THE OTHER AMERICA

Taking its name from a little-known speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Other America” is a study on homelessness and transience. In the 1960s, Dr. King was keen to observe that there existed ‘two Americas.’  He said, “in this [other] America people are poor by the millions. They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.” Dr. King’s words stand as an oracle for Los Angeles as it grapples with its largest homeless crisis in modern memory. America has always been a land where the poor and the prosperous seem to coexist, but today her poverty is in diametric opposition to the conditions in the rest of the developed world. The Other America serves as a witness to poverty in the United States–primarily in Los Angeles–and questions whether such inequality is correctable or if it must be accepted as characteristic of the American Epoch. ☗