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Vol. 81/No. 33 September 11, 2017
(Socialist Workers Party statement)
Disaster shows need for workers power
The following statement was issued Aug. 31, by Cynthia Jaquith,
Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Miami.
The catastrophic social disaster unfolding in Houston — the
fifth-largest metropolitan area in the U.S. — and surrounding areas in
Texas and Louisiana is not simply the result of massive rainfall and
what the media likes to call a “500-year flood.” It is a direct product
of the natural workings of the capitalist system, the dictatorship of
capital.
The rulers — from Washington to Austin to Houston City Hall — made no
plans to mobilize the forces needed to safely and quickly evacuate the
tens of thousands who knew they would face life-threatening conditions
in an area that’s a frequent target of hurricanes. In fact, there have
been three “500-year floods” there in the last three years.
Terms like “100-year” and “500-year” floods were invented by government
meritocrats and insurance bean counters to mask coldly calculated
cost-benefit-risk assessments aimed at minimizing workers’ coverage and
justifying the misery of millions. Similar calculations are used to
justify the preparations the rulers make — or, more often, don’t make —
to offer some protection for working people in the event of natural
disasters.
A recent article in Business Insider described Houston as a “ticking
time-bomb.” Developers out to stuff their bank accounts through their
construction “boom” and their backers in the government laid the
groundwork for greater flooding by systematically paving over wetlands
and blocking drainage systems key in heavy rains.
As waters rose, the rulers’ message to the citizens of Houston was,
“You’re on your own.”
Despite the indifference of the authorities, and all the obstacles
thrown in their way by police and bureaucrats, thousands of working
people responded with selfless human solidarity, forming our own navy to
rescue people and pets alike in every part of the city. Workers trapped
for days in the Bolillo Mexican bakery made sheet after sheet of pan
dulce and delivered it by jeep to workers in need of food. Even the New
York Times had to admit, “The working class, in large part, is being
saved by the working class.”
Cuban workers and farmers who live in hurricane alley do not experience
social disasters when hurricanes strike. Cuban working people carried
out a socialist revolution in 1959, transforming the workers and farmers
who did so, forging their own government, expropriating U.S.-imperialist
holdings and those of Cuba’s capitalist exploiters, and running society
in the interest of human solidarity, not private profit. Thousands of
volunteers, backed by the resources of their government and its
communist leadership, are in place to carry out any needed evacuation
and begin immediate reconstruction of destroyed homes and public
facilities. The capitalist property “insurance” racket doesn’t exist
there, because it is not needed.
The Socialist Workers Party is dedicated to emulating the Cuban example,
helping to lead workers and the oppressed here to make our own
revolution on U.S. soil and join the worldwide struggle for socialism.
The SWP demands: Mobilize the necessary federal, state and municipal
resources to provide immediate free emergency medical care, food,
shelter, clothes and fuel to all those affected by Hurricane Harvey!
Put millions of unemployed in Texas and beyond to work at union-scale
wages in an emergency government-funded public works program to rebuild
the Houston area infrastructure, put up new housing and build “500-year”
flood prevention
Related articles:
Social crisis in Texas is product of capitalism
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