Jacobin Radio: How to End Homelessness; Eugene V. Debs

<font color="#000000">Suzi talks to UCLA law professor </font>Gary Blasi, a longtime housing activist and advocate for the homeless about the staggering increase in homelessness in LA city and county (indeed across the country). But there are misconceptions about what is driving this surge in people living on the streets. Put simply, says Blasi, homeless people are homeless because they cannot afford housing, mostly in neighborhoods where they have grown up. We get Blasi's analysis of the scope of homelessness, the effectiveness — or lack thereof —of city, county, and state measures to deal with it, as well as what more can be done.

Suzi then talks to author and activist Paul Buhle about his graphic biography of the American socialist and labor leader Eugene V. Debs— one of the most important Americans of the twentieth century according to Bernie Sanders, who also called Debs “the most effective and popular leader that the American working class has ever had.” We hear about Debs’s life, ideas, and struggles as a fighting union leader of the Pullman railroad strike and Socialist Party leader who was jailed for opposing World War I and ran for president from prison, winning over a million votes.