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The LA Weekly published an article today headlined, “Occupy LA Sees a Homeless Invasion.” The Occupy LA encampment is just blocks from Skid Row, and there are an estimated 15,000 homeless people in the city. So far Occupy LA has no rules governing who can set up camp and share in the communal food, supplies, and tents. The Occupy Los Angeles encampment is outfitted with port-a-potties, make-shift showers, and supply centers where people can leave and take sweaters, blankets, and more. The set-up is meant to support temporary occupiers but has attracted homeless populations here and in other encampments. The confluence of communities is not surprising. Barbara Ehrenrich observed in a Sunday article for Tom Dispatch, “LA’s Skid Row endures constant police harassment, for example, but when it rained, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had ponchos distributed to nearby Occupy LA.” Ehrenreich says homelessness as a political issue has been taken up by Occupy Portland, Austin and Philadelphia and, she writes, “Homelessness is not a side issue unconnected to plutocracy and greed. It’s where we’re all eventually headed.”

GUEST: Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation. She won the 2004 Puffin/Nation Prize. Her seventeenth book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (Metropolitan Books), has just been published. Her bestselling book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, 10th Anniversary Edition, has just been released by Picador Books.

Read Barbara Ehrenreich’s latest article here: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/23-3