Hope and despair - the experience of the 1930s and the crisis today
As he reaches his 80th birthday this month, Noam Chomsky looks at Barack Obama's victory, today's economic crisis and his memories of a childhood shaped by the 1930s Depression.
I'm old enough to remember the Depression. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of people coming to the door trying to sell rags. Most of the extended family was unemployed, all my aunts were seamstresses, and there were shop boys, things like that. My most striking memories are of things like riding a trolley car with my mother past a textile factory where security forces were beating women strikers, and I remember going with my father to what looked like an extremely imposing building where he was trying to get some money and couldn't - his bank had closed.