 Photo: Khampa Bouaphanh
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Millions of people across the United States and the globe were horrified by the images of Hurricane Katrina as it destroyed entire regions of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. More horrifying was the government’s deathly slow response. Its gross negligence and callous disregard for the lives of poor, mostly Black people was a stark portrayal of the class disparities and racist divisions that characterize the richest nation in the world.
The scale of the suffering is still unknown. The victims of this crime go far beyond the corpses on the streets of New Orleans. It includes the millions of poor and working people who have lost their houses, jobs and livelihoods across the region and around the country.
The big business media and the U.S. government call for the people of the United States to “come together.” While this slogan pulls on the heartstrings of all compassionate people, its real intention is to deflect criticism of the government’s criminal role in this disaster. Those who point the finger at the government are warned not to “politicize” the tragedy.
The flooding of New Orleans: two disasters
It is becoming clearer every day that this crisis goes far beyond a “natural disaster.” The danger that a hurricane of major proportions posed for New Orleans and the region had been discussed for years—with no significant preparations taken.
When flooding killed six New Orleans residents in 1995, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA—an Army Corps project to protect the city from flooding. But after 2003—when the Iraq war started—”the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland securitycoming at the same time as federal tax cutswas the reason for the strain.” (Editor & Publisher, August 31, 2005)
Billions of gallons of deadly water filled the streets of New Orleans, turning the birthplace of jazz into the bottom of a giant lake. Almost all the water did not fall from Hurricane Katrina, but spilled over from Lake Pontchartrain, which sits in the heart of the city. This was the second disaster. As the lake swelled, its levees could not hold up and broke in three places.
This was no fluke. The levees had been weakening for years.
The federal government denied the requested funds to shore up the levees, about $250 million. That’s the same amount the Pentagon spends in any 24-hour period to occupy Iraq. In 2004, for the first time in 37 years, the Corps halted all work on the New Orleans levee system.
When it was already too late, the government promised to investigate what went wrong in the relief efforts. Bush said he himself would lead the investigation. It is a perfect recipe for a cover-up, since the responsibility for the criminal negligence reaches all the way to the White House.
There is no agency or department that can claim ignorance or innocence in the outrageous misconduct during this crisis. While FEMA head Michael Brown was finally forced to step aside on Sept. 9, many are calling for independent investigations and indictments of all the officials responsible.
In 2004, FEMA issued a contract to the Department of Homeland Security detailing the “Scope of Work” for a “Southeastern Louisiana Catastrophic Hurricane Plan.” The plan focuses on the potential damage caused by “a slow-moving Category 3, 4 or 5 hurricane that … crosses New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain,” and warns that “a catastrophic hurricane could result in significant numbers of deaths and injuries, trap hundreds of thousands of people in flooded areas and leave up to one million people homeless.”
The document accurately predicts, “Hurricane surge would block highways and trap 300,000 to 350,000 persons in flooded areas … outside responders and resources, including the federal response personnel and materials, would have difficulty entering and working in the affected area. … Standing water and disease could threaten public health. … It could take weeks to ‘de-water’ (drain) New Orleans.” FEMA planned to hire a private contractor to carry out and finalize that plan—but it never received adequate funds.
Oil companies looting
The National Weather Service called the destroyed region “ideal for wave damage” due to “coastal irregularities” such as the absence of substantial barrier islands or hills and the Gulf of Mexico’s flat bottom. This problem is not entirely natural. The wetlands of the Mississippi delta, essential for moderating flooding, have been devastated by big oil companies in order to make way for oil exploration and shipping. The Bush administration took part in this process, eliminating 20 million acres of wetlands from federal protection.
Due to the importance of the Mississippi delta in the oil industry, Hurricane Katrina immediately caused ripples on Wall Street. Eager to preserve or increase their profit margins, oil executives jacked up prices at the pump—with prices shooting to nearly $4 dollars per gallon.
To ease the impact of the crisis on U.S. poor and working people, Venezuela offered to deliver one million barrels of free oil to the devastated region. The U.S. government rebuffed the offer.
Meanwhile, the government gave the National Guard “shoot to kill” orders for Katrina survivors who broke into locked grocery stores and pharmacies for food and medicine. The media described Black survivors as “looting,” while it depicted white survivors as simply “looking for food.” But on the ground in New Orleans, many of the “looters” became immediate heroes, sharing their findings with groups of other starving and dehydrated survivors.
For the first days, most survivors were saved from flooded homes by individuals who used their own boats or commandeered abandoned vessels, in courageous and selfless acts of rescue.
The people of the United States gave $500 million for relief efforts in the week after the disaster. The four largest oil companies—Exxon-Mobil, BP, Chevron, and Royal Dutch Shell—donated an insulting total of $11 million. This sum doesn’t even compare to the additional profits they made by raising the gas prices. Their combined profits last year were $72.8 billion.
“Free-market” disaster relief
The federal government issued a “mandatory” evacuation order for the residents of the New Orleans metropolitan area. When notified that many “ignored” the order, Terry Ebbert, chief of Homeland Security for New Orleans, said, “[For] some of them, it was their last night on Earth. … “That’s a hard way to learn a lesson.”
But what was the real lesson of the evacuation order? No buses were made available to those residents who did not have the means to evacuate on their own. In their repeated evacuation orders, government officials did not offer housing or food to the displaced. Those who did evacuate did not have more sense than those who could not—they had more dollars. Many who had transportation to flee the hurricane have also depleted their savings and lost their jobs.
The United States had the financial and human resources to provide evacuation and emergency services to the people of New Orleans. They were not allocated in the interests of human need.
The “free-market” approach was used not only in the evacuation order, but also in the relief efforts. Federal troops arrived carrying rifles instead of bottles of water and baby formula. The top priority was to “contain” the situation and to protect private property.
In that same spirit, the billions of dollars headed towards the reconstruction of New Orleans will surely go to the large property holders, many of whom have insurance anyway. Renters, overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately Black, lost their few possessions and had no claims to the property. Only 40 percent of homeowners in New Orleans held any type of flood insurance.
What type of housing will replace the leveled city? Who will be able to occupy those homes? Those decisions will all be made based on the profit motive. Real estate moguls are already discussing building condominiums and high-income developments to replace the city’s affordable housing. Hurricane Katrina drove out the city’s residents, but gentrification may keep them out.
Socialist Cuba, with far fewer resources, has been able to survive natural disasters with little or no human loss. Cuba prepares for hurricanes with a centralized plan, not a flimsy warning, in which all residents in endangered regions are evacuated and given transport, adequate shelter and food. Before Hurricane Dennis hit Cuban territory last July, more than 1.5 million people were evacuated by Cuba’s civil defense system from the areas at risk, out of a population of 11 million.
The Cuban government has offered the services of 1,586 medical personnel—readied, in uniform and with their equipment already in backpacks—to assist in the relief efforts. On Sept. 4, Cuban President Fidel Castro described the doctors’ preparedness: “Our doctors’ backpacks contain precisely those resources needed to address in the field problems relating to dehydration, high blood pressure, diabetes mellitus and infections in all parts of the body—lungs, bones, skin, ears, urinary tract, reproductive system—as they arise. …
“Cuba has the moral authority to express its opinion on this matter and to make this offer. Today, it is the country with the highest number of doctors per capita in the world, and no other country cooperates with other nations in the field of health care as extensively as it does.”
Although 20,000 poor residents of New Orleans languished and starved in the Convention Center, the U.S. government gave no official response to Cuba’s offer. Evidently, it would rather have thousands continue to wait in desperation rather than suffer the embarrassment of Cuba providing humanitarian support to the richest nation in the world.
From natural crisis to social crisis
Since the government failed to provide relief to Katrina survivors, they were left to fend for themselves. In thousands of cases, they did more than that. They heroically fought for each other and their communities in tremendous displays of human compassion and sacrifice. In many instances, they organized themselves on a collective basis, providing for children and the elderly first.
Katrina survivors camped out together, made demands on the police and occasionally took decisive action. Some attempted to walk out of New Orleans and into nearby functioning towns, but local authorities blocked the highway and turned them back towards their ravaged city. The police were not just targeting “looting,” but were aiming to prevent potential rebellions.
The media only revealed glimpses of organized political action in New Orleans. The New Orleans police carried out their “shoot to kill” orders in more than a few cases. This enraged many in the New Orleans Black community, having already experienced decades of police brutality. For a couple of days, 80 police officers were trapped in the First District police station after exchanging gunfire with armed New Orleans residents.
New Orleans-based Community Labor United is organizing a “people’s campaign” to provide relief efforts while politically challenging the U.S. government. “The moral values of our government is to ‘shoot to kill’ hungry, thirsty Black survivors for trying to live through the aftermath,” stated CLU leader Curtis Muhammad. “This is not just immoral—this has turned a natural disaster into a man-made disaster, fueled by racism.”
Natural disasters, like wars, expose and exacerbate the inherent contradictions in capitalist societies. The working class bears the brunt of natural disasters and the immediate need is to simply recover physically. But natural disaster can change the climate of class struggle. In times of crisis, class-conscious workers look for ways to expose the ruling class. In recent history, working people and their organizations have in fact carried out revolutions in the aftermath of natural disasters—in Nicaragua in 1979 and in Ethiopia in 1974.
When the dust has cleared and the buildings have been rebuilt, the experience of Katrina—the criminal negligence of the state and the capitalist system’s racism and utter disregard for human life—will stay fresh in the mind of the workers and poor who lived through it.
As millions of workers across the United States demonstrate their solidarity and support for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, we must hold the federal government—along with the corporations and banks that it represents—responsible.
