#moreфон2018 Day 29. Here is another essay I wrote. “Write about something ugly — war, fear, hate, or cruelty–but find the beauty in it.” After reading the topic, one thing immediately came to my mind – the phenomenon of Hoovervilles, which definitely was negative, but at the end of the day something really good came out of it. If you are not familiar with the term “Hooverville”, let me explain it and tell a touching story that happened in the years of the Great Depression in the United States. I think we should firstly look at the etymology of the word Hooverville. In the root of it we can see the last name of the 31st President of the US – Herbert Hoover, notoriously famous for being the leader of the country in the hardest years of struggle for millions of Americans, the years of the Great Depression. There is also the suffix -ville, which is commonly added to the names of small towns, like Brownsville, Victorville and so on. To understand the phenomena of Hoovervilles better, we should keep in mind that thousands of those people, who became homeless then – they were not drug users, bums or some renegades, they were hard working people with families and values, who had just been kicked out from their jobs because of the collapse of the stock market. About a quarter of the US population was unemployed. People were being evicted from their houses with hungry kids, crying wives and elderly parents all across the country. Where could they go? Nobody was hiring, factories had been closed, companies had gone bankrupt, all friends and relatives were just in the same desperate situation. So, people started living in the streets: under the bridges, on roads shoulders, on public lands where they would built shacks from cardboard, wood, stones, anything what they could find. The authorities were showing no compassion to people in need, systematically burning and destroying those “camps”, offering no alternative, no other shelter or place to live. Although the shacks were put up in disorder in Hoovervilles, the communities did not give the appearance as being chaotic, insane tribes. People organized self-administrations and even elected mayors who represented them in negotiations with local authorities. In Hoovervilles people of all colors, nationalities and backgrounds lived together, sharing the same bitter destiny. All social and cultural differences did not play any role anymore, the residents were united in one community with a strong sense of comradery.