[O29] Poor, Black, and Left to Die, What Hurricane Katrina Shows about American Capitalism

[Patrick Ayers]

FYI, The author of the following article, Philip
Locker, will be speaking in Boston this week at the
following times and venues:

Tuesday, September 20
7:30pm
Tufts University, Barnum 104

Wednesday, September 21
7:30pm
45 Mt Auburn St, Harvard Sq, Cambridge
(Next to Tommy’s Pizza)

POOR, BLACK, AND LEFT TO DIE
What Hurricane Katrina Shows about American Capitalism
By Philip Locker

Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster. But the
massive death, destruction, and misery that followed
in its wake was entirely man-made and preventable. It
was the poor, the old, the sick – overwhelmingly
African American – who had no means to flee the storm
that bore the brunt of the suffering.

One million people in the Gulf Cost have been
displaced, many without homes or work. Thousands are
feared dead. As the New Orleans levees broke, they
unleashed a hell on earth for tens of thousands of
poor, black residents left abandoned. The city
descended into squalor and abject social misery, with
many literally dropping dead in the streets for lack
of care.

While the city government called for people to
evacuate before the storm hit, it was on a “free
market” basis. No public transportation or shelter was
provided for those without a car or who could not
afford to rent a hotel room. 28% of people in New
Orleans live in poverty, and of those 84% are black.
35% of black households did not have a car. 

Those who could not leave were told to go to the New
Orleans Superdome. But what they found when they
arrived was a scene of unimaginable horror.
Approximately 50,000 people were trapped for days in
deadly heat and stench at the overflowing Superdome
and Convention Center. 

Once in the stadium, they were not allowed to leave.
"They're housing us like animals," said Iiesha
Rousell, unemployed after four years in the Army,
unable to contain her fury. “It's worse than a prison”
was another comment. One woman worried what would
become of her after being sent out of New Orleans,
asking “What's going to happen to our jobs? How can we
take care of our families?” (NY Times, 9/1/05)

“There’s nothing offered to them, no water, no ice, no
C-rations. Nothing for the last four days,” reported
NBC journalist Tony Zumbada. Desperate crowds were
reduced to chanting “Help us! Help us!” in front of TV
cameras, while others begged “Don’t leave us here to
die.” 

But no help came for four days. 

In the richest country in the world, the U.S.
government, which is capable of fighting a $300
billion war in Iraq, failed to mobilize emergency aid
for the tens of thousands of people in desperate
conditions in the Gulf Coast. 

The New Orleans Times-Picayune noted that the hellish
conditions in the Superdome “stood in stark contrast
to those of people nearby in the restricted-access New
Orleans Centre and Hyatt Hotel, where those who could
get in lounged in relative comfort 
 guests were being
fed ‘foie gras and rack of lamb’ for dinner, according
to a photographer who stayed there, while the masses,
most of them poor, huddled in the Dome.” A line of
state police armed with assault rifles drove the
crowds of evacuees back from the entrance of the
hotel.
When buses finally arrived to evacuate people from the
Superdome, the effort was interrupted to allow the
Hyatt Hotel guests to be brought out first “much to
the amazement of those who had been crammed in the
Superdome since last Sunday. ‘How does this work? They
(are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?’
exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their
line. The National Guard blocked him as other
guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their
luggage.” (Associated Press, 9/4/05)

Just as outrageous was the callous disregard for human
suffering and the colossal mismanagement by the
corrupt Bush administration. This criminal negligence
was so staggering, even Republican politicians like
Louisiana’s Senator David Vitter gave the federal
government an F for its handling of the whirlwind
after the storm.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael
Chertoff arrogantly blamed the hurricane’s victims for
their plight. “The critical thing was to get people
out of there before the disaster,” he said. “Some
people chose not to obey that order. That was a
mistake on their part.”

In a scathing editorial, Maureen Dowd wrote “Michael
Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job
he trained for by running something called the
International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he
didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000
desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of
Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center. Was he
sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed
him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: ‘Brownie, you're doing
a heck of a job.’” (“United States of Shame”, NY
Times, 9/3/05)

Man-Made Disaster
There was nothing natural about the transformation of
New Orleans into a massive graveyard for the urban
poor.

Leave aside for the moment the growing evidence that
climate change is causing more frequent and stronger
hurricanes and tropical storms. Leave aside that the
marshlands of Louisiana, which historically provided
natural protection against flooding, has been sold off
and destroyed in corrupt deals between land developers
and politicians.

More immediately, Bush’s war on Iraq, tax cuts for the
rich, and vicious cuts in funding for vital
infrastructure and social services were centrally at
fault for the disaster. 

Repeating his “who could have known?” line from the
Iraq war, Bush claimed, "I don't think anyone
anticipated the breach of the levees.” But the fact
was that the danger of a major hurricane breaking the
levees and flooding New Orleans and was widely
discussed for years before. 

Since 1995, the Army Corps of Engineers spent $430
million on shoring up levees and building pumping
stations. But at least $250 million in crucial
projects remained. Yet after 2003, the flow of federal
dollars dropped to a trickle. 

In June 2004, the emergency management chief for
Jefferson Parish fretted to the New Orleans
Times-Picayune: “It appears that the money has been
moved in the president's budget to handle homeland
security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the
price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees
can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can
to make the case that this is a security issue for
us.”

The funding for this crucial public infrastructure was
slashed to pay for Bush’s Iraq adventure and tax cuts
for the rich. Yet at the same time, Bush and Congress
agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill
with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million
bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.

Not only was the money depleted by the Bush folly in
Iraq; 30% of the National Guard and about half its
equipment are in Iraq. How long did this delay the
rescue operations and how many lives were needlessly
lost because of it?

This has exposed in the starkest fashion the lie that
the Iraq war is about making ordinary Americans safer.
Nor is the U.S. occupation helping the Iraqi people.
Many are asking, why has funding on prevention of
natural disasters been cut back to $187 million per
year while we spend over $5.6 billion per month on the
Iraq war? Tens of millions will no doubt conclude that
we need to bring the troops home now and that money
should go towards relief, not war.

Racism and Poverty
These events have graphically illustrated the reality
of widespread poverty, racism, inequality, and social
deprivation in America, particularly the squalid
conditions in the inner cities.

The New York Times wrote: “What a shocked world saw
exposed in New Orleans last week wasn’t just a broken
levee. It was a cleavage of race and class, at once
familiar and startlingly new, laid bare in a setting
where they suddenly amounted to matters of life and
death.” (9/2/05)

This poverty and racism did not fall out of the sky.
It comes against the background of a massive
polarization of wealth within the U.S. over the past
30 years, reaching levels unseen since the 1920s.

A new Census Bureau report showed that in 2004 an
additional 1.1 million Americans were thrown into
poverty, the fourth consecutive year poverty rose,
bringing the total up to 37 million. In many cities,
the situation is even worse. In New York City, for
example, the poverty rate rose to 20.3%. 

And while it is people of color who disproportionately
are poor, tens of millions of white people also live
in poverty. In fact, since 2003 the largest increase
in poverty was among whites, going from 8.2% to 8.6%. 
The same report also announced that household incomes
had not increased for the past five years – the first
time ever recorded.

There is a boiling rage throughout the country at the
completely incompetent, criminal failure of the
government to help the victims of Katrina. But this is
felt most intensely in the African American community,
which is outraged at the naked racism that led to the
deaths of thousands. Hip-hop star Kanye West captured
this mood when he said live on national TV, “George
Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

West also pointed to the repulsive, racist media
coverage, saying “I hate the way they portray us in
the media. If you see a black family, it says they're
looting. See a white family, it says they're looking
for food.” Most of the “looting” that took place was
desperate people taking vital essentials – water,
food, diapers – in order to survive.

In response, the police were redirected away from
search and rescue to defending the private property of
businesses like the GAP and casinos. Louisiana
Governor Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat, declared “war on
looters.” Referring to newly-deployed National Guard
troops fresh back from Iraq, she said “They have
M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops
know how to shoot and kill and they are more than
willing to do so if necessary. And I expect they
will.” (Seattle P-IReuters, 9/2/05)

What did they expect stranded people to do? Get some
cash out of the broken ATM and pay the non-existent
sales clerk for the bottle of water? This response
follows the twisted logic of capitalism, which upholds
the scared principle of private property over saving
people’s lives.

It is true some horrifying crimes, like rapes and
murders, were carried out by a small but lethal number
of criminals and gang members. However, this is a
commentary on the brutal, inhuman character of U.S.
capitalism. It is the result of a system that treats
as utterly “normal” unleashing a murderous policy of
“shock and awe” on the Iraqi people, flattening the
entire city of Fallujah, or using the death penalty on
children.

But the crisis also brought out the enormous
self-sacrifice and solidarity that exists among
ordinary people.  There were numerous stories of
survivors risking their lives to save others. Across
the country, millions of ordinary people took action
to help, far faster than Bush and his cronies.

The media’s focus on criminals was completely out of
proportion with the incomparably greater crime of the
government failing to evacuate the poor or deliver
emergency aid. Where is the media outcry over the
massive looting by the big oil and gas companies, who
are gouging consumers with outrageous price increases
at a time when they are making record profits? Even
less is said about U.S. imperialism’s record of
looting poor countries, as we have seen with the
occupation of Iraq.

The events in New Orleans have driven home the fact
that racism is far from eradicated from our society.
“Is this what the pioneers of the civil rights
movement fought to achieve, a society where many black
people are as trapped and isolated by their poverty as
they were by legal segregation laws?" wrote Mark
Naison, director of the Urban Studies Program at
Fordham. “Hurricane Katrina reveals the fault lines of
a region and a nation, rent by profound social
divisions."

While the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s
succeeded in winning legal equality for African
Americans, the underlying system of capitalism
remained intact. As Malcolm X warned, “you can not
have capitalism without racism.” The continuation of
capitalism, and its economic crisis since the
mid-1970s, has meant that not only has racism
remained, but that even the social conditions for
African Americans have actually worsened since the
1960s. It is time we drew the necessary conclusions
from this experience and fight to overthrow the
system, capitalism, that breeds poverty, racism, and
inequality.

System Failure
It took almost two days for Bush to end his
fishing-and-biking vacation when tens of thousands of
poor and black people were suffering in appalling
conditions in the Gulf Coast. But he was much quicker
off the mark last March, cutting short his Crawford
vacation to storm back to Washington within hours to
sign a bill to “save” Terri Schiavo. The President
issued a statement in which he promised "to stand on
the side of those defending life for all Americans,
including those with disabilities."

The supposedly compassionate pro-life, pro-family
moral values of George Bush have been exposed as
utterly hypocritical and fraudulent. Bush's
defense-of-life policy did not prevent him from
cutting crucial funding for strengthening levees or
social services for the poor, in order to pay for tax
handouts to the richest Americans and for a war that
has killed 2,000 U.S. soldiers and 100,000 Iraqis. 

The only thing that can be said in Bush’s defense is
that the blame is being overly focused on his
administration when, in reality, this was not simply a
failure by Bush or by the local authorities along the
Gulf Coast. It was a system failure – a result of
free-market capitalism that is myopically focused on
short-term profits and on extending U.S. corporate
power around the world, while treating poor people as
expendable.

It is true that the Bush gang were the ones who lead
the charge for the war on Iraq and the tax cuts for
the rich. But what did the so-called opposition party,
the Democrats, do? They not only failed to seriously
fight these policies, they went along with them. The
Democrats in Congress voted to support Bush's “war on
terrorism,” the Patriot Act, the war on Afghanistan,
the Iraq war, and the hundreds of billions of dollars
for the occupation of Iraq, Bush's tax cuts for the
rich, and "No Child Left Behind.” In reality, the
Democratic Party, like the Republicans, represents the
interests of the corrupt corporate elite that
dominates U.S. society.

The cutting of funds for the levees is only a glaring
_expression of the general neo-liberal drive by the
entire political and corporate establishment over the
past 30 years. The ending of the post-war economic
boom in the mid-1970s opened up a period of economic
crisis, compelling big business to launch a major
offensive against the working class to drive down
wages and conditions in order to maintain their
profits. To meet Corporate America’s tax-cutting
demands, politicians have gutted essential social
services and the public infrastructure, allowing inner
cities to rot.

Of course, this neo-liberal dogma is extremely
shortsighted. A refusal to invest tens of millions of
dollars into strengthening levees has led to a
catastrophe that will cost hundreds of billions of
dollars. This shows the extreme shortsightedness and
anarchy inherent in capitalism. Decisions are made by
a small elite on the basis of today’s, and maybe
tomorrow’s, “bottom line.”  Comprehensive planning,
investment in preventive measures or public
infrastructure, and democratic involvement is foreign
to capitalism’s fundamental tendencies.

This crisis shows the basic functioning of modern
society is increasingly incompatible with the
requirements of the profit system, which ruthlessly
sacrifices social needs on the alter of private
profit. Katrina laid bare the complete disregard for
the needs of society by the arrogant, money-mad elite
who rule the country on behalf of their corporate
masters. While the administration of George W. Bush is
particularly venal, ruthless, and shortsighted, it
nonetheless is only an extreme _expression of a system
in its decay that is unable to develop human society
any further.

Socialist Solution
Katrina is a window into our future on the basis of
capitalism – “horror without end” for the poor, the
oppressed, and the working class. There will be more
disasters of this sort, particularly if drastic action
is not taken to reverse global warming. There will be
more imperialist wars. There will be growing poverty
and racism.

That is why it is urgent we fight to put an end to
capitalism and create a new, socialist society based
on human needs. The entire disaster clearly shows the
need for social planning and the failure and anarchy
of free-market capitalism. How can disasters be
prevented when decisions are being made based on the
short-term profit drive of Corporate America?

How can we possibly address climate change without a
democratically planned economy? Are we to hope that
the giant oil and auto corporations will, on their
own, decide to set aside their massive profits and
wealth for the long-term good of humanity?

How can the massive evacuee crisis be dealt with
without massive, federally-funded, public works
projects, directed by accountable, democratic bodies? 


We call for a real relief effort, which is based on
the needs of the poor and working class victims of
Hurricane Katrina:

•      Full care and compensation for Katrina victims
All victims of this crisis should be fully compensated
for all losses by the federal government. Free medical
care for all those in need. Ensure that all affected
people receive a stable income to get back on their
feet after this tragedy. All those from the affected
counties who have lost their jobs, have been
displaced, or are in need should receive a living wage
of $500/week for up to 3 years. Immediate
interest-free loans for workers, small businesses, and
small farmers who had their livelihood destroyed in
the hurricane.

•      Initiate massive public works program to
rebuild and
re-employ the Gulf Coast
Immediately begin the construction of decent,
affordable public housing in the safe areas for all
those in need due to the hurricane. Employ the jobless
victims of Katrina in public works programs to rebuild
the counties affected. All rebuilding and relief
workers must receive a living wage with union rights
and benefits. Ensure the homes, workplaces, schools,
and streets of New Orleans are cleansed of the toxic
contamination caused by the flooded sewage and oil and
chemical spills.

•      Stop racial and class discrimination in relief,
compensation, rebuilding, and policing
All relief money received through government and
charity should not be put in the hands of big-business
politicians and bureaucrats. Instead, oversight
committees elected from the affected communities,
evacuees, and relief workers should control the
funding and administration of relief and rebuilding
efforts. Don't bankrupt state and local budgets for
the relief. The federal government should hand over
billions of dollars for the relief effort. Don't cut
social service funding like healthcare and education
to pay for relief and rebuilding efforts.

•      Stop profiteering off tragedy!
We need price controls on gas and other products to
protect consumers. Construction should be done for the
public good, under democratic community control, not
for the profits of a few corporations.

•      Pay for rebuilding by ending the war in Iraq
and
taxing big business
This disaster is the direct result of the Bush
administration defunding levy strengthening and other
disaster prevention programs to pay for the war in
Iraq and tax cuts for the rich. Bring the troops home
and redirect military resources to rebuilding. This
disaster results from decades of corporate tax cuts by
the two major parties, and the resultant underfunding
of infrastructure and inner cities. Make the rich and
Corporate America pay for reconstruction.

Each of these measures, absolutely vital for those
displaced to be able to restart their lives in any
decent fashion, go directly against the logic of
capitalism, which teaches that the “market” can
magically solve social needs. 

Big business, the real culprits behind this tragedy,
will claim they cannot afford to pay for such a
massive relief effort. If that is true, then we cannot
afford to live under their inhuman, rotten system.

That is why socialists draw the conclusion that we
need to change the entire system. We need a planned
economy, where decisions about investment, about what
is produced and how things are produced, are
democratically decided in the interests of the
majority, rather than according to the undemocratic
short-term profit calculations of a small minority who
own the wealth.

This can only be possible on the basis of taking the
giant corporations that dominate the economy into
public ownership. Instead of CEOs deciding what
working people are paid and how companies should
invest their resources, this would allow workers to
elect management teams and democratically decide pay
scales and investment priorities. 

Socialism would mean that instead of big business
running our media, controlling the political system,
deciding the priorities of our country, politicians
would be directly elected from neighborhood and
workplace committees, paid an average worker’s wage,
and immediately recallable when they are not
representing their constituents.

Political Consequences
In the wake of Katrina, a political storm is sweeping
across the country with the force of a category five
hurricane. 

Nor will it simply blow over. There is far more horror
to come, as more bodies are found and more facts come
out. Its full effects, which will shake U.S. society
to its foundations, will be felt over a period of time
as tens of millions across the country begin to absorb
the full ramifications of these events.

The impact will be incalculable, transforming U.S.
politics for the whole next period on a scale similar
to 9/11. But rather than strengthening Bush and
triggering a reactionary wave like 9/11, Katrina is
the “anti-9/11,” as right-wing columnist and supporter
of the Iraq war David Brooks pointed out (“The
Bursting Point”, NY Times, 9/4/05). It is dramatically
weakening Bush, radicalizing millions, and will give a
profoundly left-wing impulse to U.S. politics.

There is enormous anger throughout the country about
this preventable tragedy and the slow, cavalier
response of the Bush administration. This has been
reflected in the firestorm of criticism against Bush
from the normally tame mainstream media, Democrats,
and even many Republican politicians.

Already before Katrina hit, Bush was in serious
trouble. His flagship policy, Social Security
privatization, was completely stuck in the water with
massive public opposition. Bush’s approval ratings
were falling sharply, and anger at the war was growing
by leaps and bounds.

A Pew Research Center poll found 67% of Americans
believed Bush could have done more to speed up relief
efforts, and just 28% believed he did all he could.
His approval rating slipped to 40%, down four points
since July to the lowest point Pew has recorded. A CBS
poll taken September 6-7 also found confidence in Bush
during a crisis had fallen, and only 48% now view him
as a strong leader - the lowest number ever for Bush
in the poll. A year ago, 64% of voters saw Bush as a
strong leader (Reuters, 9/8/05). 

Bush’s political base has been seriously weakened, not
least in his southern "stronghold" which has been
hardest hit by these events. Many Southern Republican
politicians, feeling the anger of their constituents,
have been compelled to denounce the Bush
administration’s failure to rapidly respond to the
hurricane and are demanding relief. And with gas
prices likely to stay extremely high for the next
period, support for Bush will be further undermined.

There is also widespread understanding that Bush cut
the funding for levee improvements to pay for the Iraq
war, and that relief efforts were hampered by the fact
that many of Louisiana’s and Mississippi’s National
Guard soldiers were in Iraq. This will dramatically
strengthen the antiwar mood, giving it a much broader,
working-class character as the war is increasingly
linked to domestic social and economic problems. At
the same time, the U.S. faces a growing catastrophe in
Iraq. It is likely the antiwar protests on September
24 will be huge, and could open up a new period of
mass protests against the war and the Bush
administration.

This anger is strongest in the African American
community. Katrina’s searing images of racism have had
a profound effect on the psychology of the black
community.  “To African-Americans, Hurricane Katrina
has become a generation-defining catastrophe - a
disaster with a predominantly black toll, tinged with
racism 
 ‘You'd have to go back to slavery, or the
burning of black towns, to find a comparable event
that has affected black people this way,” said Darnell
Hunt, a sociologist and head of the African American
Studies department at UCLA.” (“Katrina, Aftermath
Galvanize Black America”, Associated Press, 9/8/05)

The upcoming Millions More March against racism in
Washington, D.C. on October 15 is likely to give vent
to this anger. Despite the confused and conservative
nature of the March program, the turnout could very
well be huge in one of the largest political
mobilizations of the black community in a decade. This
explosive anger, particularly in the inner cities, is
preparing the ground for a new revolt of African
Americans against racism and poverty.

Taken together, Bush faces an immense political
crisis. The NY Times pointed out, “perhaps not since
Richard M. Nixon faced Vietnam-era tumult abroad and
at home has an American president had to meet quite
the combination of foreign war, domestic tribulations,
and political division that President Bush now
confronts” marked by the “enduring insurgency in Iraq
and the looming battles over the first double vacancy
on the Supreme Court [in] 34 years 
‘I think he's
really undermined his credibility at this point, and
it really saddles him with the kind of problems that
Johnson and Nixon faced,’ said Robert Dallek, a
presidential historian. ‘These crises are such a heavy
burden, and they are so self-inflicted, except for the
court vacancies, that if he is not very careful and
tries to put across someone who is seen as an
ultraconservative, he is going to touch off a
conflagration in the Senate.’” (9/5/05)

Bush’s credibility has taken a crippling blow, and
along with it public confidence in capitalist
institutions has been seriously undermined. 

David Brooks pointed out, “Last week's national
humiliation comes at the end of a string of
confidence-shaking institutional failures that have
cumulatively changed the nation's psyche. Over the
past few years, we have seen intelligence failures in
the inability to prevent Sept. 11 and find WMDs in
Iraq 
 We have seen the collapse of Enron and
corruption scandals on Wall Street 
 As a result, it
is beginning to feel a bit like the 1970s, another
decade in which people lost faith in their
institutions and lost a sense of confidence about the
future. Katrina means that the political culture,
already sour and bloody-minded in many quarters, will
shift 
 There is going to be some sort of big bang as
people respond to the cumulative blows of bad events
and try to fundamentally change the way things are ...
We're not really at a tipping point as much as a
bursting point. People are mad as hell, unwilling to
take it anymore.” (9/4/05)

Many on the left drew completely one-sided and false
conclusions following Bush’s election victory in
November, arguing that it signaled a right-wing swing
in the U.S. Instead, we argued that U.S. capitalism is
on the edge of historic shocks and convulsions. We
explained that, on the basis of events like the
disaster in Iraq, economic crises, and the growing
anger of workers and the oppressed, Bush’s support
would be undermined and that massive upheavals in U.S.
society - most importantly, mass movements of the
working class - were posed. 

Generally, consciousness lags behind reality. It takes
huge events, historic shocks, to shake off previously
ingrained thinking in the minds of millions of people.
Katrina is one of those shocks, breaking millions from
previous illusions and laying bare the brutal
realities of U.S. society. It has revealed how weak
Bush’s political position truly is and the potential
for mass struggles in the next period. Profound events
of this kind act as a catalyst, crystallizing in mass
consciousness the need for radical change by bringing
to the forefront the accumulated grievances that have
been building up below the surface of U.S. society for
the past period

Katrina has also severely weakened the propaganda of
the American dream and the U.S. being the “greatest
country in the world.” One of the main feelings across
the country was a feeling of “shame, a deep collective
national disbelief that the world's sole remaining
superpower could not - or at least had not - responded
faster and more forcefully to a disaster that had been
among its own government's worst-case possibilities
for years. ‘It really makes us look very much like
Bangladesh or Baghdad,’ said David Herbert Donald, the
retired Harvard historian” (NY Times, 9/3/05).
Internationally, it has also deeply undermined the
prestige of U.S. imperialism.

This catastrophe will lead to enormous questioning,
particularly by young people, of the entire order of
U.S. society. Already, one of the most striking
features of the current situation is how questions of
class and race have now entered into the mainstream
political debate.

The ideology of neo-liberalism has received a
tremendous blow. Katrina will strengthen the idea
among tens of millions that it is vital to have
publicly-funded infrastructure, social services, and
public planning. In the aftermath of the hurricane,
there is a growing demand for a massive relief effort
by the government.

But many will not stop there.  There will be profound
questions raised about the twisted priorities of an
unplanned, anarchic system which pursues foreign wars
of plunder yet is incapable of providing a decent or
stable life for the majority. The idea of a system
based on human solidarity and the democratic running
of society, socialism, will increasingly gain support.

Join us in building a movement dedicated to sweeping
away this rotten system!


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