Hurricane Harvey

By the Steering Committee of Solidarity - Solidarity, September 6, 2017

Torrential monsoon rains in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal have already taken 1200 lives, and left millions homeless and internally displaced in South Asia. A third of Bangladesh is under water; Hurricane Harvey has slammed the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coasts, where it has continued to rain, resulting in the worst flooding in Texas history and the worst rainstorm in U.S. history. Much of Houston, the United States’ fourth largest city, is still flooded.

What is happening in Houston, like what happened to New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, has powerful lessons to teach us about race, immigration, class, gender, poverty, the crisis of climate change and the environment, government, and private “security.” In South Asia, echoes of previous recent monsoons and other disasters (Cyclone Sidr in 2007 for example) haunt those living in marginal hazard-prone areas.

Flooding has submerged twenty districts out of 64 in Bangladesh. Multiple forms of marginality intersect, compounding hardship and increasing the vulnerability of people to the whims of government, industry, and NGOs. Nature might not discriminate, but systems and institutions do. In North America, South Asia and throughout the world, “disaster capitalism” profits.

Of course, capitalism itself is a disaster for humanity. Moments like this show just how brutal capitalism is--today more than ever. The warming of the oceans adds to the ferocity of storms, as evidenced in Harvey’s rapid unforeseen development to Category 4 hurricane status and in phenomena like the weakening of the jet stream that kept it hovering in place day after day. “Climate change” are the forbidden words unspoken by the corporate media, including the ostensibly liberal ones.

Uncontrolled sprawl resulting from “free market” policies have exacerbated the conditions in Houston. In the leadup to the hurricane, immigration checkpoints left many undocumented people in Texas, most notably South Texas, trapped between the threats of the storm if they stayed or of deportation if they tried to leave.

Immediately, the people of the Texas Gulf Coast and the people of South Asia need our assistance. A list of grassroots efforts engaged in Gulf Coast relief appears below. Please donate directly and support them generously.

To respond to the disaster in South Asia, Solidarity calls on members, sympathizers and well-wishers to contribute via our website--see the "Make a Donation" button on the right hand side of the page. In Bangladesh, we are working with the Communist Party of Bangladesh-Marxist-Leninist (CPB-ML) and the Krishok Federation (a peasants’ organization). Please be sure to indicate the donation is for Bangladesh hurricane/storm relief. This is part of an international appeal.

Because of climate change we will continue to see an ever-increasing frequency of deadly storms. These are one aspect of a dim future we are headed in if the working people of this planet cannot stop the fossil fuel industry and enact a just transition. This is the nightmare “new normal.” The future really is ecosocialism or barbarism.

Fred Magdoff interviewed by Michael Ware - Socialist Worker, September 6, 2017

IS THERE reason to believe that global warming made Hurricane Harvey more intense than it would have been?

YES, ABSOLUTELY. The oceans are warmer, and the Gulf of Mexico in particular has warmed significantly--this year is the warmest of all.

The warmer the water, the more easily water can evaporate, and a warmer atmosphere can hold more water, so you have that aspect as well. Storms in general have been getting more intense--not just this particularly intense storm.

There's another factor as well: The poles are warming faster than the middle of the earth, causing less of a gradient between the temperatures in both places. This affects the atmospheric transfer--that is, the jet streams. One of the predicted effects of this is that weather patterns will slow down--things won't move as fast as they normally would.

This is one of the factors that made Harvey so devastating: it stuck around. It moved a little bit, but in a circle, and it made landfall again and again. I wouldn't be surprised if this is part of the reason why it stayed so long before it started moving out toward the Northeast. That's also an effect of human activity and global warming.

But the major factor is that there's more evaporation from the large bodies of water, the atmosphere holds more water, and we have more intense storms in general.

By staff - It's Going Down, September 4, 2017

In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, many comparisons have been made to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in New Orleans 12 years ago. Sensational news coverage and dramatic visuals of flooding and water rescues—coupled with memories of the multi-faceted Katrina disaster and a fundamental misunderstanding of Houston’s sheer size, population, and environmental hazards—have shaped people’s reactions. With this misperception about the on-the-ground reality here, communities and individuals across the country began mobilizing people and resources, ready to pour into an imagined ghost-town disaster area in extreme crisis, a la New Orleans circa 2005.

This communication is meant to educate anyone interested in helping with autonomous relief efforts about what happened and did not happen here, as well as what is and is not needed here right now.

By Sean O'Torain - Facts for Working People, September 3, 2017

Global Warming: The Arsonists.

This Blog has carried two articles on the catastrophe in Texas and Louisiana. They have dealt with a number of points in relation to this. One is as one article said that the capitalist class, their media and politicians are gushing over how wonderful it is that people are working together and helping each other. No matter the color of a persons skin, no matter what religion, working class people are helping each other out. This is very positive and shows how in crisis working people can unite and work together. This shows the potential for working class people to unite and struggle together on all issues which affect their lives.

But we should not be fooled by what is going on with the capitalist class, their media and politicians. It would be a different story entirely with these forces if the working people were uniting to fight for better pay and conditions and a better life. No you have to always see not just what is being said, but by whom it is being said, why it is being said, when it is being said. In this case the capitalist class and its media and politicians want to direct everybody's gaze to the way working class people are working together and helping each other out so they can divert attention from the cause of the catastrophe. The cause of the catastrophe is the mad drive for profit of capitalism and the resulting heating up of the planet. This is why we refer to "The Arsonists". The capitalist class are the arsonists. They are burning up the planet. See the fire now raging in Los Angeles.

What the capitalist class, its media and its politicians are doing has to be seen in this way. An arsonist sets fire to a street of houses. The residents flee from their homes and in doing so help each other escape. The capitalist class and its media and politicians all they talk about is how wonderful the people are who have been burnt out in that they help each other. But they never mention anything about the arsonist. If this happened people would be aghast. They would be outraged. They would demand the arsonist be hunted down and dealt with. But because capitalism controls the media and the politicians there is not a word about the arsonists who caused the climate change, the global warming that resulted in this catastrophe in Texas. We must demand that capitalism and its climate change and global warming is ended. Hunt down the arsonists, hunt down and end capitalism.

As the catastrophe develops it becomes more clear that there is a major problem of pollution and contamination from the explosions of chemical plants and the flooding of all kinds of plants. Not only in Texas and Louisiana in this catastrophe but everywhere US capitalism is poisoning the American people. The air, the water, the food. And not only when there is a major storm. Remember Flint? The water there is poisoned by lead and other chemicals as the capitalist dominated state and city governments cut spending so they can reduce the taxes on the rich. We need to use our imagination. People have been killed in Texas. People will die in Texas as the contaminated air and water takes their toll. Texas is one the most deregulated states in the USA. That is with the least controls over capitalist industry. One result is that plants do not have to tell what chemicals they are using. People are living next to poisonous plants and do not even know. The Governor and all the state's politicians go along with this. These people are murderers. Millions die due to capitalism's profit driven pollution of the air, water, food. Yet all we hear is about the "terrorists".

By staff - National Nurses United, August 31, 2017

National Nurses United (NNU)’s Registered Nurse Response Network (RNRN), a national network of volunteer nurses, will deploy its first delegation of RN volunteers to Houston, beginning Thursday, August 31, to work with locals on providing medical assistance in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, NNU announced today.

“As nurses, we felt immediately and strongly compelled to assist local communities in their process of healing and recovery from Hurricane Harvey,” said RN Response Network director Bonnie Castillo, RN. “This is just the beginning of our assistance, and RNRN will be working with local officials to send ongoing teams of volunteer nurses to areas impacted by the hurricane, in the months to come, given that the initial aftermath of a super storm like this is followed by continuing health challenges.

“RNRN has deployed volunteer nurses post-hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Typhoon Haiyan, as well as in other disaster relief and humanitarian assistance missions around the world, and we know from experience that long past the time when news cameras disappear, disaster-stricken communities still need care. Our nurses will be there to help.”

By Anonymous Contributor - It's Going Down, August 31, 2017

We want to bring special attention to Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, Louisiana Flood Relief, Another Gulf, and Bayou Action Street Health for work in compiling this list and providing aid on the ground. 

We are the moving floating water protector camp L’eau Est La Vie located in the basin on Houma and Chittimacha land where Energy Transfer Partners is attempting to put down Bayou Bridge Pipeline, the tail end of DAPL. We believe there are no natural disasters, only sociopolitical ones. “Disasters” happen when colonization interferes with nature. Hurricane Harvey and disasters we’ve done mutual aid for in the past (Louisiana Flood of 2016, Katrina, Sandy…) are crises caused by capitalism, colonization, and climate change. not nature.

Aid in these times is constantly developing as situations evolve. The process of us organizing and carrying out aid for ourselves during crisis is incredibly complicated. There are many internal politics and nuances that will never be articulate unless you are there, and even then there’s so much most of us don’t understand. We are all we got when our situations don’t benefit capitalism. But unity doesn’t look like not calling out problematic behavior, it looks like unlearning that behavior. Emergencies currently mean sometimes being near organizations that are not trustworthy or are affiliated with the government. But there is no such thing as revolutionary work that also involves racism or oppression of any kind. Clyde Cain who represents Louisiana Cajun Navy (NOT Cajun Navy 2016 the more trusted group) said racist things about looting and shooting during his “aid,” managing to be a white savior, white victim, and white superior in his time working in disaster situations.

Us organizers need to work on dismantling racist tenancies in disaster situations and we need to do it in between emergencies. At a time when Texas is keeping ICE checkpoints running during evacuation and the political climate is less safe than ever for “undocumented” indigenous people, organizers must assist in their safety not erase their struggle! At a time when black people and people of color are being criminalized for salvaging goods to survive, we must assist their survival, not call them looters. At a time when trans people are turned away from shelters, organizers must make space for them.

We are literally knee deep in the issue right now, and the groups with these problems have a lot of resources. we believe we can use these resources without working with them. For example, using their rescue maps to organize our own rescues while communicating with them to let them know. and you can DEFINITELY avoid aiding them in any way. If you’re trying to do a donation drive and not come down, we recommend monetary donations. Giving stakeholders the power to help themselves and purchase what they need is a crucial way to give them agency when so much is being taken from them. They know what they need. People don’t need to be saved, they need knowledge of their power and means to access it.

By Louis Proyect - CounterPunch, September 1, 2017

By Candice Bernd - Truthout, September 1, 2017

"It's been a hell of a few days," says Andrew Cobb, whose house in Houston's Fifth Ward was spared the brunt of Hurricane Harvey's flood waters. His decentralized, grassroots relief effort called the "West Street Response Team" started with a simple scouting mission to a nearby flood plain across Highway 59 on Sunday.

After he and his roommates arrived at the location, they began coordinating with neighbors from the area on social media to find specific addresses of people needing rescue. They paddled more than two miles out in an inflatable kayak to make their first rescue of a mother and son, who they brought back to their own home to shelter for a few days.

"We posted about that and there was just a huge response, with some videos from that. And so, people were like, 'What can we do? What's up?' And I was like, 'We need boats. We need trucks. We need to get out there, and ... people just responded in a big way," Cobb tells me over the phone after nightfall -- the only time when his team isn't actively on rescue dispatch -- earlier this week.

The group started formally raising money, and their house has since been transformed into a volunteer dispatch base running several rescue operations each day, including the rescue of a woman who was low on oxygen, whom they paddled and drove across town to another set of volunteers who got her across the final leg to a home with an oxygen concentrator.

Cobb's team's activities aren't limited to rescues. They have also been working to drop food, water, clothing and dog food for stray animals to shelters and to certain drop-off spots at cross streets in his area.

Cobb is just one of many Texans braving Houston's rapids from sun-up to sun-down to organize decentralized rescues in the early days of Hurricane Harvey's devastation. Pre-Harvey, he organized with a local Food Not Bombs chapter and with the Society of Native Nations to oppose Energy Transfer Partner's Trans-Pecos pipeline in far West Texas.

His work providing homeless people with food via Food Not Bombs has amplified his disgust for the journalists and city officials ridiculing Houstonians for providing for themselves during a time of crisis.

"Calling it 'looting' is just such an absurdity when you have no food in the neighborhood. So, people were getting what they need, but we were hearing that supplies were limited, and the closest real grocery store was Fiesta, and there was a four-hour line to get in," Cobb says. "It's a food desert in normal times, and right now it's even more so."

His team is already working with outside groups from Austin to coordinate resources, including acquiring more technical gear for rescues, in the coming days. It's a sign of the emerging coalitions among leftists, radicals and anarchists, including those involved in antifascist organizing, that are beginning to solidify in the wake of Harvey. While Cobb says his response team opposes fascism and supports a diversity of tactics, they do not identify specifically as antifa. But many other leftists, including those who do identify as antifa, are poised, ready and waiting, for the water to recede to begin providing direct relief.

By Joshua Frank - CounterPunch, August 31, 2017

Natural disasters that are exacerbated by industrialization really bring out the best in people. Especially climate change denialists.

As the Texas-Louisiana Gulf coast drowned in the floods of Hurricane Harvey, Donald Trump pardoned Sheriff Joe in hopes of capturing higher ratings and Ann Coulter, who needs no introduction, took to her Twitter account to express sympathy for the victims. Okay, of course she didn’t, instead the Queen of Darkness blasted out that God’s hatred of homosexuality is more credible than climate science.

What does Coulter believe then? That Harvey is nothing new? Actually, it is, no matter what Coulter tweets. Harvey is now the heaviest rainstorm in US history and was made worse by our warming climate. There’s little scientific doubt about it. As climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe and many others point out, as the world warms, evaporation of water increases, which means there is more water vapor in storms and more rain to dump compared to 70 years ago. In basic terms, warmer air is able to hold more water and hence more rainfall is likely to occur. Hurricane intensity in the future is predicted to increase as our climate warms.

The Gulf of Mexico’s surface temp increased almost 5 degrees Fahrenheit as Harvey was building last week. These waters, one of the warmest ocean surfaces on the planet at the time, along with warmer air temps, allowed Harvey to turn from a tropical storm into a cat 4 hurricane almost overnight. Even Coulter’s God couldn’t stop it.

Coulter and her fans probably wouldn’t want the floods to dry up anyway, because when crisis hits there is money to be made and victims to rip off. As Ken Klippenstein first reported, a Best Buy in Cypress, an unincorporated suburb of Houston in Harris County, began selling packs of bottled water for $42.96. Best Buy later apologized in response to the report, but the Texas AG’s office as of August 29 had received over 550 consumer complaints of price gouging. It’s safe to say Best Buy is just the tip of the iceberg.

Unfortunately, disaster capitalism is the least of concerns for many Houston residents that are losing everything. Survival is their most pressing struggle. As the flood waters recede, far more deaths will likely be recorded — more victims of capitalism and carbon. Sadly it’s a trend that’s going to continue.

No doubt the worse is yet to come for Houston and the surrounding area, even when the rains end. ExxonMobil admits that Harvey has caused damage to two of its massive Houston refineries, releasing hazardous pollutants. The company’s Beaumont refinery, which is the second largest in the country, released at least 1,312.84 pounds of sulfur dioxide after Harvey hit. Many other chemicals also leaked when the sites were forced to shut down. These refineries sit in largely poor, minority neighborhoods that have long been victims of environmental racism — injustices that will continue unabated if Donald Trump has his way and destroys what’s left of the EPA’s Environmental Justice Program.

“Any release of carcinogens (like benzene, 1,3-butadiene) adds to the increased cancer risk for those living near these plants,” said Luke Metzger, director of the group Environment Texas. “[Nitrogen oxides or sulfur dioxide] and other respiratory irritants adds to the respiratory problems people in the area suffer from at high rates.”

In short, Harvey is bad for Houston’s air too, especially for those that reside near these refineries.

By Sean O'Torain - Facts for Working People, August 31, 2017

Catastrophic flooding is now hitting Texas and Louisiana. the area affected is home to 11 million people and includes over 300 smaller cities and towns.  This catastrophe is not an "act of god" or some unfortunate accident. It is the result of policies carried out by the US and international capitalist class. This is what, this is who is to blame.

Climate Change/Global Warming has increased the temperature of the world's oceans. The result is increased rain and storms. It is a world wide problem. The United nations says that 41 million people have been directly affected by flooding and landslides in South Asia, with homes and crops destroyed. Floods from heavy rainfall have also tore across Britain, Ireland, Sudan and Uganda. In one day, August 14th, floods swept through Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone and left 1,000 people dead or missing.

Climate change/global warming is causing massive flooding in some parts of the planet and drought in other parts. The international capitalist class know this. But they are addicted to their profits and so will not change their ways. And so the future of life on earth as we know it is under threat. Capitalism is to blame, the capitalist class and in the case of Texas and Louisiana the US capitalist class and their two political parties the Republicans and Democrats are to blame. And of course the predator in chief in the White House leads the charge. Pulling the US out of the albeit weak world climate change agreement is one example of this. The profits of the fossil fuel industry capitalists must not be touched. They must be allowed to carry on polluting and heating up the planet. Please do not miss who is to blame for the Texas and Louisiana flooding. It is the US and world capitalist class and their mad addiction to profit.