WASHINGTON—The “Hoovervilles” of the 1930s, encampments of homeless people named after the then-president of the United States, called attention to the Great Depression caused by his giveaways to Big Business. Beginning Monday, April 20, the first such modern-day encampment, this time by dispossessed federal workers backed by the AFL-CIO, will appear near Union Station. They are naming their settlement “Muskville,” after the richest man in the world man who is leading Trump’s attack on federal workers in order to save the money for big tax cuts for the rich.
The Hoovervilles sprang up across the land as the Great Depression deepened during President Herbert Hoover’s term, and people lost their jobs, homes, and cars while the Republican president did little to help.
Starting April 20, Muskville will come to Columbus Circle outside D.C.’s Union Station. It will be a daily encampment of dispossessed federal workers who have lost their jobs to Republican President Donald Trump and his partner, Elon Musk.
The plutocrat Trump, multibillionaire Musk, and Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have fired approximately 175,000 federal workers, with more coming. Entire agencies are either obliterated or cut beyond the point of being able to function. Programs were axed, and workers with them, often on only a few hours’ notice.
The depredations have been severe in the metro D.C. area, stretching south almost to Richmond, Va., and northeast to Baltimore—headquarters of the Social Security Administration. That agency’s workers and clients are already suffering from Musk’s chainsaw, as far north as Schenectady, N.Y., for example.
So masses of those newly unemployed will bring their plight to Columbus Circle, right at the foot of Capitol Hill, where Congress can see them and the carnage Musk and Trump have wrought.
These bereft Muskville workers, though, won’t be selling apples on the streets for a nickel apiece, or riding the rails as impoverished people, or scrounging through garbage dumps for scraps of food, as their Hooverville forebears did during the Great Depression.
Instead, with aid from the AFL-CIO, its Metro D.C. Central Labor Council’s Community Services Agency, Federal Workers Against DOGE, and other organizations, these bereft workers will provide “solidarity, relief, and resistance” to one another.
“This is an opportunity to offer a vision to counter the dismal Trump-Musk vision of the United States and the world: One where we help our neighbors rather than spurn them, share our wealth rather than hoard it, and come together in community rather than isolate,” Muskville organizers posted.
The displaced workers will also be able to take advantage of skills-based training, resource sessions, political education, physical activities, and mass assemblies, all for at least two weeks, running to and through May Day. Further information is available at info@muskville.org.
“We welcome service providers including food distribution, clothing distribution, health care, financial assistance, housing, career coaching, resume building, social service navigation, art therapy, wellness activities, and skill sharing,” organizers say. Not to mention public and media attention, all day, every day, until sundown.
Then the encampment will strike its tents for the evening, only to return the next day…and the next…and the next…and the next.
CONTRIBUTOR
MOST POPULAR TODAY
Amidst capitalist crisis and war, Russian Communists struggle against Putin and the oligarchs
Book review: ‘Blue Collar Empire—How Anti-Communism Undermined Workers Everywhere’
‘Sinners’ review: Horror, history, and Black American folklore combine for trailblazing cinema
Vietnam, beacon of peace and freedom, marks 50 years of reunification
