Crisis in California: Everything Touched by Capital Turns Toxic
The United States’ most populous state, California is the world’s
eighth largest economy. The state has some of the planet’s most
productive farmland and in the 1990s enjoyed an extensive
real-estate boom. But intensive, industrialised agriculture has
polluted much of the environment and now, with more foreclosed
homes than anywhere else in the world, it is also home to a
growing number of tent cities. Gifford Hartman takes us on a road
trip through California’s Central Valley to witness the toxicity:
of mortgages and ecosystems, houses, drugs and human relations.
"I should be very much pleased if you could find me something good
(meaty) on economic conditions in California…. California is very
important for me because nowhere else has the upheaval most
shamelessly caused by capitalist centralisation taken place with
such speed."
- Letter from Karl Marx to Friedrich Sorge, 1880
Shantytown USA
In California toxic capitalist social relations demonstrated their
full irrationality in May 2009 when banks bulldozed brand-new, but
unsold, McMansions in the exurbs of Southern California.
Across the United States an eviction occurs every 13 seconds and
there are at the moment at least five empty homes for every
homeless person. The newly homeless are finding beds unavailable
as shelters are stretched well beyond capacity. St. John’s Shelter
for Women and Children in Sacramento regularly turns away 350
people a night. Many of these people end up in the burgeoning tent
cities that are often located in the same places as the
‘Hoovervilles’ – similar structures, named after then President
Herbert Hoover – of the Great Depression of the 1930s.
full: http://turbulence.org.uk/turbulence-5/california/
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