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| Down near my former workplace. |
Afscme Local 444, retired
I worked in the streets of Oakland and surrounding towns for 30 years. I worked for the water utility that supplies some 3 million residents on the east side of the San Francisco Bay, the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD). I remember driving my backhoe (JCB to Brits) up Peralta Street heading toward Emeryville and North Oakland and I would see the homeless pushing their shopping carts liberated from some Safeway parking lot and laden with cans, metals and other recyclables to a scrap dealer there.
I became familiar with some of them as I drove by, giving a nod here, a wave there. They were homeless but were dignified, they were working collecting recyclables that could keep them going another day. There were occasional complaints from the "official" refuse collection company that the homeless would do the rounds of the recycle bins parked at the sidewalks edge which is where residents left them for the company trucks that emptied them and took them to the dump. Back then, three workers, Teamster members used to accompany the trucks, one driving the other two grabbing the bins and emptying them. Where I live now, it's just one person as the garbage truck is automated, picks up the bins, empties them and each stop takes just a few minutes. As with all technical advances that improve the productivity of labor, they are owned by the capitalist not the worker. The excess labor power now no longer needed is cast aside. Technology in the hands of the private sector increases the exploitation of the worker; I don't think the invention of the dishwasher or vacuum cleaner liberated the housewife.
Now when I drive through Oakland there are literally tent cities everywhere, and I mean real cities. Many of the homeless have traditionally been the mentally ill that were thrown on to the streets when Reagan and co shut down the institutions that were supposed to serve them. For the longest time, one third of the homeless were Vietnam veterans. What a world, a worthless POS like Reagan treating people suffering from the trauma of conflict like that. Isn't the free market great!
The city clears these camps on occasion throwing away their tents and belongings but where can they go? What a barbaric practice. If one is not suffering from some sort of mental illness prior to being homeless and living on the streets, they certainly are likely to after it. Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle today, Otis R Taylor Jr points out:
"Homelessness in Oakland increased by 47% in the past two years, with a 68% increase in the number of unsheltered people — from 1,902 to 3,210 people. What’s more, 70% of homeless people are black when black people are less than a quarter of Oakland’s population."
There is talk in some communities of building "affordable" housing and "sheds" that homeless people can occupy. But this is no solution. The US ruling class will throw a few million at some social issues that are a by product of capitalism but the system is incapable of eliminating the savagery of the market, homelessness, like racism and constant war are all an integral part of capitalism and the fox will not protect the chickens in the hen house. Crucial state institutions supposedly responsible for the health of millions of people are not designed to rectify society's problems; they are designed to give the impression they are. I have been reading about the state of the Indian Health Services, an arm of the federal government that services over two million Native Americans, it is failing them and it is designed to. And anyway, without a job or skills and after years on the streets, these vicrims of the market need more than just a roof.
In the US, public transportation is so mediocre, particularly so here in California that during the Great Recession and on through these equally hard times, people walked away from their home and the blood sucker's mortgage but continued to pay off the car loan. This was a smart decision as they could sleep in the car and at least get to work. There has been an increase in the number of vehicles, cars, trucks, and motor homes that park in certain areas, homeless with a roof at least. The "working poor" is a huge section of those in desperation and poverty in the US. To correct this situation will require a lot more than a few sheds and a million thrown out here and there. The trillions spent on the US military are off the table when it comes to finding funds. Same with the wealth of the small percentage of multi billionaires in the US who combined net worth could end world hunger.
It is the insecurity, fear, sense of powerlessness that drives the violent responses, drug and alcohol addiction and wiping out of one's entire family that are so prevalent here in the US; sensible gun control and background checks that any normal person would support will not solve the problem. There is a sort of collective madness. Almost every day there are mass killings of some sort. This is given fuel by the fact that in the media and society in general there is this constant propaganda that directs the blame at the victims. The "pull yourselves up by your bootstraps" bull has not gone away although more and more people have no bootstraps to pull up. Even if they are working, they have two maybe three jobs with one of them having some sort of meager health insurance. The extreme wealth of a few at the top is ever present in the movies and television. I long for a show where one of the actors says to the roommate, "I'd better hurry I get in real trouble if I'm late for work." This is a bit exaggerated, but the reality is that on TV, work doesn't really exist, everyone just has fun, sex and cracks jokes to one another. There will be a black face, a gay person an immigrant, and so on just to show how wonderful life is here. Remember Breakfast Club, "isn't life swell".
There are increasing challenges to this madness and that includes homelessness but, as we have stated on this blog in the past, there will be some explosions ahead in the US. The movement against the savagery of the market will not be pretty, there will be confusion, steps back and steps forward and there will be violence as reaction rises in response to the class struggle becoming more acute. The US capitalist class has a long rich tradition of hiring gangsters and thugs to combat social movements and the organized working class. US labor history is full of such examples, like the Pinkertons and the Civil Rights had the citizens councils and the KKK. Here is the link to Otis Taylor Jr's article on the situation in Oakland in today's San Francisco Chronicle
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