Deepest Red
09-25-2005, 09:55 PM
Communist League Bulletin No. 4
One-Two Punch
First Hurricane Katrina — then Hurricane Capitalism
The Central Committee of the Communist League, on behalf of its membership, extends its heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. We grieve with them and offer our hands, our hearts and our help in their time of need.
But our grief and pain at the horrific loss of thousands of our brothers and sisters in the wake of one of the greatest natural disasters in the history of the United States is tempered with anger and fury at the criminal and barbaric response of the local, state and federal governments to this disaster.
The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina has turned the Mississippi Delta and its surrounding regions, including the cities of New Orleans, Louisiana, Biloxi, Miss., and Mobile, Alabama, into a swirling cesspool of death, disease, famine and misery.
Most of New Orleans remains mired in a nauseating swamp of sea water, raw sewage, personal and industrial garbage, petroleum products, chemicals both hazardous and non-hazardous, and pulverized debris. This toxic, liquid hell is punctuated by thousands of corpses — both those killed by the hurricane and the accompanying flood, and dead bodies washed out of their graves.
The cities of Biloxi and Mobile are facing similar devastation, with whole neighborhoods wiped off the face of the earth. Smaller cities that dot the region have been washed away without a trace. But the destruction and misery caused by this act of nature have been aggravated by the actions — or, more to the point, inactions — of the capitalist government.
After Hurricane Katrina crossed the Florida peninsula and entered the Gulf of Mexico, preparations should have begun immediately for possible landfall along the coast. As the hurricane gathered strength and turned northward toward the Mississippi Delta, those preparations should have been put into practice, with evacuations begun and reinforcement of the levee system keeping both the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain from flooding New Orleans.
Buses from the New Orleans mass transit system should have been marshaled and sent to all corners of the region to pick up residents and move them to higher ground. Military and civilian cargo planes should have been mobilized to bring in food, clean drinking water, blankets, clothes, medicine and basic hygiene supplies to keep people safe, dry and healthy.
After the hurricane passed, civilian and military units attached to the Army Corps of Engineers should have moved immediately into action to repair broken levees, begin pumping water out of the city, demolish destroyed buildings and build new ones in their place, restore basic utilities and wastewater treatment, and dispose of any dead humans or animals found in the area.
None of this happened. Not one bit of it.
Instead, the federal, state and local governments effectively washed their hands of any responsibility for the carnage that was looming. The mayors of these cities, including New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, and the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, refused to take responsibility for getting people out of the path of the storm.
In spite of the crocodile tears and hollow appeals for people to leave, the state and local governments abandoned the residents of the region to their own devices. The only efforts they made were to close down Interstate 10’s inbound lanes into New Orleans, opening them to outbound traffic, and designating places like the New Orleans Superdome as “shelters” for those who could not leave.
Flights to and from New Orleans’ international airport were suspended more than 24 hours before the hurricane made landfall, and most planes were flown out of the area. For the airline bosses, keeping their precious airplanes intact was more important than helping to evacuate the region. And the same can be said for the owners of regional charter bus lines, which refused to lend their coaches for evacuation. Bus drivers were told to refuse any person who wanted to board the bus but could not pay.
Residents who could not leave the area, overwhelmingly African-American, poor and working people, were callously herded into places like the Superdome, under the delusion that the flimsy roofs used in professional sports stadiums could withstand the force of a category four hurricane. The small sense of safety that some residents felt inside the stadium was cruelly ripped away along with a large section of the roof.
The poor and working people of the region were trapped. As one television reporter callously put it: “If you had money you took a plane out, if you had less you drove, if you were poor you had no option but to stay.” Over 70 percent of New Orleans’ population is African American. One-third lives below the federal government’s poverty line; two-thirds of those are children. Tens of thousands of them were crammed into the “shelters” without any food, water or sanitation.
People jumped from the high bleachers of the Superdome and committed suicide. Hundreds died from hunger, dehydration and lack of medical attention. Thousands drowned in their homes, having been turned away from the “shelters” by automatic-rifle toting cops.
As Hurricane Katrina moved farther inland, and the weather began to subside in the Gulf Coast region, the extent of the devastation and human tragedy began to fully unfold. This tragedy was fundamentally worsened by the actions of the federal government, headed by the George W. Bush regime.
For the first 72 hours, Bush and his fellow corporatists did nothing for the people of the region. As the hurricane passed over the area, Bush sat and joked with his cronies at his Crawford, Texas, ranch. The next day, Bush went to Arizona for a round of golf and to eat cake with Ariz. Senator John McCain. The next day, it was on to San Diego, California. It was not until Wednesday afternoon that Bush reappeared in Washington to make a speech.
On his way to Washington, in a scene that more than anything signifies the arrogance and indifference of the capitalist class, Bush had Air Force One descend to 1,700 feet so he could look at the devastation in New Orleans. Like all of Bush’s appearances, this too was nothing more than a photo-opportunity. The same can be said for his appearance with the Executive Cabinet outside the White House later that afternoon.
Bush’s speech in Washington was carefully crafted; the speech was crafted to make the wholly inadequate and incompetent response of the regime sound greater than the sum of its parts.
The centerpiece of the policy was a “Cabinet-level task force” to “work with local and state governments” — in other words, the most the Bush regime was willing to do was appoint a group of Cabinet officials to study how the federal government might help the people of the region.
Meanwhile, the situation inside New Orleans deteriorated to astonishing levels. Reporters inside the city reported that the dead were left to rot in homes and on the street. Rats had begun to come out and were feasting on the corpses. The dead inside the Superdome and other areas were left untouched. The stench of human waste, chemicals and dead bodies has overwhelmed those who are forced to remain.
By Wednesday, the poor and working people of the area who survived were without any of the basic human needs. People began organizing themselves as scavenging parties. Local businesses refused to reopen, and so working people took matters into their own hands. Grocery stores and larger retail outlets like Wal-Mart were opened by force and supplies were gathered.
Even the local police joined in. They too had lost nearly everything in the hurricane, and their basic human instincts trumped their loyalty to the capitalist state and defense of private property.
In fact, in the wake of the government’s complete unwillingness to properly prepare for the hurricane and provide relief after it passed, close to half of New Orleans’ police officers have resigned and joined with their neighbors to fight the battle of survival.
Unlike before, when the survivors were passively waiting for assistance, the Bush regime and its state forces have now fully mobilized ... to brutally suppress the spontaneous expropriation of goods and services by the working people of the area. Bush himself appeared on ABC television’s Good Morning America program and called for “zero tolerance” for people trying to survive.
The message is clear: Your life means nothing; private property means everything. And we will defend it, even if we have to slaughter thousands.
This message was reinforced by Governor Blanco. “They [the soldiers sent by the Bush regime] have M-16s and they’re locked and loaded,” she said. “These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, and I expect they will.”
The conditions in the Gulf Coast region at this moment are what are referred to as a “failed state” situation.
A failed state means that all civilian infrastructures have collapsed, the armed agents of the state, enforcers of “law and order,” have abandoned their posts, what remains of the government is powerless, essential services, including basic utilities and sanitation, are non-existent.
Somalia and Rwanda in the early- and mid-1990s were the textbook examples of a failed state. Afghanistan and Iraq today border on being failed states (and would be failed states themselves if it wasn’t for the billions of dollars the Bush regime is pouring into the military occupation of these countries). Failed state situations often arise in the aftermath of war, civil war or rebellion, or massive natural or environmental devastation.
From our perspective, what we are seeing in the Gulf Coast region today is little more than a foreshadowing of what is to come for the United States. The decline of the capitalist system, its inability — and unwillingness — to provide even the most basic human needs, has already brought many of the metropolitan centers of this country to the brink of collapse into such a situation.
It is within this context that we can better understand the capitalists’ physical separation from the urban and industrial areas of the U.S., their “flight” to rural and semi-rural areas, and the establishment of “communities” that are little more than fortresses and citadels of bourgeois affluence and “respectability.”
As technology has advanced, and fewer working people are needed to generate and maximize profits for the capitalists, increasingly larger sections of the working class are being written off as “surplus population.” Mass layoffs and unemployment could only be partially offset by the growth of the service sector economy and part-time labor in transportation and distribution.
This systematic degradation of the living conditions of working people, compounded over the decades, has reduced many of the major urban areas in the U.S. to a level comparable to cities in the so-called “Third World.”
With the end of the Cold War, and capitalism’s need to present a face of “humanity,” and to have a section of the working class bribed and kept loyal, this degradation became generalized, affecting not only those who were tossed aside a generation ago, but those who were spared.
The overall result of this assault on working people, carried out by both Republican and Democratic administrations in the 1980s and 1990s, has been to establish these cities as nothing short of internal colonies, occupied by police forces armed, equipped and trained in tactics borrowed from U.S. military interventions in Latin America and Asia, and to view residents as “the enemy.”
These ongoing and sustained assaults have left the major cities almost wholly dependent on federal government subsidies and grants for financial and political survival, and on these police forces to maintain not only “law and order,” but also the very authority of the state. If there is any disruption in either of these dependencies, the state quickly collapses — even if only temporarily — and has to be “rescued” by the federal government.
The corporatist George W. Bush regime, in its drive to redivide the world along lines most favorable to U.S. capitalism, has not only disrupted the flow to the urban areas, it has in some cases completely cut them off. This was the case with New Orleans, when millions of dollars meant to maintain the levees surrounding the city were diverted to the ongoing occupation of Iraq.
In fact, the so-called “war on terror” has diverted billions from the urban areas of the U.S., and has resulted in a very real war of terror waged by the capitalist class against the tens of millions of poor and working people of this country.
But appeals to capitalism to end its diversion of resources into its redivision of the world have and will continue to fall on deaf ears. It is vital to their survival to wage these wars, to accumulate control over the world’s resources, and they will not be deterred by demands from working people that they maintain our survival.
We are “surplus population” to them. Our deaths mean nothing to them.
For communists, this situation once again points to the urgent and overarching necessity for working people to organize themselves into a mass movement that will fight for the rights and livelihoods — not to mention the very survival — of our brothers and sisters.
The complete inability and willingness of the federal government to send adequate supplies to the hundreds of thousands of poor and working people in the Gulf Coast region reinforces this point. For working people, the ultimate lesson of this tragedy has to be that, if we as a class — as human beings — are to survive, we must begin to build and develop our own organizations and infrastructure to provide for society.
Over the last year of the Communist League’s existence, we have repeatedly raised the demand of the third, working people’s republic, and have said time and again that the initial construction of this republic must begin now, or else it will be too late. The events along the Gulf Coast region of the United States have fully confirmed the correctness of this position.
For raising this demand, and appealing to all self-described leftwing and working-class forces to take up this call, we have been called everything from “ultraleft” to “liberal.” We have been derided for “bypassing the existing organizations” of working people and attacked as wanting to “tail the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.”
But, any review of how the League has understood and responded to these events, when placed alongside the numerous statements and paper appeals of the left, the “existing organizations” of working people, etc., shows that it is the left that has abdicated its historic responsibilities and has relied on the capitalist government (i.e., the Bush regime) to provide the urgent needs of working people.
Later this month, tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of antiwar activists, leftists and people opposed to the ongoing occupation of Iraq will be gathering in Washington, D.C., to protest against the war. The organizers of this demonstration have already stated that they intend to make the issue of the federal government’s response to the situation in the Gulf Coast a part of the event.
If these brothers and sisters can mobilize these kinds of numbers for an antiwar demonstration, why are they abstaining from organizing an independent working people’s aid program for the thousands of people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama that are in dire need of food, clothing and shelter?
For its part, the League has sent essential items — albeit limited by our own limited resources — to the region. We see such an act as an elementary expression of solidarity with our brothers and sisters in their time of need.
We encourage anyone reading this statement to come together to organize the gathering and transport of supplies to the Gulf Coast, and to demand that all organizations claiming to stand for the interests of working people — labor unions, community coalitions, leftwing political organizations, etc. — to take the lead in helping the residents of the region, not just being a “labor” auxiliary for the capitalists’ “relief effort.”
As the people of the Gulf Coast region begin to rebuild, the capitalists will once again begin to squabble among themselves about what areas will be the recipients of the most reconstruction dollars.
This division will not be over whether poor or wealthy neighborhoods should receive money, but over which wealthy area will get it: The rich, or the filthy rich?
Areas like the Ninth Lower Ward, home to thousands of mostly African-American poor and working people, prior to the hurricane, will likely be ignored or, as Republican Representative and Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert of Illinois bluntly suggested, bulldozed and never rebuilt.
If efforts in areas like the Ninth Lower Ward are either minimized or ignored altogether, we believe and advocate that those same self-described partisans of working people to whom we have appealed to organize relief today should be called upon to organize reconstruction brigades to help build homes, repair basic utilities, services and roads, and help collect essentials people will need to begin rebuilding their lives.
In addition, measures should be taken to make sure that the people of the Gulf Coast will continue to receive aid and supplies until they are able to find new jobs. In the immediate term, a massive public works program should be immediately organized, under the control of the working people of the area and coordinated by local organizations of working people, including the labor unions and community coalitions, to help restore the local infrastructure.
Special attention should also be paid to attempts by profiteers to bleed the already beaten and battered people of the region. If the government will not impose price controls on essential goods, including food, water, heating oil and gasoline, then working people should organize themselves to demand — and impose through their own means, if necessary — that prices are kept low and goods are kept stocked.
Most importantly, these structures and programs should not disappear as the damage is repaired and life begins to resemble pre-hurricane conditions. As many people who are experts in climate and weather have said, the likelihood of “another Katrina” hitting the Gulf Coast, even this year, is very likely.
What we have seen should never happen again! And, as the experience of the last week has shown, the only way that will happen is if working people take matters into their own hands. In our view, such independent action is a small but important step forward, and it is a foreshadowing of what must come.
Central Committee, Communist League
Adopted: September 3, 2005
One-Two Punch
First Hurricane Katrina — then Hurricane Capitalism
The Central Committee of the Communist League, on behalf of its membership, extends its heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. We grieve with them and offer our hands, our hearts and our help in their time of need.
But our grief and pain at the horrific loss of thousands of our brothers and sisters in the wake of one of the greatest natural disasters in the history of the United States is tempered with anger and fury at the criminal and barbaric response of the local, state and federal governments to this disaster.
The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina has turned the Mississippi Delta and its surrounding regions, including the cities of New Orleans, Louisiana, Biloxi, Miss., and Mobile, Alabama, into a swirling cesspool of death, disease, famine and misery.
Most of New Orleans remains mired in a nauseating swamp of sea water, raw sewage, personal and industrial garbage, petroleum products, chemicals both hazardous and non-hazardous, and pulverized debris. This toxic, liquid hell is punctuated by thousands of corpses — both those killed by the hurricane and the accompanying flood, and dead bodies washed out of their graves.
The cities of Biloxi and Mobile are facing similar devastation, with whole neighborhoods wiped off the face of the earth. Smaller cities that dot the region have been washed away without a trace. But the destruction and misery caused by this act of nature have been aggravated by the actions — or, more to the point, inactions — of the capitalist government.
After Hurricane Katrina crossed the Florida peninsula and entered the Gulf of Mexico, preparations should have begun immediately for possible landfall along the coast. As the hurricane gathered strength and turned northward toward the Mississippi Delta, those preparations should have been put into practice, with evacuations begun and reinforcement of the levee system keeping both the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain from flooding New Orleans.
Buses from the New Orleans mass transit system should have been marshaled and sent to all corners of the region to pick up residents and move them to higher ground. Military and civilian cargo planes should have been mobilized to bring in food, clean drinking water, blankets, clothes, medicine and basic hygiene supplies to keep people safe, dry and healthy.
After the hurricane passed, civilian and military units attached to the Army Corps of Engineers should have moved immediately into action to repair broken levees, begin pumping water out of the city, demolish destroyed buildings and build new ones in their place, restore basic utilities and wastewater treatment, and dispose of any dead humans or animals found in the area.
None of this happened. Not one bit of it.
Instead, the federal, state and local governments effectively washed their hands of any responsibility for the carnage that was looming. The mayors of these cities, including New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, and the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, refused to take responsibility for getting people out of the path of the storm.
In spite of the crocodile tears and hollow appeals for people to leave, the state and local governments abandoned the residents of the region to their own devices. The only efforts they made were to close down Interstate 10’s inbound lanes into New Orleans, opening them to outbound traffic, and designating places like the New Orleans Superdome as “shelters” for those who could not leave.
Flights to and from New Orleans’ international airport were suspended more than 24 hours before the hurricane made landfall, and most planes were flown out of the area. For the airline bosses, keeping their precious airplanes intact was more important than helping to evacuate the region. And the same can be said for the owners of regional charter bus lines, which refused to lend their coaches for evacuation. Bus drivers were told to refuse any person who wanted to board the bus but could not pay.
Residents who could not leave the area, overwhelmingly African-American, poor and working people, were callously herded into places like the Superdome, under the delusion that the flimsy roofs used in professional sports stadiums could withstand the force of a category four hurricane. The small sense of safety that some residents felt inside the stadium was cruelly ripped away along with a large section of the roof.
The poor and working people of the region were trapped. As one television reporter callously put it: “If you had money you took a plane out, if you had less you drove, if you were poor you had no option but to stay.” Over 70 percent of New Orleans’ population is African American. One-third lives below the federal government’s poverty line; two-thirds of those are children. Tens of thousands of them were crammed into the “shelters” without any food, water or sanitation.
People jumped from the high bleachers of the Superdome and committed suicide. Hundreds died from hunger, dehydration and lack of medical attention. Thousands drowned in their homes, having been turned away from the “shelters” by automatic-rifle toting cops.
As Hurricane Katrina moved farther inland, and the weather began to subside in the Gulf Coast region, the extent of the devastation and human tragedy began to fully unfold. This tragedy was fundamentally worsened by the actions of the federal government, headed by the George W. Bush regime.
For the first 72 hours, Bush and his fellow corporatists did nothing for the people of the region. As the hurricane passed over the area, Bush sat and joked with his cronies at his Crawford, Texas, ranch. The next day, Bush went to Arizona for a round of golf and to eat cake with Ariz. Senator John McCain. The next day, it was on to San Diego, California. It was not until Wednesday afternoon that Bush reappeared in Washington to make a speech.
On his way to Washington, in a scene that more than anything signifies the arrogance and indifference of the capitalist class, Bush had Air Force One descend to 1,700 feet so he could look at the devastation in New Orleans. Like all of Bush’s appearances, this too was nothing more than a photo-opportunity. The same can be said for his appearance with the Executive Cabinet outside the White House later that afternoon.
Bush’s speech in Washington was carefully crafted; the speech was crafted to make the wholly inadequate and incompetent response of the regime sound greater than the sum of its parts.
The centerpiece of the policy was a “Cabinet-level task force” to “work with local and state governments” — in other words, the most the Bush regime was willing to do was appoint a group of Cabinet officials to study how the federal government might help the people of the region.
Meanwhile, the situation inside New Orleans deteriorated to astonishing levels. Reporters inside the city reported that the dead were left to rot in homes and on the street. Rats had begun to come out and were feasting on the corpses. The dead inside the Superdome and other areas were left untouched. The stench of human waste, chemicals and dead bodies has overwhelmed those who are forced to remain.
By Wednesday, the poor and working people of the area who survived were without any of the basic human needs. People began organizing themselves as scavenging parties. Local businesses refused to reopen, and so working people took matters into their own hands. Grocery stores and larger retail outlets like Wal-Mart were opened by force and supplies were gathered.
Even the local police joined in. They too had lost nearly everything in the hurricane, and their basic human instincts trumped their loyalty to the capitalist state and defense of private property.
In fact, in the wake of the government’s complete unwillingness to properly prepare for the hurricane and provide relief after it passed, close to half of New Orleans’ police officers have resigned and joined with their neighbors to fight the battle of survival.
Unlike before, when the survivors were passively waiting for assistance, the Bush regime and its state forces have now fully mobilized ... to brutally suppress the spontaneous expropriation of goods and services by the working people of the area. Bush himself appeared on ABC television’s Good Morning America program and called for “zero tolerance” for people trying to survive.
The message is clear: Your life means nothing; private property means everything. And we will defend it, even if we have to slaughter thousands.
This message was reinforced by Governor Blanco. “They [the soldiers sent by the Bush regime] have M-16s and they’re locked and loaded,” she said. “These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, and I expect they will.”
The conditions in the Gulf Coast region at this moment are what are referred to as a “failed state” situation.
A failed state means that all civilian infrastructures have collapsed, the armed agents of the state, enforcers of “law and order,” have abandoned their posts, what remains of the government is powerless, essential services, including basic utilities and sanitation, are non-existent.
Somalia and Rwanda in the early- and mid-1990s were the textbook examples of a failed state. Afghanistan and Iraq today border on being failed states (and would be failed states themselves if it wasn’t for the billions of dollars the Bush regime is pouring into the military occupation of these countries). Failed state situations often arise in the aftermath of war, civil war or rebellion, or massive natural or environmental devastation.
From our perspective, what we are seeing in the Gulf Coast region today is little more than a foreshadowing of what is to come for the United States. The decline of the capitalist system, its inability — and unwillingness — to provide even the most basic human needs, has already brought many of the metropolitan centers of this country to the brink of collapse into such a situation.
It is within this context that we can better understand the capitalists’ physical separation from the urban and industrial areas of the U.S., their “flight” to rural and semi-rural areas, and the establishment of “communities” that are little more than fortresses and citadels of bourgeois affluence and “respectability.”
As technology has advanced, and fewer working people are needed to generate and maximize profits for the capitalists, increasingly larger sections of the working class are being written off as “surplus population.” Mass layoffs and unemployment could only be partially offset by the growth of the service sector economy and part-time labor in transportation and distribution.
This systematic degradation of the living conditions of working people, compounded over the decades, has reduced many of the major urban areas in the U.S. to a level comparable to cities in the so-called “Third World.”
With the end of the Cold War, and capitalism’s need to present a face of “humanity,” and to have a section of the working class bribed and kept loyal, this degradation became generalized, affecting not only those who were tossed aside a generation ago, but those who were spared.
The overall result of this assault on working people, carried out by both Republican and Democratic administrations in the 1980s and 1990s, has been to establish these cities as nothing short of internal colonies, occupied by police forces armed, equipped and trained in tactics borrowed from U.S. military interventions in Latin America and Asia, and to view residents as “the enemy.”
These ongoing and sustained assaults have left the major cities almost wholly dependent on federal government subsidies and grants for financial and political survival, and on these police forces to maintain not only “law and order,” but also the very authority of the state. If there is any disruption in either of these dependencies, the state quickly collapses — even if only temporarily — and has to be “rescued” by the federal government.
The corporatist George W. Bush regime, in its drive to redivide the world along lines most favorable to U.S. capitalism, has not only disrupted the flow to the urban areas, it has in some cases completely cut them off. This was the case with New Orleans, when millions of dollars meant to maintain the levees surrounding the city were diverted to the ongoing occupation of Iraq.
In fact, the so-called “war on terror” has diverted billions from the urban areas of the U.S., and has resulted in a very real war of terror waged by the capitalist class against the tens of millions of poor and working people of this country.
But appeals to capitalism to end its diversion of resources into its redivision of the world have and will continue to fall on deaf ears. It is vital to their survival to wage these wars, to accumulate control over the world’s resources, and they will not be deterred by demands from working people that they maintain our survival.
We are “surplus population” to them. Our deaths mean nothing to them.
For communists, this situation once again points to the urgent and overarching necessity for working people to organize themselves into a mass movement that will fight for the rights and livelihoods — not to mention the very survival — of our brothers and sisters.
The complete inability and willingness of the federal government to send adequate supplies to the hundreds of thousands of poor and working people in the Gulf Coast region reinforces this point. For working people, the ultimate lesson of this tragedy has to be that, if we as a class — as human beings — are to survive, we must begin to build and develop our own organizations and infrastructure to provide for society.
Over the last year of the Communist League’s existence, we have repeatedly raised the demand of the third, working people’s republic, and have said time and again that the initial construction of this republic must begin now, or else it will be too late. The events along the Gulf Coast region of the United States have fully confirmed the correctness of this position.
For raising this demand, and appealing to all self-described leftwing and working-class forces to take up this call, we have been called everything from “ultraleft” to “liberal.” We have been derided for “bypassing the existing organizations” of working people and attacked as wanting to “tail the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.”
But, any review of how the League has understood and responded to these events, when placed alongside the numerous statements and paper appeals of the left, the “existing organizations” of working people, etc., shows that it is the left that has abdicated its historic responsibilities and has relied on the capitalist government (i.e., the Bush regime) to provide the urgent needs of working people.
Later this month, tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of antiwar activists, leftists and people opposed to the ongoing occupation of Iraq will be gathering in Washington, D.C., to protest against the war. The organizers of this demonstration have already stated that they intend to make the issue of the federal government’s response to the situation in the Gulf Coast a part of the event.
If these brothers and sisters can mobilize these kinds of numbers for an antiwar demonstration, why are they abstaining from organizing an independent working people’s aid program for the thousands of people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama that are in dire need of food, clothing and shelter?
For its part, the League has sent essential items — albeit limited by our own limited resources — to the region. We see such an act as an elementary expression of solidarity with our brothers and sisters in their time of need.
We encourage anyone reading this statement to come together to organize the gathering and transport of supplies to the Gulf Coast, and to demand that all organizations claiming to stand for the interests of working people — labor unions, community coalitions, leftwing political organizations, etc. — to take the lead in helping the residents of the region, not just being a “labor” auxiliary for the capitalists’ “relief effort.”
As the people of the Gulf Coast region begin to rebuild, the capitalists will once again begin to squabble among themselves about what areas will be the recipients of the most reconstruction dollars.
This division will not be over whether poor or wealthy neighborhoods should receive money, but over which wealthy area will get it: The rich, or the filthy rich?
Areas like the Ninth Lower Ward, home to thousands of mostly African-American poor and working people, prior to the hurricane, will likely be ignored or, as Republican Representative and Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert of Illinois bluntly suggested, bulldozed and never rebuilt.
If efforts in areas like the Ninth Lower Ward are either minimized or ignored altogether, we believe and advocate that those same self-described partisans of working people to whom we have appealed to organize relief today should be called upon to organize reconstruction brigades to help build homes, repair basic utilities, services and roads, and help collect essentials people will need to begin rebuilding their lives.
In addition, measures should be taken to make sure that the people of the Gulf Coast will continue to receive aid and supplies until they are able to find new jobs. In the immediate term, a massive public works program should be immediately organized, under the control of the working people of the area and coordinated by local organizations of working people, including the labor unions and community coalitions, to help restore the local infrastructure.
Special attention should also be paid to attempts by profiteers to bleed the already beaten and battered people of the region. If the government will not impose price controls on essential goods, including food, water, heating oil and gasoline, then working people should organize themselves to demand — and impose through their own means, if necessary — that prices are kept low and goods are kept stocked.
Most importantly, these structures and programs should not disappear as the damage is repaired and life begins to resemble pre-hurricane conditions. As many people who are experts in climate and weather have said, the likelihood of “another Katrina” hitting the Gulf Coast, even this year, is very likely.
What we have seen should never happen again! And, as the experience of the last week has shown, the only way that will happen is if working people take matters into their own hands. In our view, such independent action is a small but important step forward, and it is a foreshadowing of what must come.
Central Committee, Communist League
Adopted: September 3, 2005