People's Tribune

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The People's Tribune is devoted to the proposition that an economic system that can't or won't feed, clothe and house its people ought to be and will be changed.
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August 2007 Issue:

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Editorial

The housing crisis and the fight for a new society

Across the country, in many forms, people are fighting about housing. They're struggling to escape the curse of homelessness, or get better housing, or cheaper housing, or against gentrification, or to keep public housing, or return to their homes after being forcibly displaced. A national movement around housing is steadily developing, a reflection of the housing crisis we face. But what is at the root of the crisis?

Mortgage and rent payments keep rising while incomes keep falling. A Harvard study found that a family with only one full-time minimum-wage earner can't afford a standard two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the country. Millions who own their homes are threatened with foreclosure. The growing poverty is the major cause of the housing crisis, but what is causing the spreading poverty?

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Cover Story

Rebuilding New Orleans:
Demand government take over food industry

This second anniversary of hurricane Katrina's destruction of New Orleans will be marked by hundreds of meetings and demonstrations to criticize what seems to be an inept, racist government's response marked by cronyism and class indifference. This estimate of the Bush administration is an echo of the criticism of the way the war against Iraq was planned and executed. There, we heard about no exit strategy and poor preparation for the kind of war that is being fought.

Politics is war. The laws of political struggle are exactly the same as in a military conflict. Sun Tzu 4,000 years ago, summing up these laws, began with, "know your enemy, know yourself." Does anyone really believe that a ruling class that destroyed the Soviet Union, placed men on the moon, put robots on Mars, disoriented the Chinese revolution and turned the national liberation movements into pillars of imperialist strength can possibly be inept and indifferent? The American invaders have no exit strategy in Iraq because they don't intend to leave. They haven't rebuilt New Orleans because they have an entirely different New Orleans in mind.

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Special Section: Housing Struggle in America

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