Hurricane Harvey

By Mutual Aid Disaster Relief - It's Going Down, November 26, 2017

The rest is Puerto Rico.

Centro de Apoyo Mutuo, Centers for Mutual Aid, exist as raised fists across the island landscape of post hurricane Irma, post hurricane Maria Puerto Rico.

In the narrow, colorful streets of Caguas, a building seized and defended by community is being painted by Centro organizers and a Mutual Aid Disaster Relief medical and systems crew from the main land.

Outside, a tuff tank 400 gallon buffalo awaits the systems teams’ erection of the high volume modular water filtration system and pump which will fill it with potable water for the community, creating a resource on lands reclaimed by autonomous Apoyo Mutuo community members.

By 2pm it is pumping heavily, spilling treated water from the mouth of a hose until long after sunset.

Apoyo Mutuo seized the space a month and a half ago. A month ago they defended it from policia who demanded to know their individual names.

“We just kept responding that our name is Centro de Apoyo Mutuo.”

At 8, a crowd fills the parking lot sharing donuts cut in halves with the opening scenes of a documentary on a history of direct action occupations in Puerto Rico playing on the concrete wall of the lot in front of the building.

Community members spend the following two hours taking turns at the pump and watching the buffalo fill. An Apoyo Mutuo comrade laid out their mission for us at the community kitchen where solidarity work and mutual aid feeds 300 people every day.
“We are changing the way we relate to each other. Thats what we want. To change the behaviors we have learned through capitalism.”

We parted with the crew of community members from Centro de Apoyo Mutuo late in the night after helping paint the new community kitchen space, building a compost toilet and pumping hundreds of gallons of potable drinking water into a common tank.

This is the work of actualization.

This is the dream of a new Puerto Rico being manifested by autonomous direct action.

Robert Bullard interviewed by Amy Goodman - Democracy Now!, November 24, 2017

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We are just back from COP23, the U.N. climate summit in Bonn, Germany, where the Trump administration tried to derail the conference by pushing coal, nuclear and gas as solutions to climate change. Well, on this Democracy Now! special, we’re looking at the ways climate change is already affecting the United States.

We turn now to Houston, which was devastated by massive flooding from Hurricane Harvey. The storm shattered all past U.S. rainfall records, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their homes in the fourth-largest city in the United States. Some call it the “Petro Metro,” Houston, because it’s home to the country’s largest refining and petrochemical complex. The storm also caused massive environmental and public health impacts. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, more than a million pounds of air pollution have been released into the air as petrochemical plants were forced to shut down by the storm.

Well, over Labor Day weekend, just as the floodwaters were receding, Democracy Now! traveled to Houston, where we spoke with Professor Robert Bullard, among others. Dr. Bullard is a professor at Texas Southern University, a historically black college and university. He’s considered the father of environmental justice. We spoke with Professor Bullard at his home, which he had just returned to after evacuating. I began by asking him about his experiences of the flood.

By Stephanie Basile - Labor Notes, November 7, 2017

In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, as Puerto Rico faces government neglect, unions’ relief efforts have been critical.

Teachers and students across the island have cleared debris off the roads and delivered medical supplies. On the outskirts of San Juan, communications and transport workers cooked and distributed hot meals. Union volunteers on Isla Verde drove door to door with water and supplies. And these are just a handful of stories among hundreds.

On September 26, less than a week after the storm barreled through the island, Puerto Rico’s storied teachers union, the Federación de Maestros de Puerto Rico (FMPR), sprang into action. FMPR teamed up with the island’s labor federation (CGT) to set up “brigades.” Teams of teachers, retirees, and students were dispatched to remove fallen trees, clear roads, and put up tents in roofless houses.

Such large-scale efforts require cross-union coordination. The teachers have worked hand in hand with other Puerto Rican unions through the CGT, and with mainland unions such as the New York State Nurses.

Members of Transport Workers (TWU) Local 501—the union of ground service and baggage handling workers at American Airlines in New York and San Juan—and Communications Workers (CWA) Local 3140, which represents American Airlines passenger service workers in Puerto Rico and Florida, teamed up to cook and distribute 400 meals of rice, beans, and chicken in the outskirts of San Juan.

They chose neighborhoods that hadn’t received much attention. “These were the forgotten areas,” said Local 3140 Vice President Georgina Felix. “Everybody’s focusing on San Juan and forgetting everywhere else.”

“Without labor down there right now, half the things that are getting done wouldn’t be getting done,” said Local 501 Executive Vice President Angelo Cucuzza. “Besides being a feel good story, it’s an important story.”

By Gordon Lafer - Labor Notes, November 1, 2017

After Harvey, Irma, and Maria, many thousands of homes have been lost and lives wrecked. People in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico need decent paying jobs while they try to put their lives back together, and the one industry that will be booming is construction.

By Amy Goodman - Democracy Now, October 31, 2017

By Amy Goodman and Juan González - Democracy Now, November 1, 2017

AMY GOODMAN: So, as the governor announced they were going to try to cancel this Whitefish Energy contract, on Sunday, we were in the offices of Ángel Figueroa Jaramillo. He is the head of UTIER, the electrical workers’ union in Puerto Rico. We were asking him about Elon Musk’s proposal to make Puerto Rico a model of sustainable energy. I asked him how to rebuild the devastated grid, if it’s possible, in a more sustainable way, and whether solar power has to mean privatization.

ÁNGEL FIGUEROA JARAMILLO: [translated] First, the complexity of the electrical system of Puerto Rico, it’s a totally isolated system. A system with a large amount of demand poses a major challenge in terms of looking at the possibility of solar power for powering the whole country. It’s very complex. It requires many studies, a lot of analysis, many evaluations. And the people of Puerto Rico can’t wait for all of that right now. Now, that doesn’t mean that Puerto Rico doesn’t have to look very seriously at the possibility of the transformation towards solar power. Nonetheless, the transformation that UTIER believes is most appropriate is—are solar communities. The communities themselves should appropriate that system. It’s not that we will become a commodity for renewable solar energy.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you interested in meeting with Tesla, Elon Musk or his representatives to figure out what a solar solution or a sustainable solution would be for Puerto Rico?

ÁNGEL FIGUEROA JARAMILLO: [translated] Yes. Yes, of course. Of course, yes. We have to meet and search for alternatives to transform the country. This doesn’t mean that we’re against—I mean, in favor of this becoming privatized. I believe that we have to meet and have a dialogue. We have to search for alternatives. But we are very clear: All the alternatives have to be owned by the community.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Ángel Figueroa Jaramillo, the head of UTIER, the electrical workers’ union in Puerto Rico.

Ángel Figueroa Jaramillo interviewed by Amy Goodman - Democracy Now, October 28, 2017

By Monique Dols and Lance Selfa - Socialist Worker, October 28, 2017

MORE THAN one month after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, a battle over the future of the island's schools has emerged. As this article was being written, only 119 out of a total of 1,113 schools had opened.

The Federación de Maestros de Puerto Rico (FMPR)--a teachers' union which has organized against school closures and attacks on public education for many years--charges Education Secretary Julia Keleher with unnecessarily delaying the opening of hundreds of schools in order push for privatization. The FMPR has called for Keleher's resignation.

By October 24, school was back in session for a small portion of children in particular areas in and around the two major cities of San Juan and Mayaqüez. But in other educational districts, Keleher has postponed the opening of schools indefinitely.

There's no doubt that in a number of localities, classes must be postponed while schools are rehabilitated, and electricity and water are restored.

When we arrived at the Escuela de la Comunidad Marcelino Canino Canino in Dorado, about 20 miles west of San Juan, we joined a "brigade" of more than a dozen teachers, parents, students and local supporters of the FMPR and the Partido Independentista de Puerto Rico (Puerto Rican Independence Party or PIP). The brigade had been at work for hours trying to clean up the school.

During Hurricane Maria, the school, which sits in a flood plain between two rivers, endured heavy flooding. In many classrooms, muddy water almost reached the ceiling. On classroom walls, we could see the marks left behind after the floodwaters receded.

The brigade filled dozens of shopping carts with waterlogged and moldy school supplies and books--in some cases, having to scrape them off the concrete floors--before dumping them in a huge, open-air pile outside the school. Hundreds of rusted desks and filing cabinets lined the entrances to the school.

This was just another example of ordinary working people organizing themselves to fill the vacuum after the government abandoned them. Yet again, the work of people like those on the brigade at Escuela Canino gave the lie to Donald Trump's insulting tweet saying that Puerto Ricans "want everything to done for them."

By Keith Leslie - Socialist Action, October 26, 2017

“The only thing we need now is a hurricane.” These were the words of a financial advisor in Puerto Rico this summer, anticipating the business opportunities the devastation of a hurricane would produce.

This framework—which understands disaster as an opportunity for profit—is not unusual. As Naomi Klein showed in her famous book, “The Shock Doctrine,” capitalism exploits both natural and manmade disasters as a chance to tear down social reforms, privatize public services, and implement neoliberal economic policies.

From the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile to post-Katrina New Orleans, we have seen the program and tactics of disaster capitalism persist and expand. Today, we can see the same forces seeking to bring disaster capitalism to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria.

The most immediate disaster capitalist proposals for privatization came after Hurricane Irma. The storm did not hit Puerto Rico directly, but knocked out power to more than a million people. The executive leadership of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, PREPA, warned that the island might face power outages for six months or more. This immediately prompted calls for the privatization of PREPA on the grounds that it was inefficient and incompetent. In fact, PREPA was able to restore power for most of its customers within a few weeks.

PREPA’s current executive leadership was installed through an agreement with its creditors after the previous, anti-privatization administration was ousted. Four of the board’s seven members had signed a letter in June calling for PREPA’s privatization. The Electrical Industry and Irrigation Workers Union, which represents PREPA’s workers, accused the leadership of exaggerating its estimates and delaying the deployment of available workers to promote the prospects of privatization.

Hurricane Maria, with a far more devastating impact on Puerto Rico, has likewise intensified the disaster capitalist pressure. The calls for PREPA’s privatization have intensified. They have also been joined by the likes of Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, who has attempted to put a green veneer on this push by proposing to build a renewable grid in Puerto Rico—but on a privatized basis.

One of the key objectives of advocates of PREPA privatization is the breaking of the electrical workers’ union. Musk has a history of opposing union drives at Tesla and elsewhere. The fiscal control board installed in Puerto Rico by Washington has invoked a legal provision that would allow it to approve public-private partnerships with almost no public or environmental review.

Of course, Hurricanes Irma and Maria were not the start of austerity and privatization programs in Puerto Rico. Even before the hurricanes, Puerto Rico faced a debt of $74 billion—more than 70% of its GDP—as well as nearly $50 billion in unfunded pension liabilities.

In 2016, the U.S. Congress passed the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, or PROMESA. PROMESA established a fiscal control board with broad authority over Puerto Rican finances and over its elected government.

The main causes of this debt crisis include massive tax breaks for corporations and wealthy individuals in Puerto Rico. Restrictions on the Puerto Rican government and economy due to its status as a U.S. colony have also contributed. This includes the Jones Act, which restricts non-U.S.-flagged ships’ ability to ship goods to Puerto Rico but also extends beyond it: when Puerto Rico attempted to raise taxes on large corporations that imported goods, Walmart successfully sued to block the tax in a U.S. federal court on the basis of federal law.

Nonetheless, the austerity program in Puerto Rico has fallen squarely on the poorest and most vulnerable: the fiscal control board has cut public health spending by a third, lowered the minimum wage for workers below the age of 24 to $4.25 an hour, raised utility bills, cut the public pension system, and closed public schools.

The hurricanes, however, have enabled the intensification of this ruling-class offensive. Demands for the cancellation of Puerto Rico’s debt by the U.S. Congress have been bluntly rejected. In fact, the majority of the disaster relief allocated to Puerto Rico by the House is in additional loans of more than $5 billion, rather than grants, as is typical for disaster relief to U.S. states. In the same bill, the House cancelled $16 billion in loans for the National Flood Insurance Program—but not a dollar of Puerto Rico’s debt. Such “disaster aid” will only indebt Puerto Rico further and expand the austerity demands from the fiscal control board.

By Steve Zeltser - Transport Workers Solidarity Committee, October 26, 2017

KPFA WorkWeek Radio-Puerto Rico Labor Action By US Unionists & Jones Act
WW10-24-17 Puerto Rico Labor Action By US Unionists And Jones Act

https://soundcloud.com/workweek-radio/ww10-24-17-puerto-rico-labor-actio...
WorkWeek looks at the ongoing struggle in Puerto Rico for survival. We interview NNU CNA Alta Bates nurse Gregory Callison about his solidarity action and that of the NNU-CNA to help the people of Puerto Rico. The union sent a delegation of over 50 nurses. We also interview retired ILWU Local 10 longshoreman Jack Heyman. Heyman talks about the Jones Act and why it coming under attack.
Additional media:

• https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/23/puerto-rico-and-the-jones-act-co...
• https://vimeo.com/238379586
• https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/blog/people-puerto-rico-are-dying-a...
• https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2017/10/11/nurses-demand-congress-...
• Production of KPFA Pacifica WorkWeek Radio
• workweek @kpfa.org
• https://soundcloud.com/workweek-radio