This nearly brought tears to my eyes, because I was homeless—as in the streets homeless—for a short while in the 80s & what I learned from that experience is that it's exhausting. Rest, much less sleep, is impossible to find for any decent period. And that's intentional. At least this was in my hometown, LA, where the weather was on my side. I don't know what I would have done in the No East where I live now!

Great & thoughtful piece, overall. But since you asked, I think it would benefit you & readers to break it up a bit. There's too much here to unpack, too many ideas to respond to. One feels a trifle overwhelmed. E.g. I think it's common knowledge that foundations such as Rockefeller's were PR operations designed to rehabilitate his image—Behind every great fortune..., right? Maybe that would be grist for a standalone essay?

Also, some details: e.g. Occupy Wall Street was 2011, no '08, & from what I can gather, about 70+ miners & family were killed overall in the Colorado Coalfield War of '14, not 700; the Milgram Experiment has been pretty soundly discredited (though I believe the Stanford Prison experiment was spot on).

Addressing some of the points you make:

I was at Zuccotti for much of OWS & the expulsion. The sense I got, as an older man & more of a helper than an activist, was that OWS per se wasn't going to make great changes because they really had no specific agenda. Rather the whole experience was more of a summer camp for activists. People made connections, learned how to operate, developed techniques, & found out just how far they'd be willing to go. I wonder whether the George Floyd protests would have been as widespread & effective w/o OWS as a precursor of sorts.

Wrt to Hamas & Oct 7 as "resistance" I don't know. I have serious questions. You argue that Zelensky leads a corrupt administration, is Hamas any less corrupt? Haven't its leadership treated foreign aid like a personal ATM? And what does its resistance aim for?Would a Hamas regime, especially led by the more Islamist wing, be any fairer, more democratic toward its population than what they experience now? And does that even matter from the standpoint of outsiders gauging whether or not to offer support?

That being said, I do believe Israeli operations are needlessly brutal & indicative of missed opportunities.

As far as Ukraine & Zelensky ... I haven't read enough really to know, but I thought I understood Zelensky's government was seeking to undo much of kleptocracy of Yankovych's government.

I think you're spot on regarding the inability of the bourgeoisie & proletariate making common cause. The former, as Franz Fanon points out, simply has too much to lose, & the latter nothing to offer but justice, which sadly does not fill bellies or heat rooms. There's no doubt, too, that many who were born on third base grow up thinking they've hit a triple.

There are too many other good & interesting points in your essay for me to address in a casual comment. Last thing, however, I recall that it wasn't the party so much as black voters in the south who put Biden ahead of Sanders. Bernie just didn't have much credibility with black Americans ... but it's possible I have that wrong. I know many party luminaries breathed a sigh of relief when Biden finally surged.

Sad, 'cause I think we need Bernie now more than ever. If he had flown to Israel on Oct 8 it would have been to tell Bibi to cool his jets.

Great piece.