BOSTON, MA, February 3 — Two weeks after the earthquake in Haiti, it was standing room only at a meeting of the student club, Pizza and Politics, on our community college campus. The initial comments students made showed very little political consciousness. In response to the first discussion question, “Who or what is to blame for the social catastrophe, besides mother nature?” students thought it was ridiculous to introduce a political analysis of the role of imperialism and capitalism in the catastrophe. Many, including Haitian-Americans, reflected the same racism in their comments that are implied by TV and radio announcers; “Haitians are crazy,” meaning that in the face of chaos, Haitians will resort to a dog-eat-dog mentality.

But students responded very positively when CHALLENGE readers brought in an anti-imperialist perspective, explaining how colonialist and imperialist policies devastated the country and left it vulnerable to mother nature. They spoke of the capitalist-controlled aid efforts, compared Haiti to New Orleans after Katrina, exposed the racism and paternalism of the media. They also spoke of the proud and rebellious history of Haiti’s working class.

By the end of the discussion, some of the same students who initially resisted a political analysis were expressing anger toward all the rich countries of the world and blaming the capitalist system for the devastation in Haiti. A new CHALLENGE reader was heartened at how the discussion clearly progressed “in the direction of communism.”

Many students expressed the desire to organize an aid effort that would bring the aid directly to the people. The club is also planning a forum that will bring political understanding to the campus. PL’ers and our friends have a very important role to play at this working-class, largely immigrant college. The crisis in Haiti gives us an opportunity to expose the racism and utter failure of capitalism and to build international class solidarity — workers helping workers — an antidote to the cynical individualism that students resort to when they don’t see an alternative to capitalist greed and inequality

Obama invaded Haiti to secure U.S. capitalists’ access to energy supplies, not to aid the working class there, as token relief efforts show. (See CHALLENGE, 3/3.) Haiti may itself possess significant oil and gas reserves. Bloomberg News (2/26) reports, “The January 12 earthquake was on a fault line that passes near potential gas reserves, said Stephen Pierce, a geologist who worked in the region for 30 years for companies including the former Mobil Corp. The quake may have cracked rock formations along the fault, allowing gas or oil to temporarily seep toward the surface….

“The Greater Antilles, which includes Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and their offshore waters, probably hold at least 142 million barrels of oil and 159 billion cubic feet of gas, according to a 2000 report by the U.S. Geological Survey. Undiscovered amounts may be as high as 941 million barrels of oil and 1.2 trillion cubic feet of gas....”

It’s hardly a coincidence that a month after Cubapetroleo announced discovery of one of the world’s largest oilfields in the deep waters off Cuba, Russian President Medvedev flew to Cuba to sign an agreement to develop Cuban oil. And a week before that, China’s president Hu Jintao met Cuba’s president Raul Castro to sign an agreement to modernize Cuban ports and undoubtedly discussed the country’s oil discovery.

Obama’s Main Target:
Venezuela’s Oil Treasure

But while the jury may be out on Haiti’s possible hydrocarbon bonanza, U.S. rulers have identified nearby enemy Venezuela as potentially another Saudi Arabia. Britain’s government-controlled BBC noted (1/23), amid the U.S. build-up in Haiti, “Scientists working for the U.S. Geological Survey say Venezuela’s Orinoco belt region holds twice as much petroleum as previously thought....[T]he area could yield more than 500 billion barrels of crude oil.... Saudi Arabia has proven reserves of 260 billion barrels.”

By establishing U.S. army, air and naval bases in Haiti moments after the quake, Obama sent a clear message about U.S. military supremacy to his oil-soaked, fake leftist Venezuelan foe Hugo Chavez. To hammer home the point, Obama diverted the first of the Navy’s brand-new fleet of Littoral Combat Ships — specifically designed for U.S. imperialism’s latest naval need for coastal invasion of oil-rich nations — from California to the Caribbean shores of Colombia and Venezuela.

“The USS Freedom (LCS 1), has entered service in the Caribbean, joining the U.S. Navy drug interdiction patrol..... [T]he Freedom headed south on February 15th and [on] the 22nd intercepted its first drug-smuggling boat off the Colombian coast.” (Strategy Page, 2/28) Drugs are secondary to U.S. bosses. They use them to help control their domestic working class. On the other hand, U.S. imperialists use oil to control dependent nations and wage war on rival states. 

NEW YORK CITY, February 19 — More than 180 CUNY professors, staff members and students packed the union hall tonight for an “Evening of Solidarity with the People of Haiti.” The event kicked off with a delicious dinner of Haitian food, and continued with traditional Haitian folk music performed by a classical guitarist. Members of the union’s International Committee distributed a sheet of brief commentaries on Haiti from radical historians and novelists like Jacques Stephen Alexis.

The evening had two goals: to raise thousands of dollars for relief work in Haiti (which it did) and to provide a critical explanation of why the January 12th earthquake resulted in so many deaths, injuries and homelessness. Two CUNY professors, both from Haiti, explained how the earthquake was not a natural but rather a social disaster, or as one speaker termed it, a “poverty disaster.” It was largely the poor who perished when their poorly- constructed homes, schools and workplaces collapsed. The small but wealthy Haitian elite, residing in their mansions on the hills above Port-au-Prince, went relatively unscathed.

One of the professors noted how the U.S. media has emphasized Haitian poverty but neglected to mention the country’s inequality — how 5% of the population controls 46% of the wealth. The media also neglect to mention how the backbreaking labor of Haitian slaves once enriched French plantation owners and bankers, and how in recent years U.S. companies like Sears, G.E. and Wal-Mart profited handsomely from Haitian sweatshop labor. The speaker explained how U.S. trade policy had impoverished Haitian farmers, who then swelled the shantytowns of Port-au-Prince, which were devastated by the earthquake.

The second speaker, a long-time Haitian activist, was in Haiti when the earthquake struck. He met a friend whose mother died in the quake, but his friend put off mourning until he finished organizing shelter and food for the survivors. It is this spirit of collectivity and courage on the part of ordinary Haitians that draws this professor back to the island.

Both professors warned that the U.S. and capitalist institutions like the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank will use the disaster to restructure the Haitian economy to benefit U.S. corporations. The 20,000 heavily-armed U.S. troops in Haiti are there to mainly ensure that Haiti remains a neo-colony of the U.S., a haven for U.S. sweatshops, and will allow the U.S. to build military bases in this strategically-located Caribbean nation.

A union leader quoted William Blake’s line that “Pity would be no more, if we did not make somebody poor” to emphasize how important it is for people to understand the social causes of disasters like Katrina in New Orleans and now Haiti. She emphasized that our goal is not charity but solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Haiti. Later, another professor made clear that it was racist capitalism, not the earthquake, that had caused the deaths of 250,000 Haitians and left a million homeless. He argued that true solidarity would be to build an international movement aimed at overthrowing the monstrous system that has impoverished most Haitians and billions of other workers around the world. He cited the union’s past support for striking teachers in Mexico and Colombia as positive examples of international labor solidarity and urged the union to demand “U.S. Marines Out of Haiti!” today.

This evening of solidarity ended with people suggesting having forums on many campuses, so that thousands of students and faculty can learn the truth about Haiti. 

ANKARA, TURKEY, February 26 -— The strike of TEKEL tobacco workers is now more than 10 weeks old. The strike erupted after the government decided to close all the company warehouses, eliminating 12,000 jobs, as part of privatizing the government-run tobacco company. The strikers and their families descended on the capital and set up a tent-city to protest the job cuts.

Acording to Turkish labor law, workers who are laid off due to privatization are supposed to be placed in jobs elsewhere, with full benefits. But the only “job” the TEKEL workers have found is actually fighting for one.

The strikers and their supporters have clashed with the police, the bosses’ hired thugs. On December 16, the cops attacked a rally in front of the headquarters of the ruling AKP party. The following day in a nearby park, police erected barricades and attacked protesters with water hoses, tear gas and clubs. After that the workers moved their encampment to the headquarters of Türk-Is, the Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions, who have failed to answer the bosses’
attacks with militant strikes or demonstrations.

Capitalist labor laws aren’t worth the paper they are written on, especially in the face of a worldwide financial crisis that is spreading poverty and war to everything it touches. The more workers fight back against these attacks, we create a better atmosphere to learn that a system that can’t provide jobs should be smashed. Poverty, war and racist terror are all the bosses have to offer. The only way to stop them is by building a mass international PLP and fighting for communism. That is the most important victory that we can win in the class struggle.