[Mb-civic] To Our International Friends: This is America

[William Swiggard]

To Our International Friends: This is America
by Socialist Saturday, Sep. 03, 2005 at 8:43 AM

Thank you to the solidarity messages from around the world we are all 
reading. We are also reading your illusions of the United States. What 
is taking place in the 90,000 square miles that were flooded, an area 
the size of Great Britain, that includes Louisiana, Mississippi and 
Alabama, is typical of what takes place everywhere in the United States. 
The neglect of social services and physical infrastucture such as 
levees, the poverty of the workingclass, the blatant racism, and the 
horrifying criminal arrogance and murderous actions of the capitalist 
class and its lackeys like Gov. Blanco exist all across the United States.

Now that you have finally seen the reality, please do not come here if 
you can possibly find somewhere else to live or attend school; please do 
not buy American goods, and please stop repeating the sales pitches of 
the Chamber of Commerce that the United States is some kind of fantasy 
land of freedom, democracy and opportunity. It is impossible for any 
capitalist country to be such a fantasy land, and the United States does 
not come close as it is the most backward country in the industrialized 
world with the highest infant mortality and lowest life expectancy. We 
still have the death penalty (abolished in all of Europe), we still have 
no national healthcare system (unlike the rest of the industrialized 
world) and above all we still have no labor movement, as labor is only 
13% organized, and even among organized labor, nothing is being 
accomplished as they are accepting cut backs in wages with every union 
contract.

There are private efforts being made to help the people in Louisiana and 
the rest of the hurricane damaged area, but no charity efforts can 
compare to what our tax dollars can pay for. The United States 
government has at its disposal thousands of helicopters, huge Navy 
hospital and fresh water tank ships, Navy desalinzation ships that could 
make fresh water from the waters of the Gulf of Mexico region; enough 
cots, tents, blankets, medicine, food, clothing, water, portable toilets 
and all other necessities to temporarily house all hurricane victims 
today; enough buses either that it owns or that it can take over from 
private companies like Greyhound to transport everyone immediately; and 
the resources to do all of this before the hurricane arrived, which was 
adequately predicted. We taxpayers also have paid for the ability to 
immediately permanently house, feed and provide medical care and 
adequate income to everyone as the United States budget is in the 
trillions of dollars. This is a country of about 300 million people, 
about the size of Europe, and it is about 3,000 miles from the east 
coast to the west coast. In other words, mobilizing private aid is 
difficult and costly, although it is being done, and we can never beat 
the economic and political power of the United States government, 
courtesy us taxpayers.

We are witnessing a society that puts profits before people, private 
property before human beings, greed before need. This is the stench of 
capitalism. We are also witnessing the bitter legacy of slavery that 
still exists in this country, although slavery was officially abolished 
in the 1860s and segregation officially ended in the 1960s. The term is 
racism, and since New Orleans was 60% African American, with a large 
percentage of the population being poor, the lack of assistance should 
come as no surprise to any American. Keep in mind that we still have a 
US Senate, the millionaire's club that was a concession to the 
slaveholding states, where each state, no matter how large or small, has 
2 senators, so that the small states have as much power as the large 
states. The US Senate should be abolished, as should the electoral 
college, which makes it possible to elect presidents who have no popular 
support. The electoral college was also a concession to the 
slaveholders. The current president sits in office courtesy election 
fraud in both the 2000 and 2004 election, and the whole system is rigged 
in favor of the twin parties of capitalism, the Democrats and Republicans.

Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were part of the slaveholding 
Confederate states, and the US capitalist class has actively promoted 
the backwardness that exists to a greater degree in the former 
slaveholding states than in the northeast and far west, both northern 
areas having strong labor organizations.

The barbarity the world is witnessing perpetrated by the US against the 
people of Iraq comes from the barbarism the US capitalist class 
perpetrates right here in the United States. The horrifying tortures the 
world saw at Abu Ghraib is typical of the entire US prison system, and 
that prison system is filled with the poorest sectors of the 
workingclass, who are mostly poor African-Americans and poor Hispanic 
Americans, while the majority, 75%, of the US population is white, 
non-Hispanic.

This is a society that puts guns before butter because war is 
profitable, and maximization of profit is the primary law and goal of 
capitalism.
As the World Socialist Website states on Sept. 2, 2005, at
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/noir-s03.shtml
"Vast funds expended on the Iraq war and other acts of US militarism 
have been drained away from social spending at home. With the upcoming 
approval of yet another emergency spending bill for Iraq, Congress will 
have appropriated $250 billion for the war. Washington is spending on 
average $5.4 billion a month on the war. Thus, the Pentagon will expend 
in less than two months the equivalent of the entire relief package that 
the Bush administration has requested for New Orleans and the devastated 
Gulf Coast."

Only a serious labor movement can put an end to this bankrupt social 
order. At the peace demonstrations we will have on September 24 in San 
Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and your town if you organize 
it, let's make the labor contingent the largest contingent and organize 
the unorganized now.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/noir-s03.shtml
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