The corporate vultures move in

Emperor George has no clothes. Hurricane Katrina has exposed his administration and its ruthless indifference to the needs of a population exploited by class, race and poverty.

The government has lost its credibility because of the too-little, too-late response to the colossal catastrophe in New Orleans and the Gulf states. The hurricane has brought home death and destruction, hun ger and disease such as wars of imperialist conquest have brought to the world’s peoples—Iraq and Afghanistan, foremost.

Statistics have now taken on a human face. The contrast—stark and indisput able—is between a government indistinguishable from the empire of high finance and a Black community dispossessed and poor, now more than ever homeless and jobless. The tragic events in the Gulf states are a brutal reflection of a racist and class virus, institutionalized and national.

On July 24, the opening day of the AFL-CIO convention, a group of Black trade unionists had presented this critical issue to the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win Coalition. A statement was distributed by co-leaders of the Million Worker March Movement (MWMM), Clarence Thomas and Saladin Muhammad. Entitled “Racism and sexism: Major pillars of the crisis in U.S. trade union movement,” it said that the most immediate problem for the labor movement, if it is to survive and grow, is confronting “institutionalized racism and gender discrimination.”

“The failure to organize the South,” it went on, “a low-wage region which has been used historically by the corporations to force billions in concessions from organized workers and tax abatements from cities and states throughout the country by their threats of plant closings and runaway shops to the South, stands out as a major indictment of labor’s failure to struggle against racism.

“Organizing labor in the South, especially during the 1950s and 1960s, meant taking on the struggle against legal segregation and white supremacy. It meant aligning with the Black civil rights movement and broadening the character of labor organizing and representation from being a narrow economic movement to a movement for social and economic justice.”

The article concluded: “Prejudice means profits for the boss. For the worker—Black and white—it means lower living standards, humiliation, violence, often death.” How prophetic!

Halliburton already at the trough

Cost estimates for restoring the Gulf Coast infrastructure have already reached $200 billion—more than enough to attract the biggest corporate vultures.

“A Halliburton Co. subsidiary that has come under fire for its reconstruction work in Iraq has begun tapping a $500-million Navy contract to do emergency repairs at Gulf Coast naval and Marine facilities that were battered by Hurricane Katrina.“ (AP, Sept. 4)

Vice-President Dick Cheney headed Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. The government is locked into fulfilling the needs of the military-industrial complex.

Halliburton/KBR is a notoriously anti-union corporation. There are 22 “right to work” states and Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are among them. They also have some of the highest poverty levels in the country. And now, estimates are that at least 1 million jobs have been wiped out.

Halliburton, bank lenders, contractors and subcontractors are licking their chops over the billions that will be pouring in from government and humanitarian aid. The oil barons are reaping huge profits as they hold the public hostage by monopoly pricing of energy products. Jacked-up prices at the gas pumps and for home heating oil ensure them more “windfall” profits.

Meanwhile, the cleanup, recovery and repair work in the stricken areas is too little, too late for hundreds of thousands. And this after a five-year downward cycle in income and benefits over the whole country.

New census data show that 800,000 additional workers found themselves without health insurance in 2004, bringing the total of uninsured to 45.8 million. Some 1.1 million more people fell into poverty in 2004, bringing the ranks of the poor to 37 million. Only the top 5 percent of households experienced real income gains in 2004.

Yet the minimum wage has remained at $5.15 for the last eight years. Congress recently rejected any increase.

It’s time for a fightback.

History as a guide to action

Back in 1932, just one year after the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, an army of poor and unemployed was formed to meet the challenges of a national emergency. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was initiated by a presidential executive order on April 5, 1933. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was also established by executive order in 1935.

Both were created to sidetrack a potential revolutionary development that was rapidly spreading. The government was responding to the continuous demonstrations of the unemployed, rebellions and general strikes—the hallmark of Roose velt’s first term.

Communists, socialists and other progressives organized unions in the WPA and other projects. Labor battalions of the unemployed were formed nationally in the CCC. However, these labor camps were highly regimented under a military code of behavior.

Both organizations built highways, bridges, public buildings and recreation facilities. New roads were built, telephone lines strung up, federal parks created and millions of trees planted. The WPA performed theater and created new art forms that reflected the struggles, the sacrifices, and the bonding of Black and white in a people’s movement.

In 1937, the Ohio River flooded surrounding areas. It was the CCC that saved lives and homes. They were indispensable in fighting a Labor Day hurricane in the Florida Keys in 1935, when winds of 150 to 200 miles per hour knocked out bridges and rail lines; Vermont and New York floods in 1937; and a New England hurricane in 1938.

Emperor George and the government have no intention of organizing and subsidizing the laboring masses in order to rebuild New Orleans and the cities bordering the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. Oil production facilities and the corporations that use the ports will get their first attention, along with the casinos and hotels that bring in the tourists.

Organized protests are spreading rapidly. The people must be allowed to assemble independently of the government and work out a program to resist these shameful policies. The $10.5 billion emergency relief must be directed to the people’s needs, but it is only a drop in the bucket. The fallout from Katrina will be felt for years.