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End the Racist Occupation of New Orleans Now!

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Our wise fellow-traveler, Comrade Cindy Sheehan said on her blog, "George Bush needs to stop talking, admit the mistakes of his all around failed administration, pull our troops out of occupied New Orleans and Iraq, and excuse his self from power."

The International Socialist Workers' Liberation Party agrees wholeheartedly and is prepared to take all necessary steps to stop the racist occupation of New Orleans by the Imperialistic and Fascistic US government.

The "natural" disaster that is hurricane Katrina is not natural at all! Like the Indian Ocean Tsunami, it is the product of Western Imperialism and the continued exploitation of the working class by the ruling fascist elite. Our comrades from the Internationalist Group (League for the Fourth International) have this to say on the matter (taken from the September 5th edition of The Internationalist)

...the devastation of New Orleans was not natural, nor just the result of callous, criminal neglect, – it was mass murder by the racist rulers of capitalist America.

The authorities knew exactly what would happen in a major storm, and did nothing to prevent catastrophic damage. They knew the floodwall was vulnerable precisely at the point it was breached. They knew that over 100,000 people would be stranded in the city, and they left them there to die. In the aftermath, the survivors of Hurricane Katrina have been held prisoner in the flooded city.

The hue and cry over looting is a racist ploy: desparate flood survivors scavenge for good while the oil companies loot on a massive scale. As has frequently happened through the ages, a natural phenomenon laid bare the fault lines between the classes in a rotting, decaying society.

The real response to this outrage is not to call on criminals in power to improve preparations for the next disaster, but to fight for socialist revolution to bring down the system that perpetuates war, racism and poverty

This truth is self evident, and all our comrades call for the same course of action, the establishment of a "a socialist planned economy, in which natural resources and the technological and productive forces of society would be marshaled on behalf of human needs, not profit." (the Workers Vanguard No. 854).

However, there is no agreement as to the method in which this socialist utopia is to be established. The Workers Vanguard, a truly progressive publication deserving every kind of praise, says this:

Reformist leftist groups are pumping out lists of immediate demands for flood relief, for housing, for jobs —all urgent necessities. But what is left out of the equation is how we''re going to get those things. The agency for social change the working class, including its key black component is not what they look to to carry out their demands.

Typical of this approach is the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP). In a 4 September statement that calls for “a planned, cooperative economy run by the workers,” the FSP argues that “public pressure” can prevent the Bush administration from using the crisis to enrich Halliburton, Bechtel, et al.

Workers World Party's new front group, the "“Troops Out Now Coalition,"” one of the groups organizing the September 24 protests against the occupation of Iraq, calls for “Money for Hurricane Relief, Not for War.” A coalition statement calling for a “national campaign for emergency action” headlines, "The Bush Administration Is Criminally Negligent." It then states, “We call on the Bush Administration to do all manner of good things, including a massive jobs program at union wages for rebuilding." What is this, Christian redemption through good works by war criminals?

Such groups cynically appeal to naive young liberals who believe that the American government, even under Bush, can be made to respond to "“public pressure."” In practice, such pressure politics is a vehicle for bourgeois "lesser evilism," i.e., the Democratic Party.

Left-liberal publicist Naomi Klein states in the Nation (26 September), "New Orleans could be reconstructed by and for the very people most victimized by the flood." But how? New Orleans is owned already, by corporations and big landlords. They must be expropriated, their system of exploitation overthrown by workers revolution, before such mass rebuilding in the interests of the people can take place.

It is clear that there can be no question of collaborating with the Fascists in Washington and their Democratic sycophants. There can also be no collaboration with their friends, the so-called "socialists," like the FSP who merely disgrace the proud name of socialism with their insane antics. There can be no other solution to the world's problems than a radical, progressive, socialist, violent and ethical revolution of the working class against the tyranny of the capitalists.

Which is where we come back to New Orleans. The poor, black, exploited people of New Orleans, called "looters" and "criminals" by the right-wing media, are, in fact neither. They are not "looting" but radically redistributing the wealth of the city from the capitalist exploiters to the truly underpriviledged who deserve it.

When a poor black man breaks into a store or a middle-class home and takes a TV set, he is not doing that because he is a criminal, that is a racist lie! He is taking it because he believes that he deserves it, that is is his right as a human being to own a TV set, especially one that has been stolen from him by the rich white middle-class exploiter.

He is not a criminal, nor a thief, but a revolutionary hero, living his life according to the progressive principles of Marxism, trying to create a little socialist utopia for himself and his family. What is happening right now in New Orleans is not looting, it is the beginning of a class war, a socialist revolution, one that we have dreamed about and hoped for since the October Revolution in Russia.

And this is why you hear about the "looters" in New Orleans. That is why you hear about thousands of National Guard troops patrolling the street shooting the revolutionaries on sight. The fascists in Washington have realized what is going on and are now doing their best to suppress this revolution.

They have invaded and occupied the city of New Orleans, much like they have invaded and occupied Iraq. They claim to bring "peace" and "order" yet all they bring is racism, hatered, and oppression.

US OUT OF IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN, HAITI, SOUTH KOREA, AND NEW ORLEANS!

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Apparently, they were going to re-enforce the levi's, but the enviro-whackos didn't let them.



 
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