‘Alligator Alcatraz’
At the beginning of hurricane season the government of Florida, backed by the White House, opened the “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention center in the Everglades. Tents will hold up to 5,000 beds inside chain-link cages.
Officials claim the tents will withstand a Category 2 hurricane. In the last 20 years Florida has had 16 storms of Category 3 to 5 strength. The tents have already leaked during a normal rainstorm.
This disregard for human life is nothing new for the capitalists, whether Republicans or Democrats. In 1935 Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt shipped hundreds of homeless and unemployed World War I “Bonus March” veterans who remained camped in the Capitol to South Florida. A “New Deal” program cleared the Capitol and provided cheap labor to the rail barons to build the Florida East Coast Railway from Miami to Key West. Over the 1935 Labor Day weekend a Category 5 hurricane swept through the Keys, killing over 500 people. Over half were the vets who were housed in flimsy barracks and tents.
A cover-up of the government’s inaction followed as the dead were dumped into mass graves. I recommend the book Storm of the Century: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 by Willie Drye. Readers can also use the Militant index to learn more about the Bonus Marchers.
Maggie McCraw
Miami, Florida