Hurricane Katrina And Capitalism: A Disaster In The Making
Statement By The Free People’s Movement
On August 29, 2005, Katrina, one of the most powerful hurricanes in history, slammed into the coast of the South Eastern United States, washing away entire towns in Mississippi and destroying much of New Orleans.
No one knows how many people have died in this disaster, but estimates range from hundreds to even thousands, and up to one million have been left homeless.
The toxic water, which is flooding the streets of New Orleans, is a mixture of garbage, raw sewage, gasoline and other petroleum products from nearby oil refineries, thousands of corpses–of those who died in the hurricane as well as those washed out of the cemeteries, and poisonous chemicals from the many chemical plants in the region (more per square mile than in any other region in the U.S.). The effects of this will likely be felt by the people and environment of the area for years to come.
Tens, possibly hundreds of thousands are stranded on rooftops and in attacks. The “relief” effort has proven to be too little, too late. “We are out here like pure animals,” cried a survivor, “We don’t have help."
In response to the increasingly desperate survivors’ appropriations of food and water, the government has proclaimed a defacto martial law, with soldiers and police enforcing a “shoot to kill” policy. The entire area has descended into chaos.
Although hurricanes cannot be prevented, catastrophic results like these can.
Cuba, a socialist country which is organized to meet human needs, has shown that it’s possible to carry out large scale evacuations with very little resources. Less then two months ago, 1.7 million people were evacuated on short notice in preparation for Hurricane Dennis.
In Cuba, both the pickup and delivery of people for evacuations is organized well in advance. The population is well educated about hurricanes, and they know where to go (and how to get there) in emergency situations.
The country’s leaders and knowledgeable meteorologists take charge, going on television and keeping the population informed. In case of power outages, there are special messengers who communicate evacuation plans to each area.
People go door to door to inform everyone of upcoming evacuations, and return to let them know when they have begun.
All shelters are staffed with medical personnel and family doctors evacuate along with their neighborhoods, knowing who needs special medicines (such as diabetics and asthmatics) and bringing them along in sufficient quantities. Veterinarians evacuate animals and items such as televisions and refrigerators are brought along so that people don’t stay behind in attempts to protect them.
If all else fails, people can be evacuated to high schools in the countryside which contain built-in dormitories.
Because of measures like these, made possible by Cuba’s social revolution, the last category 4 hurricane to hit Cuba left only 16 dead – the highest death toll in forty-one years(!) in an island constantly bombarded by hurricanes.
But in the U.S., a capitalist country where profit rules over people, evacuations like these are not only not planned for, they are in fact blocked!
Airlines stopped flights to New Orleans twenty-four hours before they had to, only because it wouldn’t have been profitable to fly airplanes with no passengers on them.
Commercial buses have lined up on Interstate 10 of the city, refusing to evacuate people with no money. “It’s like they’re punishing us,” said one 52-year-old survivor.
The U.S. government, which has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on a war based on lies, didn’t spend a single penny evacuating a city directly in the path of one of the worst hurricanes in history – even though they knew it was coming days in advance!
The levees, built to protect the city from disasters like this one, were not maintained before the hurricane hit and couldn’t hold up to the impact of the water and wind. As a direct result of the funding of the Iraq war and Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy, many U.S. Army Corps of Engineers requests for hurricane protection projects have been cut back or delayed since 2001.
As the Chicago Tribune reported, “Despite continuous warnings that a catastrophic hurricane could hit New Orleans, the Bush administration and Congress in recent years have repeatedly cut funding for hurricane preparation and flood control. The cuts have delayed construction of levees around the city and stymied an ambitious project to improve drainage in New Orleans’ neighborhoods.”
At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane and flood-control dollars.
The corporate controlled media has portrayed victims of the hurricane, who are struggling to survive, as “looters” and “miscreants.” The media coverage has also revealed the deep rooted racism that prevails in this society – White survivors are portrayed as ‘refugees’ who ‘find’ food and other supplies while Blacks are demonized and depicted as savage criminals. The results of slavery, Jim Crow segregation laws, and the ongoing oppression of Blacks and other minorities has been brought to the front.
The truth is, these survivors are taking food, water, dry clothing, and other items because they need them survive – they have been abandoned and have no other choice!
So what has been the response of the government?
Louisiana’s governor has called for a day of prayer when she should have been working to meet the needs of the hurricanes victims!
Federal Emergency Management Director Michael Brown went as far as placing the blame on the victims themselves, saying “I think the death toll may go into the thousands and that’s going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings [to leave].”
The reality of the situation is that the over 100,000 people that remained in New Orleans and the surrounding areas hit by the hurricane didn’t have the financial means to leave! As a survivor told reporters, “that’s a crime, and people are angry about it!”
People are angry, and for good reason. But instead of attempting to relieve their anger by doing what should have been done in the first place, the emphasis of the government is being placed on stopping the “looting” and “lawlessness” of the hurricane victims!
President Bush, taking a break from his long vacation, urged a “crackdown,” saying “I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law, and I’ve made that clear to our attorney general.”
Thousands of troops, “fresh back from Iraq,” have been sent to New Orleans and thousands more are on the way. “These are some of the 40,000 extra troops that I have demanded," said Louisiana’s governor (the same person who called for a day of prayer), as she went on to threaten the hurricane victims, “They have M-16s, and they’re locked and loaded … I have one message for these hoodlums: These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so if necessary, and I expect they will.”
U.S. Coast Guard rescue missions have been suspended, and boat rescue teams looking for Katrina survivors have been ordered to stand down by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
New Orleans Mayor Nagin ordered the police force to abandon search-and-rescue efforts and focus on stopping the “criminals.”
Police officers armed with shotguns are standing outside of hotels to keep out refugees looking for food, water, and shelter, while snipers are stationed on police station rooftops to “protect” private property. Officers attempted to keep camera crews from filming their actions under the pretense that the streets were “too dangerous.”
Police from Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, and as far away as Michigan are being called in to “bring order back to the streets.” Of course, no one was called in to help with evacuativon or relief efforts earlier.
This disaster, and the government’s response to it, have shown unequivocally that the people of New Orleans and the other areas hit by Hurricane Katrina are not only victims of a natural disaster, they are victims of the capitalist system – a ruthless system based on the exploitation of the majority of humanity for the benefit of the few, in which private property and profit are considered more important than human life.
This did not have to happen this way, and it doesn’t have to ever happen again! A much better world for all of us is possible! Now, more than ever, we must push onward to a socialist revolution to liberate all of humanity!
I think it’s important to relate to as many people as possible the root causes of all of this, and so I think we should try to get this message, and ones like it, in front as many people as possible, in blogs, emails, forums, etc.
Link To Original Story: http://freepeoplesmovement.org/fp14a.html
