The Ghost of Tom Joad

Nobody reads The Grapes of Wrath anymore.

ONTARIO, Calif., Dec 21 (Reuters) - Between railroad tracks and beneath the roar of departing planes sits "tent city," a terminus for homeless people. It is not, as might be expected, in a blighted city center, but in the once-booming suburbia of Southern California.
The noisy, dusty camp sprang up in July with 20 residents and now numbers 200 people, including several children, growing as this region east of Los Angeles has been hit by the U.S. housing crisis.
The unraveling of the region known as the Inland Empire reads like a 21st century version of "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck's novel about families driven from their lands by the Great Depression.
As more families throw in the towel and head to foreclosure here and across the nation, the social costs of collapse are adding up in the form of higher rates of homelessness, crime and even disease.
While no current residents claim to be victims of foreclosure, all agree that tent city is a symptom of the wider economic downturn. And it's just a matter of time before foreclosed families end up at tent city, local housing experts say.
"They don't hit the streets immediately," said activist Jane Mercer. Most families can find transitional housing in a motel or with friends before turning to charity or the streets. "They only hit tent city when they really bottom out."

One commenter over at Eschaton proposed that such encampments be called "Georgetowns." Ha ha.

My mind turns to too-easy-to-draw comparisons between 1939 and 2007.
Mike Huckabee can be Father Coughlin.
George Bush can be Hoover, but that would be insulting Hoover.
Halliburton and Blackwater can be the union-busting goons. (Oh, and they will be. Make book on it.)
Surprisingly, not too many people want to be Preacher Casey. We've seen what happens to people who do that.