Les Very Misérables
Money and property have always been more important than people in the United States. In Colonial days, when every colony printed its own money, the reverse side of each note clearly stated: “To Counterfeit is DEATH.” Most financial institutions are such ugly, Godzilla-sized monoliths so protective of what’s inside, that millions worth in guards, security fences and razor wire are necessary to hide and guard it. Outside, hungry, troubled people try to sleep in the doorway and then get busted for it. When future historians look back at this era of unprecedented wealth alongside soul-destroying poverty, known as capitalism, they will be shocked and unbelieving. The United States, a country which called itself “great”, refused to house, feed, and care for its own most needy citizens. Amid such riches, as little capital as possible goes to those who most need it. That is unpardonable. Especially since many in the poor and homeless community are disabled ex-workers, women, people of color, and vets who’ve already paid their dues. “Profits Before People” is capitalism’s proud motto.
Recently, I gave a tour of the Tenderloin SRO hotel I live in, and the neighborhood, to Marina Preza, from El Salvador, co-leader of the Women’s Commission of the Workers of the Salvadoran Trade Union Council and co-founder of Mujeres Radicales Cuzcatlecas, the newest branch of our organization, Radical Women. From the roof, we could see the dome of City Hall. When she learned that there were around 12,000 homeless in S.F. yet there was enough money to gild the dome, she was horrified. Her face fell again and her jaw dropped as we walked around the block on Golden Gate and she saw the pain and reality of being poor, disabled, and on the streets in this country. Ms. Preza remarked again and again, “¡Que contraste!” What a contrast, in the richest country in the world! Unbelievably, the myth still exists that everyone in America is rich and that life is better here. Even poverty is somehow better here, the myth goes. But reality goes something like this:
The 2006 HUD Appropriations Bill… makes almost $50 billion in cuts to mandatory programs serving primarily poor people, working families, the elderly, and the disabled. Included in the bill is a $12 million cut to Medicaid, the elimination of daycare subsidies for an estimated 330,000 children, and more than $700 million in cuts to food stamps, knocking out over 200,000 recipients from the program. (Brad Paul, STREET SHEET, December, 2005)
Homelessness is a multi-issue human rights problem encompassing poverty, the criminal injustice system, mental illness, sexism, poverty-induced alcoholism and drug addiction, racism, immigration, and domestic violence against women and children. You can introduce reforms, build a little low-income housing here and there, or pass counterproductive initiatives such as Care Not Cash, but homelessness will never go away under the current system. Decade after decade, presidents come and go, mayors come and go, supervisors come and go, and the net result is more homelessness and an ever more impenetrable, Byzantine bureaucracy. Trying to navigate that bureaucracy makes life torture for the poor. The private sector has failed, the churches have failed, politicians have failed, Republicans have failed, Democrats have failed.
Capitalism is a crapshoot and the ruling class brought their own dice, which are loaded. Under capitalism, the dispossessed and disabled are thought of as useless because they can no longer be exploited for gain by the few at the top. Worse, they actually cost the government money (as little as possible, of course) for what scant housing and healthcare they do get. The basic, underlying problem is capitalism’s lack of any kind of real safety net for workers or anyone else who didn’t “make it” under the stupid illusion known as the American Dream. It’s up to all of us to fight for the position that the well-being of all is a social responsibility.
When we fail in that responsibility, we get the case of Lashaun Harris, the profoundly disturbed homeless mother who flung her three small children into the Bay last October. Instead of conducting her gently to the nearest psych unit (if there are any left in San Francisco) she was arrested, jailed, and will stand trial for capital murder. The same goes for Andrea Yates. Two schizophrenic and /or severely depressed women kill their children and that doesn’t tip off the police or the DA that they are deeply disturbed mothers and human beings, not vicious murderers?!
The answer is no, because another aspect of this system is gender oppression—of women, women of color, and queer women. “We were raised in such a twisted way that we are often driven to acts of great psychological and physical harm to ourselves and others,” writes Susan Williams, M.D. in Women’s Psychology-Mental Illness As a Social Disease, “Bound down by the warped life designed for us, humiliated in our despised roles, taught to deny our own dynamic strength, women go crazy.” She continues, “It is not we, but society’s definition of us, that is pathological, and we face real problems generated by real social tyranny.”
What is to be done then about the monster, capitalism? The beast won’t be tamed or reformed. We don’t need new ideas, we need new ways of thinking. Replace the for-profit system with an egalitarian one, a socialist and feminist one, which puts the needs of people before profits. It would be a world of cooperation not competition and would spell the end for sexism, racism, homophobia, the exploitation of workers—and homelessness. Shred the Pentagon’s war budget and spend it on quality healthcare, jobs and housing for all, 24-hour daycare, full funding for education at all levels, and funding of the arts and sciences. Tax the rich, the corporations, and the pharmaceutical industry—heavily. They have been enriching themselves at our expense for far too long. Expropriate the expropriators!
How can you get involved? Join a movement, get active, organize. Vote for real change, which will never happen under the twin parties of big business. Rattle cages, go to rallies. Become active in a group like ours and prepare to be astonished at how powerful you become when you join your voice with others. Be a part of the vital, ongoing anti-capitalist movement against poverty and war, racism, sexism, and global exploitation.
¡Venceremos!
RADICAL WOMEN is an international socialist feminist organization dedicated to winning the full equality of women and building grassroots feminist leaders. We believe that the liberation of women is indissolubly linked to the battle against all the burning injustices that define capitalism. We work for the revolutionary transformation of capitalism into a socialist society. Only the unity of people of color, workers, youth, women, sexual minorities, prisoners, the elderly, and people with disabilities can free us from our collective oppression. Reach Radical Women at rwbayarea@yahoo.com or www.RadicalWomen.org or call 415-864-1278.
Andrea