Sign of the times? Tent cities in LA

March 20, 2008 - 2:37pm — Jeremy McNaughton
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Here's a video from the BBC on a new tent city that has sprung up in Los Angeles. The people interviewed are all former home owners, who lost their homes in the sub-prime mortgage meltdown.

It reminds me of the fruit picker tent cities outside of LA during the 1930s.

I often say and hear said that real pressure for change won't happen while the middle class is so comfortable. That real change isn't possible until more people are negatively effected directly by the evils of the capitalist economy. Is that finally happening, at least in the States?

To me this really underscores the need for people and communities to collectively own their own housing. Not with a mortgage, I mean just plain own. Short of direct ownership, does London have enough affordable rental housing to prevent something like this happening? The answer of course is no, there are not enough affordable units right now, let alone if we suddenly start feeling the recession a little more.

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March 21, 2008 - 8:53pm — Dan H
Dan H's picture

When the levee breaks

Much to comment on here, however I wanted to focus on your accurate observation about things not changing while the middle class is comfortable.

Since the whole recent environmental attention and talk of large scale social changes, I've been kicking around the idea the last couple of months that there is the Image and the Reality.

The Image is what many of us have experienced growing up in Canada for the last 60 years. It is the 'American Dream - big house, many cars, and entertainment every minute we can pay for.

Our wealth, our very North American way of life, has been based on overconsumption at the price of unprecedented destruction of the ecosystem and the impoverishment of millions of people.

The Reality is what those millions of people have lived and live - They are the true majority of the world.

For us in Canada and the US, for the majority, though slowly decreasing, their lives still meet the Image. No matter with all the education, the knowledge, and/or moral recognition to the true costs of maintaining the Image (at the expense of the Reality), as long as the Image exists nothing sufficient enough will change its behaivoir.

Those of us who strive to practice a conscious living in the Image society, we still leave a eco-footprint far nearer to the size of the worst over-consumer in our culture, than that of those who live in the Reality.

Might sound bleak but I wouldn't suggest efforts go to waste, if for nothing alone but one's own sanity in an insane society. However it is likely the Image will only change when the majority of people in our culture live the Reality.

I wouldn't count on people necessarily becoming more community oriented if this occurred very quickly. In fact, you could see a reemergence of fascism in Canada in the mainstream if the inevitable change did so swiftly.

Not that I believe people are inherently bad, in fact I believe the opposite. However, many people would find themselves with very little choices in means of survival. That would leave many very afraid and subject to manipulation by extremists.