New Orleans: Lessons from the Katrina Genocide

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina sideswiped the city of New Orleans. The capitalist class and its politicians turned this unnatural disaster into a genocide of more than 1,400 mostly Black workers. The racist displacement of tens of thousands of Black families was the largest refugee crisis in U.S. history (New York Times, 9/11/05).
Katrina exposed the face of fascism to workers worldwide. One hundred thousand mostly Black workers were left to die and then forced into concentration camps by the National Guard. For half a century, the capitalists knew that New Orleans was vulnerable to storms. They knew that a direct hit would devastate the city and could wipe out poor Black neighborhoods like the Lower Ninth Ward. These areas were especially vulnerable because of canal dredging and the destruction of natural woodlands to promote commercial development and the bosses’ profits. Even so, levees could have been reinforced and protected. Tens of thousands of mostly Black families could have been evacuated in plenty of time. But under capitalism, maximum profits and imperialist wars trump workers’ lives. Ten years later, the working class of New Orleans is still under attack and still fighting back!
Workers in New Orleans displayed mass heroism in the fightback against the bosses’ attack in Katrina’s aftermath. Progressive Labor Party responded with solidarity actions on the job and in the streets. We connected the genocide there with the genocide of the U.S. invasion and sanctions in Iraq by attacking capitalism as their common source and proclaiming armed communist revolution as our goal. In this way we moved many workers into this anti-racist battle.
Workers Square Off Against Fascism
For weeks following Katrina, there was a news blackout in the area. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) took control, kept hundreds of rescue buses and helicopters at nearby bases idle, and hired private Blackwater mercenaries to protect ruling-class property. Reporters were barred from much of the city, including the Superdome, which housed over 26,000 refugees. Soldiers under racist FEMA’s authority barred an armada of 500 civilian fishing boats from conducting rescues, turned back a convoy of volunteer Houston firefighters at gunpoint, and burned food sent from workers around the world at an incinerator in Georgia, among countless other crimes.
Under the false pretext that they were looting, workers found outside after curfew or attempting to travel on the few usable roads were threatened and shot. Katrina exposed the racist foundation of this system.
In spite of this massive repression, workers within and around New Orleans organized their own rescues and evacuations. Other workers attempting to barter goods in exchange for food or evacuation also braved being shot.
Throughout the winter of 2006, the rulers called for a larger military occupation. Liberal politicians like current Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called for expanding FEMA’s powers and withdrawing troops from Iraq for deployment in New Orleans. Outside the U.S., the Progressive Labor Party organized in their unions and mass organizations for solidarity with the workers of New Orleans, and sent messages of support. Within the U.S., PLP organized relief and spread communist politics among refugees in Texas and the Midwest. In major U.S. cities, we mobilized hundreds of workers to attack the liberal bosses’ plan to expand the military occupation, under the slogan: “From New Orleans to Iraq, the working class must fight back!”
PLP Learns and Fights in Summer Project
Our organizing activities culminated in the 2006 New Orleans Summer Project. This summer-long project was led entirely by young, multiracial comrades, women and men. Comrades and friends joined local organizations to assist with the cleanup. We got to know residents, learning from their experiences and introducing them to communist politics.
The city was still under military occupation. Local organizations attacked PLP and anyone who supported multiracial, working-class unity. Years later, a founder of one of these organizations revealed he was an FBI informant.
For comrades new to PLP, and even many veterans, operating in this hostile environment was a steep learning curve. Yet our comrades built relationships with many anti-racist students and workers. Black workers of the Lower Ninth Ward warmly welcomed our Party’s efforts and were open to our goal of communism. Some National Guard soldiers were receptive to our presence, as well. We guaranteed regular CHALLENGE distributions to new friends and thousands of workers there.
The Meaning of New Orleans
Fighting back after Katrina was not the first time the working class of New Orleans led the way forward. Over five days in November, 1892, Black and white workers paralyzed the city with a general strike for a ten-hour workday—the first general strike in a major U.S. city. Despite the racist filth printed in the bosses’ media and their backing of KKK-style racism to split the working class, Black and white workers united with such disciplined multiracial unity that capitalists in neighboring states feared this “virus” might spread.
Today, New Orleans is more unequal than ever. According to Census data, there were 100,000 fewer Black residents in 2013 than in 2000, compared with an overall decrease of 11,000 white residents in the same period. Hundreds of billions of dollars in “aid” went to banks, insurance companies and other capitalists. Many who were relocated could not return for lack of assistance. The child poverty rate is about 40 percent, and the city’s incarceration rate is twice the national average. The median income of Black workers is 54 percent less than white workers, the second largest gap in the country behind Atlanta, Georgia.
Nature may create storms like Katrina, but capitalism—a system by and for the bosses—creates the disasters. Barely one month after Katrina, capitalism struck again in South Asia. On October 8, 2005, a massive earthquake occurred in the Kashmir region of Pakistan. An estimated 87,000 workers were massacred in Pakistan and India. Despite the fact that Kashmir was in an earthquake zone, the capitalists of both countries invested their research in weapons for war as they compete for control of the region’s land, resources and workers. Under capitalism, whether in East Asia or Haiti or Nepal or the U.S., workers’ lives are disposable.
Multiracial unity is essential to the fight for communism, a system where workers run society to meet workers’ needs. As in 1892, the working class of New Orleans is teaching the workers of the world how to fight back and organize amid the never-ending disasters of capitalism. New Orleans is yet another example of Black workers playing the lead role in our fight toward a worldwide communist revolution.
Ten years on, PLP still fights and learns with the working class in New Orleans. We invite workers worldwide to join us in organizing an international PLP to smash this capitalist house of horrors once and for all!