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

Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home