There have been over 120 reported deaths from Hurricane Sandy in the U.S., with another 100 or more in the Caribbean countries, the majority in Haiti, a reflection of the worst racist oppression in the Western Hemisphere. Sandy is the largest hurricane on record — over 1,000 miles in diameter —though it did not have the highest winds recorded.

In the U.S., tens of thousands were displaced by destruction of their homes, while in Nigeria in West Africa, the worst flooding in half a century has displaced more than two million people over the last few months and killed hundreds, with the figure still climbing. The overflow of the Niger River, the third largest in Africa, has mixed sewage with fresh water and brought crocodiles, snakes, and hippos into people’s homes. Are these exceptionally destructive events just a coincidence, or is there a common cause?

It is estimated — as only a capitalist system will do — that Sandy may cost over $50 billion. Some costs will be paid by insurance companies and other capitalists, but a majority will fall on millions of workers. It is the second most costly U.S. weather event in recent history, second only to Hurricane Katrina’s more than $100 billion in damages. No other event comes close. By capitalist reasoning, the many deaths in both the U.S. and Nigeria take a back seat to the monetary losses.

Not ‘Freak Natural Happenings’

The capitalist media are slightly more willing on this occasion than in the past to link the catastrophe to global warming. They usually describe extremely violent and destructive weather events as freak natural happenings, but as even Gov. Cuomo of New York pointed out, horrible events that used to happen once a century are now happening every other year.

This makes it harder for the capitalist media to hide the connection between these events and global warming. They still try hard to do so, or at the very least avoid talking in this context about a solution that could make a difference, namely getting rid of fossil fuels altogether (coal, oil, natural gas). Fossils are fueling not only economies, but also the global warming that produces warmer air and warmer oceans that, in turn, produce faster evaporation and immensely greater amounts of rain. But the rain only falls in certain places, robbing other places of moisture and leaving behind desertification and drought.

The accelerated melting of the Arctic Sea ice (as well as land-based glaciers all over the earth) due to the increase in heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels created a high pressure area over the North Atlantic. This prevented Sandy from moving eastward, as hurricanes usually do, instead sending it crashing into the eastern shore of the U.S.  While the devastation was centered on coastal states, the winds and rain were felt as far away as the Midwest with gigantic waves on some of the Great Lakes, mimicking Sandy’s Atlantic storm surge that raised the sea level almost 14 feet in New York City.

In addition to wind-caused damage, many burst natural gas pipelines in New Jersey and elsewhere caused fires that burned hundreds of homes, and all their contents. Because of downed power lines, gasoline was not available even though it was stored underground at thousands of filling stations. As many as eight million homes and businesses lost access to electricity, causing food spoilage and other damage and leaving people to freeze in the dark.

So it seems that these fossil fuels are both dangerous and unreliable in a pinch. But since Nigeria is a vast source of oil profits and therefore a target of imperialist rivalry, workers there will still suffer worsening imperialist exploitation and oppression in the international competition to obtain even more of these fossil fuels.

Communist Dialectics
Gives Answers

Only dialectics, which is the key scientific tool communists use to understand the world and to describe it, makes this transition from quantitative to qualitative changes a central part of its approach to understanding everything in the world. Such ever-present transformations of quantitative changes into qualitative changes can, and do, take place over seconds, years, or even millennia. But the atmospheric changes brought about by GHGs, emitted relentlessly by all capitalist economies, have entered a phase that is taking place over a few decades. Extreme weather events, particularly where they haven’t happened before, are only the tip of the melting iceberg.

Other expected accelerations include permanent rise in sea level. For example, “normal” sea level at lower Manhattan has risen a foot in the past 100 years, and is expected to rise by at least another two feet in the next 70 years. With rivers flooding here and droughts persisting there, killer heat waves and home-destroying wildfires, migration of forest-destroying insects farther from the equator, desertification and consequent food shortages, many other effects of global warming will occur. These things are discussed fully in our essay on global warming in the Winter 2010 issue of THE COMMUNIST at www.plp.org.

Communist revolution is another example of quantitative change becoming qualitative: not changing the bosses’ system a little, but overturning it entirely, with its profits and competition. And as masses of workers, students, and soldiers in the U.S., Nigeria, and around the world swell the ranks of PLP — a quantitative change — sooner or later will turn into a qualitative change: from capitalist tyranny into a world wide egalitarian communist society run by the workers under the leadership of their communist party, PLP.

Until this occurs, capitalism’s many tragic outcomes will multiply without limit. Neither Obama, Romney, nor Nigeria’s President Jonathan will make any difference in this situation. Only the workers everywhere, through mass collective action from New Jersey to Nigeria, can do that.

 “All my life I had struggled to rid the earth of the rich man’s crimes.”

— “Two Good Arms” by PL singers
Revolution Disc 2

The graphic novel Lives of Sacco and Vanzetti by Rick Geary dramatically presents the case of two Italian immigrants who were arrested for a 1920 murder and robbery. Nicola Sacco, a shoemaker, and Bartolemo Vanzetti, a fish peddler, both pleaded innocent and after seven agonizing years of controversy were finally executed. The trial attracted international attention because the real reasons for it was to carry on racist attacks on immigrants. The two men were anarchists who fought for workers rights and supported socialism.

The 1917 Russian Revolution had caused panic among capitalist rulers all around the world.  A Seattle general strike in February 1919 showed U.S. capitalists the strength of the working class with radical leadership.

In November 1919, a fire bomb went off at the house of Attorney General Palmer in Washington, D.C.and bombs also exploded in Philadelphia, Cleveland and  New York. Palmer used the bombs planted by a small group of anarchists to conduct raids to deport immigrants who were political radicals and socialists. About 10,000 immigrant workers were deported as a result of the Palmer Raids.  These “Red Scare” attacks were led by a 24-year-old Department of Justice official, J Edgar Hoover!

Vanzetti learned that a friend, the editor of an anarchist newspaper, had been arrested and detained by the Justice Department.  Two months later, his friend, still in custody of the Justice Department, mysteriously fell out of a 14th floor window and died. After hearing the news, Sacco and Vanzetti decided to warn their comrades to get rid of any anarchist literature and stay out of sight. 

The police learned that they were meeting with two anarchist friends, but the cops arrived too late to arrest all four anarchists. Only after seeing Sacco and Vanzetti on a street car, were they arrested on the flimsiest excuses because of the Red Scare.  Their trial was a thinly disguised frame-up that relied more on racist and political attacks on Sacco and Vanzetti as immigrant radicals than on any direct evidence.

Widespread hatred for capitalism and substantial support for revolutionary responses around the world led to many demonstrations and rebellions in support of Sacco and Vanzetti by workers in Germany, France, Switzerland, Portugal, South Africa, Mexico,  Argentina, Japan and Australia. There were fewer worker demonstrations demanding the release of Sacco and Vanzetti in the United States, possibly due to the intimidation of Atty. Gen. Palmer and the Red Scare raids deporting immigrant workers.

In March, 1927, Felix Frankfurter, a Harvard Law Professor and later a Supreme Court Justice, wrote an article in the Atlantic Monthly discussing the blatant prejudice of  the trial including:

1) The suspects were identified without a lineup;

2) The jurors were rounded up late at night;

3) The prosecution concealed an exonerating witness;

4) Atmosphere around the Red Scare and armed guards in the courthouse caused bias; 

5) Trial Judge Thayer made comments that Sacco was not patriotic;

6) The jury foreman made a statement before the trial that he already thought Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty; and

7) The stolen money was never recovered.

Sacco and Vanzetti’s case was appealed to the Supreme Court. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes refused to hear the case, replying, “We practice law and not justice.” The ruling class did not care about railroaded workers — they only cared about keeping workers from rebelling.

It was not until August 26, 1977, fifty years after their executions, that Governor Michael Dukakis stated the Sacco and Vanzetti were unfairly tried and convicted and “any stigma or disgrace should forever be removed from the names of Nicola Sacco and Bartolemo Vanzetti,” but Dukakis also never proclaimed their innocence.

Anarchists, leftists, socialists and communists all around the world have held up Sacco and Vanzetti as martyrs to the cause of fighting for workers’ rights and against capitalism. This graphic novel is easy to read and will be interesting to many middle school and high school students. It is well worth reading and discussing, especially about the racist and anti-working class nature of the laws and courts of the capitalist rulers.

Fighting against capitalism and racism and fighting for workers’ rights frightens the ruling class. This case shows the ruling class will use all of its state power to crush workers’ rebellions. Only a communist working-class revolution will smash the bosses’ injustice system and bring a real, if belated, recognition of the brave workers who have given their lives in the fight against capitalism.

Abridged and reprinted from a special issue of LE DÉFI , the local CHALLENGE in Haiti.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, October 28 — After the devastating 2010 earthquake a fragile Haiti was struck by a devastating cholera epidemic, brought in by the UN’s “peacekeeping” force MINUSTAH.

The UN did not vaccinate these troops coming in from an area where cholera is endemic. The so-called “international community” (which gave us cholera) wants us to believe the earthquake caused this genocidal epidemic when in fact the earthquake had nothing to do with it. There is a deathly silence about cholera here.  To this day, against all the scientific evidence, they refused to acknowledge their responsibility. Thousands among the oppressed class are dead, with many traumatized and in tears. If it is not eradicated soon, another wave of deaths will ensue because cholera is with us still and spreading.

It is a crime against the workers, peasants and students in Haiti, a small black population under the harsh, direct domination of U.S. imperialism. This is racism! The society in such countries is always under the imperialists’ control. They are our real enemies.

Poverty and its Diseases:
A Consequence of Capitalism

Poverty, hunger, and diseases like cholera stem from the domination and exploitation of the blood-sucking capitalist system. No capitalist state can ever stop driving people into extreme poverty, unemployment — and worse, death — under whatever form of rule the ruling class erects over the working class.

Once cholera established its rule here, it slaughtered many a family, and dumped into poverty many others who lost the relatives who could have helped them combat it. The authors of this evil are MINUSTAH, the UN and U.S. imperialism, joined to a capitalist state which is the tool of, and always defends, the bosses’ interests. These merchants of death could produce no other result. It’s a white sheet hiding a gaping wound. People will die by the thousands if we don’t understand that the state does not function in workers’ interests. We can’t look for hope where there is none to be found.

The Cholera Campaign: Direct Action and International Solidarity

In mid-September, some comrades brought our revolutionary politics to a teachers’ assembly just outside the capital, to connect cholera to the problems teachers are facing everywhere, and show how capitalism has created both. We wanted to prepare people for the revolutionary battle against the system itself if they lacked that perspective.

One comrade spoke about cholera awareness and then moved from a political analysis to mobilizing for the cholera campaign, linking problems of education to those of health. He noted that vaccination and ending cholera was right up there among the teachers’ demands; that teachers belonged to the same class as the workers who were victims of cholera; and that capitalism was the root cause of all these problems.

While he spoke other comrades distributed cholera campaign flyers to the 100 teachers in the crowd, to a few journalists and others who came to listen. “What can you give us to do?” asked several teachers, showing their desire to join the campaign. Many quickly grabbed the flyers and everyone was reading them.

The comrade leading the meeting addressed the journalists about why ending cholera was one of the teachers’ strike demands, how the epidemic was tied to the teacher’ problems. “If the government does nothing, strike!” shouted those distributing the flyers, and the whole crowd chanted it loudly for the press to hear.

As some went to additional meetings, others stayed to continue the discussion. The campaign is moving ahead and all comrades must commit themselves to its success.

During the third week of October, there were many demonstrations against MINUSTAH and against cholera, organized by a coalition to drive out MINUSTAH and obtain reparations for cholera victims. Union and student activists participated and distributed cholera campaign flyers. Such direct action will continue.

We call on the solidarity of all our international friends engaged in popular struggles to force the Haitian state, the UN and all the criminals guilty of this genocide to be forced to root out cholera in every corner of the country. The Ministry of Public Health must establish: universal vaccination of all people in Haiti; well-equipped nation-wide treatment centers with well-trained health workers; and clean water and modern sanitation systems.

Fighting Cholera Means
Fighting MINUSTAH

We demand that MINUSTAH leave Haiti, that they pay reparations to ALL their victims, and that they be punished under so-called human rights law. We must liberate the whole working class from this vicious occupation force, bandits with heavy weapons here to break our spirit and aid the reactionary ruling class and its government servants.

Their death squads massacred students and workers during the 2009 fight for the minimum wage. They don’t just have their jackboots on the necks of the poor and on workers in the factories. Everyone knows how they’ve sexually assaulted young girls, women and men; stolen peasants’ livestock; made innocent blood flow in the capital’s slums until the earth became mud. Their atrocities in Cap Haïtien remind us of slavery days, hanging people as the colonialists did. In Ti Goave they fired on demonstrators and in Port Salut grossly assaulted a pregnant teenager and a young boy.

In Port-au-Prince they’ve fired on demonstrators as they did to the hunger protestors in 2008; entered university campuses — Social Sciences, the Ecole Normale and the School of the Arts — to kidnap students and smash or steal equipment. And then they brought cholera, leaving more than 7,500 dead and hospitalizing 300,000, besides killing us with bullets and tear gas.

The workers worldwide have been facing huge problems of health, unemployment and hunger. National and international rulers do nothing to end this epidemic. We call on everyone suffering these problems to take to the streets and force them to act. Students and teachers, workers, professionals, unemployed: let’s rise up and march against cholera, against racism, against imperialist occupation. People everywhere have the right to live like human beings.

The fight against cholera is an international fight because it kills the working class internationally. That’s why the petition of ECHO (End Cholera in Haiti Organization) is for all the world’s workers. It’s being circulated in Haiti, the U.S. and all over. One single international working class is signing it, against capitalism and all its diseases.

Oppressed of the world, wherever you are, join us to fight this bloody, devastating capitalism. Surely our future cannot be built on racism, sexism and disease. We have to abolish this profit-driven view of “difference” we call racism, invented by capitalists to justify their exploitation.

Our class must defend our own destiny and our very lives, now in danger of being snuffed out. Our just demands must be satisfied. Neither MINUSTAH, the UN nor the capitalist state can resolve the problems of the working class or bring peace to the world. The solution is once and for all to destroy this system that eats our class alive! It is only communism, rule by and for the working class, that can liberate us.

Storms don’t know skin color or class, but capitalism is built on inequalities rooted in both.  An event like Hurricane Sandy that seems to affect “everyone” the same turns out to strike hardest at those who have the fewest resources, the fewest choices, the fewest places to go.   

Like Katrina in 2005, or the earthquake in Haiti in 2010 this system’s response to disaster shows that what is natural under capitalism is RACISM.   Footage of ruined yachts and vacation homes dominated the early images of the bosses’ media coverage. More recently news coverage has centered around devastated white communities of the region to the exclusion of areas like Red Hook, the Lower East Side, Coney Island and Canarsie.  But there is nothing “natural” about who pays the highest price in these disasters.  Meanwhile the ruling class gets to practice fascist police state tactics of population transfer, curfew, military direction of civilian affairs under the name of “emergency management.”

• ·       Undocumented workers live in fear of deportation and so many will not come forward to seek the help they need (in the aftermath of 9/11 families of undocumented restaurant workers in the Twin Towers received nothing!)
• ·       Mostly black DC 37 city workers were forced back to the job while mostly white UFT members got paid days off.  On the whole salaried workers have much more income protection than hourly wage workers.  
• ·       Red Hook supermarkets with no power take no electronic food stamps: no cash, no food.

Yet workers all over New York have worked collectively to help each other out.  While Obama and Bloomberg cruise around in helicopters giving orders, it will be workers who rebuild the homes, roads, rails, ports and more destroyed in this storm.  Some put their lives on the line to rescue people stuck on roofs of their homes, others have turned their front yards into collection centers for food, water and clothes that they then hand out to their neighbors. Still others have pooled what little resources they have to help the elderly, disabled and children get meals. This is human nature! The bosses push the idea that everyone is “naturally” greedy and selfish, but in real times of need, those lies are uncovered.

There is nothing natural about this disaster.   And as a global system capitalism had doomed countless millions to conditions like those we endure in Sandy-ravaged areas and much worse.   Sandy gathered strength over an ocean five degrees warmer than normal and hit a New York harbor where water levels have already risen a foot due to climate change.  As the Arctic Ocean melts oil companies race to drill the floor of the sea for more oil.  The wasteful nature of the profit system is driving our biosphere off a cliff. 

Under communism, natural disasters will continue to occur, but a global communist planned economy is the only hope for reversing human-induced climate change.  Under communism society will be organized with the needs of people in mind, not profit like under capitalism.  The infrastructure to make our neighborhoods safe will be built. People will be sent to safe evacuation centers without the worry that their belongings will get stolen, since everyone will have what they need.

Obama’s victory will not change what drives the attacks on our class.  Both candidates served this racist system of inequality that drops bombs on innocent children in Pakistan and at the same time allows hurricane victims to go hungry and cold.  Elections only build loyalty to this broken social order.  People’s response to this latest disaster shows that our class, the working class, has the need and the desire to help each other in times of need. Let’s build on those actions and fight for a world built on equality for all, a communist world!