Tent Living During the Depression

AMERICA'S TENT CITY

 

About 30 miles outside of Los Angeles spreads a growing community of homeless people. They've settled in a spot fenced between poorly paved roads and railroad tracks. It's a barren tract, useless to anyone but them. Here, as industrious as they are downtrodden, the newly poor have constructed a colorful quilt of tin campers and makeshift tents.

 

This community is located in the city of Ontario, California - a part of the region known as the Inland Empire. It is a very conservative area. President Bush has visited here a couple times and, even with its proximity to leftist Los Angeles and the unpopularity of the Iraq War, Bush supporters outnumbered protesters at these events. As one might expect, it's also a deeply Christian area where churches compete with fast food joints for prime real estate.

 

Recent reports suggest that the population of this tent city is around 200 - though the actual number is surely closer to 400. It's a diverse grouping, both ethnically and age-wise. It's an American melting pot where brown, black, white and other colors mix as they watch their children play and seniors pray. This is George Bush's vision of an America where the impoverished live just five miles from a mountain chain cradling multi-million dollar mansions.

 

The site is a surreal world of paradox and irony. These people are homeless, yet Ontario has more than two dozen hotels (with names like Hilton, Sheraton and Marriott). California produces more than half of the nations' home-grown food supply. Yet, these people are hungry. Along the railroad tracks and nearby Route 10, trucks and trains carry goods from the ports of LA County, the busiest ports in the nation. But these people, with virtually nothing, can only watch as America's trinkets pass them by. While limousines and shuttles ferry businesspeople to and from the nearby, medium-sized, Ontario Airport, the denizens of this tent city trod along, carrying garbage bags for briefcases.

 

This is America. While our nation was supposedly founded on the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, there is no right to a job. There is no right to a warm, dry home. There isn’t even a right to eat. And all across this country, even in the nearly unknown city of Ontario, California, the Republicans, neo-cons and libertarians are leading us toward their version of the future. Leading us forward, to the 1930's.

 

The above opinion article may be reprinted and distributed by like-minded individuals and groups provided that it is done so in its entirety, without modification, and INCLUDING THIS PARAGRAPH. Copyright 2007 by Bob Maschi, bmaschi@yahoo.com