Hurricane Katrina: The Black Nation’s 9/11!

The magnitude of the destruction and human suffering caused by Hurricane Katrina to the people and communities of the Gulf Coast Region, while not the results of an act of "terror", is directly a result of a profit driven system of capitalist exploitation reinforced by the national oppression of African American people in the US South, a region where the majority of Black people live and where the conditions of oppression, poverty and underdevelopment are most concentrated.

As anti imperialists and activists engage in work to build support for the Gulf Coast survivors, we must have an analysis and political context for properly understanding the reasons for this crisis and the contradictions surrounding its aftermath. The response to this human tragedy must be more than a humanitarian response in order to deal with the magnitude and complexity of issues, international political ramifications, the legal aspects, and the various levels of local, regional, national and international coalition and network building and mobilizing that must take place to build a powerful movement for social justice.

There is much talk about how to define the main social impact of Katrina: Whether it is mainly a major disaster for Black people or for working class and poor people in general. This attempt to separate race from class when dealing with issues where those workers affected are majority African American is no accident. It seeks to divide the character and content of the working class responses.

Thus, it is important to define the race and class character of the crisis and to call on the larger working class to unite with it’s most oppressed section — the African American working class who is also the predominant basis of an oppressed nation and nationality historically denied real democratic rights and subjugated by US imperialism.

The government's failure to correct this impending danger was known far in advance, that led to the continuously unfolding massive human tragedy, and helps all to see the racist nature of the US capitalist system and how the system of African American national oppression is in violation of human rights and guilty of crimes against humanity.

READ MORE