PHOTO/SARAH MENEFEE
The homeless are those on the leading edge of this great economic tsunami that is threatening to drown us all. There on the streets and in the illegal tent encampments, on the sidewalks under high-rise buildings and hiding in empty foreclosed or burnt-out houses—in every town and city across the country—are people who have been pushed out of the capitalist system. They are united by their common poverty and common demand for the right to what they need to survive, whether they have money or not. This demand is a revolutionary one: it can’t be answered without a revolution in the economy to a system based on distribution of all we need according to need. As the economy, based on the buying and selling of people’s ability to work, is destroyed by labor-replacing robots, more and more people from all walks of life are pushed out, losing jobs and homes and then falling into the streets. This is not being stopped, and can’t be, in a pay-to-play economy. No one who isn’t in the owning corporate class is safe. The presence of millions of homeless people of all ages, colors and backgrounds is evidence that the system of corporate private ownership is morally and practically bankrupt. Homelessness unites people across all the false divisions, and is the Achilles heel of a system based on class exploitation. The question of homelessness is a revolutionary one. That’s why neither of the major parties can seriously address it, if at all. The fight to end homelessness is the fight for a government that serves the needs of the people and for a new society where everyone’s life has value.
