “But it means following people’s personal history, their medical history. And nobody would want somebody to expose all their private information.” She predicts that researchers will have trouble recruiting people to participate in future studies if the rule change is enacted.
This proposed change is just the latest part of a much broader effort by Pruitt and his corporate supporters to shift how the EPA conducts and uses science to guide its work. The EPA has always been subject to pressure from corporations to do their bidding. But Pruitt clearly wants to turn the EPA into an open tool of industry–a tool for maximizing corporate profits at the expense of health, safety and the environment.
Apr 30, 2018
This article was translated from Lutte Ouvrière, the newspaper of the French revolutionary workers group of that name.
Edouard Philippe, the French Prime Minister, agreed to enter into direct talks with the unions on May 7. This is not the beginning of a retreat, but it is at least a recognition of the government’s inability to stop the railroad workers’ strike movement. After three weeks, this movement remains solid and determined.
The press and the management of SNCF (the French rail company) tried to spread disinformation by talking about the weakening of the movement on April 18. But they mistook their wishes for reality, because the next day of demonstration, according to the SNCF’s own figures, the number of strikers was back up to the level of the previous week.
The 23rd and 24th of April, the next strike days planned according to the union’s calendar of two strike days every five days, the number of strikers remained very high. 63.4 percent of train conductors went out, more than half. At starting time, 27 percent of all the rail workers in the country were on strike, and more than 50 percent in many regions.
The proportion of railway workers involved in the movement is in reality much larger: In many areas, the railway workers chose to only participate on some of the strike days. But these workers feel themselves to be part of the movement and are also strikers.
Another sign of the movement’s vitality: There has been no discouragement after the declarations of Macron, Philippe, or Pepy (high government officials). On the contrary, their lies make the workers indignant. It’s the same with the threats to spin off freight, or to privatize the railways: These threats make it clear to the workers that if the movement is defeated, the attacks will fall on everyone, and very quickly. The workers’ determination to continue the fight remains unshaken and is commensurate to the attack they face.
The government can certainly multiply its declarations and hand-waving, but not the number of trains in circulation ... because it is the workers, and only the workers, who make them move.
For three weeks the railway workers have succeeded in building a movement that poses problems for the government, this ruling council of the capitalist class. First, on the economic plane, because many bosses are hurting: those that have lost customers, others whose employees have been delayed getting to work, and others who lack supplies they get from rail freight. But the problem for the government is also on the political plane: A part of the working class, which exists all over the country, has shown clearly that it is possible to resist.
It is thus vital to maintain and reinforce this mobilization to stand up to these attacks by the bosses.
Apr 30, 2018
Are the relations between the U.S. and North Korea moving toward a thaw?
Things have sped up since the Olympic Games, when the North and South Korean delegations marched together. A historic summit just took place between Kim Jong-un and the South Korean President Moon Jae-in on April 27th, when the two pledged to work toward officially ending the Korean war and de-nuclearizing the Korean peninsula. And, a meeting between the U.S. and North Korean leaders, Trump and Kim Jong-un, is being arranged for the end of May.
It is clear that the North Korean regime, while it did want to demonstrate its ability to produce nuclear weapons, was mainly concerned with getting the United States to negotiate. This is because, contrary to what the Western media keeps repeating, North Korea’s isolation was imposed on it by U.S. imperialism.
At the end of World War Two, in order to prepare for Japan’s surrender, the United States had a plan to divide the Korean Peninsula into two zones of influence, one south of the 38th parallel under its own authority, the other to the north under the authority of the Soviet Union. But the social explosion that followed the military collapse of Japan in August 1945 upset these schemes. People’s Committees formed all across the country and founded a People’s Republic of Korea on September 6th, 1945. The Korean Communist Party, which came out of the war as the most powerful party in Korea, put all its weight behind curbing the goals of social revolution and channeling the movement into entirely nationalist aims. Despite this, when the U.S. army arrived, it refused to negotiate with these committees. Leaning on politicians linked to the wealthy classes who had often collaborated with the Japanese colonial power, it put in place a dictatorial regime under its firm control.
And so, the big majority of those who had been driven out of the South took refuge in the North. In its zone of occupation, the Soviet army established a government made up of the Korean Communist Party and different nationalist currents who fused to found the Workers’ Party of North Korea. The leader of this party was Kim Il-sung, the grandfather of the current North Korean dictator. The regime was authoritarian and did not tolerate any opposition, but it carried out a radical land reform that made it popular in both the North and the South, where, on the contrary, the new rulers monopolized the land for themselves.
Armed with this popularity, the regime of the North tried to reunify the country in 1950 by launching a military offensive. This was the start of the Korean War. For three years, the country was ravaged several times by the offensives and counter-offensives of the armies of the North, backed by China, and those of the South, supported by the United States. The Korean population came out of this war deeply damaged and remains divided in two, on opposite sides of the 38th parallel.
After this, the North was subjected to one of the longest embargoes in history, which would limit its economic links only to China and to the regimes of Eastern Europe, until these collapsed. In the South, the military dictators who came after used anti-communism and the imagined threat of the North to silence all opposition and to terrorize a new working class that was becoming more and more powerful as the country rapidly industrialized. This industrialization, in the framework of a strict state control, took place as the result of U.S. and later Japanese orders and investment, especially during the war in Vietnam. It gave rise to exceptionally large industrial conglomerates, the chaebols, the most well-known of these today being Samsung, Hyundai, and LG.
Today, Trump seems to want to soften his policy. This would not be the first time that U.S. imperialism has played this card. About 20 years ago, a center-left South Korean government began what it called the Sunshine Policy, which led to several international summits. North Korea received some crumbs of foreign aid, and timid economic relations between North and South Korea started to develop. But after a few years of this, the U.S. government decided to put an end to it, when George W. Bush placed North Korea on his “Axis of Evil” list.
What will come of the current opening? It is impossible to predict. The political choices of U.S. imperialism are motivated by its geopolitical interests. And behind this power struggle between the United States and North Korea is the U.S. desire to be the main player in this region of the world. U.S. imperialism is not only confronting China, a commercial competitor that it wants to dominate, but also its allies like Japan, upon whom it imposes its policies. Taking advantage of the opening that Kim Jong-un appears ready to make is part of this strategy.
Obviously the political unpredictability of someone like Donald Trump adds to the uncertainty. Right now he wants to look like a brilliant deal-maker, and is taking credit for Kim Jong-un’s willingness to meet. But tomorrow, he may very well decide that 63 years is not too long to wait for an end to the Korean war!
Apr 30, 2018
For five weeks, Palestinians have protested every Friday at the fence separating Gaza from Israel. And for five weeks Israel has responded with deadly force. At least 45 Palestinians have been killed and more than 6,000 have been wounded. Israel has suffered no casualties.
The militant Islamist group Hamas has organized these demonstrations. Over the years, Hamas has organized rocket attacks and suicide bombings within Israel, and Israel has repeatedly bombed and invaded Gaza seeking to kill Hamas leaders–in the process killing thousands of Palestinian civilians. Hamas has run Gaza since it was elected in 2006. In that time, Israel, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority that controls the West Bank, the other major area of Palestinian settlement, have all increasingly strangled Gaza.
Whatever the motives of Hamas in calling for these demonstrations, they have clearly found an echo in the population. Gazans are trapped in an open-air prison, unable to leave their narrow strip of land caught between Israel and Egypt. There are almost no jobs so people rely on food aid. The water is undrinkable and many die every day from a lack of basic medical resources. Most people get only four hours of electricity a day. An Al-Jazeera reporter explained that “people have lost their fear” because “their situation is so miserable in Gaza.”
These protests are organized to culminate on May 15, known as Nakba Day, marking the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the creation of Israel. The majority of Gazans are the descendants of these refugees. The protestors are demanding “the right of return” to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel.
The people who founded Israel said that they were creating a refuge for the Jews after six million were killed in the Holocaust. This might seem reasonable. But by trying to create a state that would be for Jews alone, allied with the imperialist powers that dominate the region, they recreated the problem they were trying to escape. The Israelis may have become the guards, using lethal force to keep unarmed civilians locked in, but they are still caught in the prison camp of nationalism.
Apr 30, 2018
May 4th is the 50th anniversary of the anti-war action known as the “Catonsville Nine.” On that date in 1968, nine Catholic activists walked into the Catonsville Selective Service office, in a suburb of Baltimore. They pulled out files of draftees eligible to serve in the Vietnam war, took the papers into the parking lot, set them on fire with homemade napalm, and waited for the police to arrest them.
The commemoration takes place over the next several days and weekends, with talks by current and previous anti-war activists. It is sponsored by a Peace Organization of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, along with the Maryland Historical Society and other local churches and organizations.
The resulting trial of the Catonsville Nine received a good deal of publicity, which the draft protesters were trying to direct against the U.S. war in Vietnam. The best known among the nine were Fathers Phil and Dan Berrigan, brothers and Catholic priests located in Baltimore and New York.
Perhaps the best known remarks of the trial were Father Dan’s: “Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order ... for the burning of paper instead of children ... our hearts give us no rest for thinking of the Land of Burning Children.” (He was referring to the massive U.S. napalm firebombing of the civilian population in Vietnam.)
The Catonsville Nine were sentenced to prison terms for destruction of U.S. government property. And Father Phil went to jail, repeatedly during the Vietnam era, and in later years for protests against the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Father Dan helped AIDS victims in the 1980s, before new drugs helped slow the death toll.
The Catonsville Nine actions were not the first against the Vietnam war and were followed by dozens of other protests at Selective Service offices and in one case, against the FBI itself, which directed harassment of anti-war protesters. These were a part of the thousands and then millions who demonstrated throughout the U.S. against the Vietnam war.
All the protests were part of an era including, first and foremost, two decades of civil rights protests by black activists.
Catholic activists, like so many others from 50 years ago, laid out the precise nature of the problems. But neither they nor very many others saw the reasons to get rid of capitalism, a system that garners profit off the most atrocious circumstances and especially the wars that we remain mired in.
Apr 30, 2018
The police killing of Diante “Butchie” Yarber, a 26-year-old black man and father of three, has drawn protests from the community in Barstow, California.
In fact, the protests began right after the shooting and right where it happened, a Walmart parking lot, on April 5. A witness, shopper Patricia Cullen, said, “People were very upset, and some were yelling and harassing the officers.”
Witnesses saw the deadly shooting of the driver and feared for their own lives when the cops fired dozens of shots within a few seconds into the car which had four people in it. One of the passengers in the car, 23-year-old Mariana Tafoya, also suffered serious wounds and had to be airlifted to a trauma center. Another passenger, Yarber’s cousin, was shot in the leg.
Police defend their actions on the basis of Yarber’s collisions with two police vehicles in an attempt to escape the situation. They acknowledge that he was unarmed and attempted to communicate with them before re-entering the vehicle.
Police gave conflicting and constantly changing stories about why they initiated this “traffic stop” for a car already parked at Walmart. Finally, police said Yarber was in violation of probation.
Whatever the reason, the fact is that the police shot up a car with four people in it, all unarmed, in a crowded parking lot. An attorney hired by Yarber’s family summed it up by saying that Yarber “wasn’t complying–and they decided to execute him for it.”
This is what means to be a black man in the year 2018–you are a walking target no matter what you do.
Apr 30, 2018
Staci Fountain, a former corrections officer at a prison in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, sued the Michigan Department of Corrections over a pattern of sexual harassment by her supervisors. She tells of how, while still in a probationary status on her new job, she was subjected to a “butt check,” in which she was told to climb on top of a desk and retrieve an item from a cupboard above, and later her co-workers “rated” her butt. Those co-workers included two supervisors. Fountain describes a pattern of sexual harassment beginning when one of the supervisors asked her out on a date, which she resisted. She tells of receiving unwanted love letters, one of the supervisors exposing himself to her at work and asking her to perform a sex act, and making other derogatory sexist comments. Another co-worker actually tore open her blouse and one of the supervisors refused to let her go home to change. A fellow female officer of Fountain’s testified in the lawsuit that one of the same supervisors threatened to bend her over a desk and spank her.
Fountain found relief for a period when she was able to transfer to the midnight shift under a female supervisor, Captain Bonnie Barnes, known for protecting women from harassment. Still Fountain endured being reminded repeatedly that once Barnes retired she would be gone, too.
Eventually, Fountain filed a harassment complaint after Barnes retired. She says her supervisors retaliated against her. For example, she recalls being sent alone with a crew of prisoners carrying picks and shovels to dig up the prison yard, a task no one else had ever been asked to do. Eventually Fountain was fired from her job for flimsy reasons.
Fountain’s is just one of many similar stories of sexual harassment of female employees of the Michigan Department of Corrections described in a Detroit Free Press investigation. Several other women describe getting little help when they do file a complaint. The Free Press found corrections employees filed 186 complaints of sexual harassment between 2015 and 2017 alone, with only 30 ending in discipline. Many women officers say it’s common for male supervisors and co-workers to tell them they have to expect a certain amount of harassment as part of their jobs. The stories of numerous others show the retaliation Fountain experienced is common.
The prisons where women corrections employees work are often located in remote rural areas where there are no decent-paying alternative jobs around. As a result, many are hesitant to even file a complaint when they experience harassment.
Women who sue over retaliation by the Corrections Department can often expect little help from the courts. The Michigan Supreme Court, for example, dismissed Staci Fountain’s lawsuit in 2017 claiming she couldn’t prove intent in her firing.
The stories of women corrections officers who have come forward in the face of everything stacked against them shows their tremendous courage. Their story is only the beginning of what is likely to come out in the future.
Apr 30, 2018
The following is a speech that Juan Rey gave at a campaign fund raiser and pizza party on April 22 in Los Angeles. It first appeared on the www.workingclassfight.com website. Rey works as a train mechanic for L.A. Metro and also serves as a union steward. He is running as an independent candidate in the June 5th primary for U.S. Congress in the northeast San Fernando Valley.
Last week the U.S. and other big powers bombed Syria. This just added to the massive destruction and killing that the people in Syria have gone through for the last seven years. But the Democrats and Republicans applauded it. Because all they want is to make the Middle East safe for the oil companies, military contractors and the banks.
These same politicians are attacking the working class here. They blame public sector workers for the government budget deficits in order to pit public sector workers against private sector workers. These same law makers criminalize productive workers and call them illegal immigrants in order to pay them less and make them work harder. The bosses and politicians complain that in order to compete against the Chinese, they have no choice but to hire temporary and part-time workers, in reality driving a wedge between full-time and part-time workers. Black workers continue to suffer the worst unemployment, worst poverty and the worst police violence while the criminal justice system is used to deprive them of their basic rights.
For more than 40 years workers have been falling behind in wages. Public sector pensions are under attack after private sector pensions disappeared. Full time jobs with some protection are giving way to part time and temp work with little or no protection.
Why? Is society getting poorer? Absolutely not. Our productivity continues to increase. That means it only takes three workers to do what it took 10 workers to do 40 years ago. Much of this is being done by automation and technology. These advances are made possible by the work of past generations of workers. But who benefits from them? Are we working shorter hours? Are we getting more time off to live our lives? Not the workers! The bosses keep the gains for themselves. This is what is behind the increase in inequality. We have all read or heard in the news of all the loot the big bosses and their cronies hide in off-shore accounts all over the world. Is this what we work for? So politicians can spend trillions of our tax dollars and send the workers’ children off to war? To protect big business interests?
We need to fight against the wrongs heaped on workers by the politicians and bosses.
I’m running for U.S. Congress in District 29 to propose to the workers to get together and build our own Working Class Party. We get the bosses’ point of view from the Democrats and Republicans. We get it from the news media. It is time for workers to have our own political voice, our own way to put forward our own policies, our own way to cut through all the lies. And we need our own way to organize our fights.
We solve problems for a living. We repair, we maintain, we build, we clean. We are transportation workers, we teach and we are home care workers. We prepare the next generation of workers. We do the most important work in the real economy. The workers’ power lies in the work we do. We have to build our own political party in order to break with the divisiveness created by the politicians and bosses. We have to do away with the racism and sexism that pervades the very core of our society. Workers have to come together regardless of color, sexual preference, nationality, legal status. We have to stand up to the politicians, the bosses and their failed policies that can only lead us to our ruin.
SI SE PUEDE!
YES, WE CAN!
OUI, NOUS POUVONS!
Apr 30, 2018
Over the last five years, officials in Los Angeles have moved 33,000 homeless people into permanent housing. But that hasn’t stopped homelessness from continuing to mount. Last year, estimates are that about 150,000 people in Los Angeles County suffered homelessness during at least some time during the year.
The flow of people into homelessness in Los Angeles is steady and growing. And no wonder. Rents are high and wages are low. A new study by the non-profit Economic Roundtable found that about half of all families living below the poverty line spend more than 90 per cent of their entire income on rent!
Even if these families receive food stamps (now called CalFresh) and have health coverage through Medi-Cal, there are 600,000 people living on the cusp of homelessness. If they lose any income at all or have to pay any extra expense, they cannot pay their rent, and they risk being evicted and thrown onto the street.
Homelessness is a direct result of the extremely precarious position of the vast majority of the working poor in Los Angeles County. Officially, the homeless situation in Los Angeles is considered worse than anywhere else. Nonetheless, what is happening in Los Angeles is hardly unique.
Everywhere, it is becoming increasingly difficult for big parts of the working class to be able to afford the rent. And for the same basic reason: workers are being increasingly squeezed by both their employer and their landlord.
Just as large Hoovervilles sprang up during the Great Depression of the 1930s, so too are homeless camps once again springing up in Los Angeles and all across the country.
Economists may not yet call this a depression. But it already is for growing layers of the working class.