Word: squalidity
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...slums and ghettoes of London have provided inspiration for generations of artists. Steven Berkoff's East, a hodge-podge collection of abstract scenes and monologues concerning one London family's daily life, draws on the squalid conditions and pervasive violence that spawned works from Oliver Twist to A Clockwork Orange. Conscious of this tradition, East makes an early reference to its setting as the turf "the blessed Jack" stalked. The play concerns the East End of London as much as the people who live...
...they rebuild homes wrecked by Hurricane Andrew. By night they drink, fight, smoke crack and sometimes kill. In the squalid roadside camps they call home, shotguns and 9-mm pistols abound, as do the tools of their trade: roofing knives. In one case a roofer's throat was cut so deeply he was nearly decapitated. In another a roofer shot and stabbed a drifter 100 times. Soldiers who patrolled the area say they saw a roofer bite off another man's ear, then spit...
...most dangerous places are the squalid camps where roofers and construction workers live. With 270 sq. mi. of destruction and few hotels in the disaster zone, 5,000 to 10,000 itinerant workers and locals now live in these makeshift tent cities, according to estimates by Dade County officials. Mike Anelli, a 28-year-old carpenter from New Jersey who has set up camp near the destroyed Homestead Air Force Base, says he wakes nightly to the sound of gunfire. "It's like a Mad Max movie after a nuclear war, what with the fires at night, the rusted heaps...
...understand why Brazilians would migrate to Curitiba, but why do people keep streaming into a Kinshasa or a Karachi, Pakistan? What is the irresistible lure of the megacity? To the outsider, a neatly swept native village in Africa, Asia or Latin America may look more inviting than a squalid urban squatter settlement. But until recently even the most wretched city slums have offered better access to paying jobs, more varied diets, better education and better health care than what was available in rural communities...
They live for the most part in squalid hostels and receive no more than $340 a month in state assistance. But that has not prevented the foreigners from being blamed by many easterners for the problems of their much troubled region or from becoming the focus of right-wing demonology. Many easterners are certain that the newcomers are treated better than native Germans. "We have enough unemployed. We don't need any foreigners here," says Frank Tamaz, 30, of Rostock. "They take our jobs, and they take our houses...