On the First Anniversary of Katrina

Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS)

August 25, 2006

The next days will mark the first anniversary of one of the most devastating natural – and manmade – calamities in the nation’s history. For a few days, at least, the pain and tragedy of Katrina will be revisited by the nation’s media – families clinging to rooftops pleading for help, bodies floating on water, thousands in stifling heat herded without food, water and sanitation into the Superdome and Convention Center while government officials claimed to know nothing about the gathering disaster.

In the next few days perhaps there will be references to the hundreds of thousands of predominantly African American New Orleans and Gulf Coast residents still uprooted and scattered across the country, unable to return to homes and communities that remain devastated. If some attention is focused upon that displaced population, it will be a departure, for a moment at least, from what Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) described as a media descent into virtual silence over the past year. Perhaps some will point out that while many did not have the vehicles to escape the flood, their ravaged communities had been deeply rooted and viable with an exceptionally high percentage of home ownership. One year later many from far and near struggle against efforts to permanently obliterate their communities, writing off largely African American neighborhoods in pursuit of a corrupt vision of a re-born New Orleans as a symbolically gated, essentially white middle class enclave.

Meanwhile, over the past year, promises of government funds to rebuild homes and repair shattered lives have largely disappeared in a maze of red tape. The cronyism, corruption and ineptitude that marked the early days of the flood linger as thousands of temporary mobile homes sat unoccupied for months while many homeless flood victims were being removed from emergency housing. Contractors and builders connected to the Bush administration grabbed land and enriched themselves while homeowners were far away and powerless to challenge such fateful actions.

Many observers have noted that blame for the disaster was not limited to any one branch of government, but was “system wide.” That reference to “system” cannot be applied narrowly to government functions alone, but broadly to the economic and social order itself that has historically generated intertwined oppressions of class, race and gender. Such systemic oppressions came home to roost in the storm and flood. The overwhelmingly Black Lower Ninth Ward was not destroyed by a natural disaster, but by the well-known, long-existing neglect of levees. That was symbolic of the remorseless racial framework within which the Katrina tragedy unfolded.

For the Black majority of New Orleans, Katrina was a manifestation of what historian Manning Marable has called the “new racial domain” under corporate globalization whereby Africans Americans are written off through mass unemployment, mass incarceration, and mass disfranchisement – and, we can add, through the systematic denial of equal public services to their communities. The late peace and justice leader, Damu Smith, in one of his last addresses declared that those who call themselves progressives have no right to claim the principles embodied in that label unless they resolutely and persistently fight to the finish to end such circumstances.

The tragedy that unfolded one year ago in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast was inseparably connected to the historic legacies of racism and class discrimination compounded by the Iraq war and the corporate-government assault on the living standards of working people. Because of deployment to Iraq, nearly a half of Gulf Region National Guard troops were not available to assist the victims of Katrina. With expenditures for Iraq approaching a half-trillion dollars and with billions more allocated to spurious “home security,” agencies responsible for the real security of populations trapped by Katrina were both under-funded and saddled by inept Bush cronies. With corporate globalization squeezing decent-pay productive employment, with a growing low wage economy, with a relentless corporate and government assault on collective bargaining and union representation – the result has been a steady growth of the working poor and the jobless, with the heaviest weight of that development falling upon communities of color.

This week also marks the tenth anniversary of “Welfare Reform” that was supposed to eliminate economic dependency by moving millions (largely women and racial minorities) from “welfare to work.” But fully one-third of the jobs in the country today pay under ten dollars an hour without benefits, underscoring the false contention that the labor market would provide decent jobs for welfare recipients. The bitter fruit of welfare reform also contributed to the widespread poverty exposed by the images of Katrina.

These anniversaries should also note growing movements to challenge the social wreckage created by government and by the social system as a whole. With little or no help from official agencies, communities are struggling back to life in New Orleans led by residents who are organizing themselves into effective fighting forces. Throughout the country, state and local movements have won more than 140 living wage ordinances. In addition, 23 states plus Washington, D.C., have established higher minimum wages than federal law. In Chicago, a movement to force Wal-Mart and other “big box” employers to pay a living wage has succeeded. Whatever progress has been made in recent days and months has come almost exclusively as a result of battles waged by communities demanding justice.

One year after Katrina and ten years after “welfare reform,” the reality of massive poverty largely driven by racism can no longer be met with claims of ignorance. Nor can the consequences of such conditions be separated from struggles for economic and social justice for all, an end to the Iraq war, and an end to all Bush administration plans for preemptive and preventive wars.

The Katrina anniversary should mark growing demands for:

On this anniversary, let us accept Damu Smith’s challenge to forever remove the stain of Katrina and its consequences.

Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
520 Eighth Avenue, 14th Floor NE
New York, NY 10018
(212) 868-3733 Email: national@cc-ds.org Web: www.cc-ds.org


To respond to this post please join the CC-DS Forum: (BETA MODE)
[Post a Comment]; [Sign-up]; [Login]

HOME PAGE