This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
Hey, in case you didn't know it, there's no such thing as homelessness in America. And I have a distinctive authority to cite on the subject: Elon Musk. Yes, Elon, the man (except, of course, for The Man, aka Donald J. Trump). I mean, who should know better than Elon, the richest man on planet Earth (even though his Tesla brand is now losing popularity and its stock price sinking through the floor)? I mean, who should know better than the fellow who actually sold his seven mansions for more than $100 million and now lives in a $50,000 three-bedroom ranch-style rental home in Boca Chica, Texas, right next to his SpaceX Starbase? That, in other words, is about as close as the richest man on Earth could get to homelessness and no one would call him "homeless," would they? So why should anyone conceivably be considered homeless?
And who better to listen to than him when it comes to homelessness? The very word "homeless," he believes, is a "lie." As he told former Fox News star Tucker Carlson, "Homeless is a misnomer. It implies that someone got a little bit behind on their mortgage, and if you just gave them a job, they'd be back on their feet." And then he added, "What you actually have are violent drug zombies with dead eyes, and needles and human feces on the street." Homeless, them? Not a chance!
Or thought of another way, Musk and Trump give the very word "homeless" a new meaning as they create a wildly-tariffed world in which if, in the end, the global economy crashes, nothing much could belong to anyone (other than a few billionaires) and then we'll all have no choice but to move into $50,000 three-bedroom, ranch-style homes. But homeless? Never! In the meantime, let TomDispatch regular Liz Theoharis and TomDispatch first-timer Noam Sandweiss-Back, both of them authors of the new book You Only Get What You're Organized to Take: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty, consider the power of the poor in Trump's America, a land where the "less" in that word "homeless" should now be coming into ever more striking focus. Tom
You Only Get What You're Organized to Take
The Power of the Poor in Trump's America
By Liz Theoharis and Noam Sandweiss-Back
The day after Donald Trump won the 2024 election, the 10 richest people in the world -- including nine Americans -- expanded their wealth by nearly $64 billion, the greatest single-day increase in recorded history. Since then, an unholy marriage of billionaire investors, tech bros, Christian nationalists, and, of course, Donald Trump has staged an oligarchic assault on our democracy. If the nation's corporate elite once leveraged their relationships within government to enrich themselves, they've now cut out the middleman. We're living in a new Gilded Age, with a proto-fascistic and religiously regressive administration of, by, and for the billionaires.
With the wind at their backs, leading elements in the Republican Party have rapidly eschewed euphemisms and political correctness altogether, airing their anti-immigrant, anti-Black, and anti-poor prejudices in unapologetically broad and brazen terms. The effect of this, especially for the most vulnerable among us, is seismic. During the first two months of the second Trump administration, we've witnessed nothing less than an escalatory war on the poor.
The attacks are many-pronged. Rural development grants, food banks, and environmental protection measures have all been slashed in the name of "ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs." Planned Parenthood and other life-saving healthcare services for poor and marginalized communities have been defunded. Homelessness has been ever more intensely criminalized and Housing First policies vilified. The Department of Education, which has historically provided critical resources for low-income and disabled students, has been gutted, while the barbaric conditions in overcrowded immigrant detention centers have only worsened. Billions of dollars in funding for mental health and addiction services have been revoked. Worse yet, these and other mercenary actions may prove to be just the tip of the spear. Tariff wars and potential cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and SNAP could leave both the lives of the poor and the global economy in shambles.
This volatile moment may represent an unprecedented, even existential, threat to the health of our democracy, but it is building on decades of neoliberal plunder and economic austerity, authored by both conservative and liberal politicians. Before the 2024 elections, there were more than 140 million people living in poverty or one crisis away -- one job loss, eviction, medical issue, or debt collection -- from economic ruin. In this rich land, 45 million people regularly experience hunger and food insecurity, while more than 80 million people are uninsured or underinsured, ten million people live without housing or experience chronic housing insecurity, and the American education system has regularly scored below average compared to those of other nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Amid tremendous social and economic dislocation, traditional American institutions and political alignments have steadily lost their meaning for tens of millions of people. The majority of us know things aren't well in this country. We can feel it, thanks not just to the violent and vitriolic political environment in which we live, but to our bank statements and debt sheets, our rising rent and utility bills. As the hull of our democracy splinters and floods, the question remains: How do we chart a more just and humane path forward? There are no easy answers, but there are profound lessons to be learned from the past, especially from movements of poor and dispossessed people that have inspired many of this country's most important moments of democratic awakening.
This is the focus of our new book, You Only Get What You're Organized to Take: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty. Drawing on Liz's 30 years of anti-poverty organizing, we poured over old pamphlets and documents, memories and mementos to gather evidence that social transformation at the hands of the poor remains an ever-present possibility and to summarize some of the most significant ideas that, even today, continue to animate their organized struggles.
Homeless, Not Helpless
In the late spring of 1990, hundreds of unhoused people across the country broke locks and chains off dozens of empty federally owned houses and moved in. Bedrooms and kitchens carpeted with layers of dust suddenly whirled with activity. Mattresses were carried in and bags of food unpacked. Within hours, the new occupants made calls to the city's energy companies, requesting that the utilities be turned on. They were remarkably disciplined and efficient -- single moms who had been living in their cars, veterans, students, and low-wage or recently laid-off workers, and people battling illness without healthcare. They were Black, Latino, Asian, Indigenous, and White, and although they came from radically different slices of society, one simple fact bound them together: they were poor, in need of housing, and fed up.
That wave of takeovers was led by the National Union of the Homeless (NUH), one among many carried out by the group in those years. The NUH was not a charity, a service provider, or a professional advocacy group but a political organization led by and for unhoused people, with close to 30,000 members in 25 cities. Liz was introduced to it on her first day of college. Within a few months, she had joined the movement and never left.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
