New Orleanians have not forgotten how the wealthy weaponized Hurricane Katrina to dispossess tens of thousands of workers of our jobs, homes, and livelihoods. We watched (and continue to watch) giveaways to developers, business owners, and tourism executives while our community remains displaced, impoverished, and denied basic rights to jobs, healthcare, public transportation, public housing, and public education.
For reasons the wealthy would like us to forget, New Orleanians, more than most Americans, are poised to see the COVID-19 pandemic for what it is. We know that disasters are always in part human-made: when we talk about Katrina, when we speak of the Storm, we aren’t just talking about wind and water. And when we talk about COVID-19, we know this disaster is more than a virus; it’s also a scheme of the rich ruling class.
Like Katrina, COVID-19 is being weaponized against the working class in the United States. As we see corporate bail-outs shower our exploiters with money, the working class is told to be satisfied with one-time payments and unemployment checks (which many workers still don’t qualify for) while we face mounting debts, evictions, and hunger.
With COVID-19, we currently face a disaster on two fronts: there is the immediate threat of the virus itself and the imminent and ongoing threat to our lives that the ruling class, using the virus as cover, is opportunistically organizing.
We New Orleanians must position ourselves to fight both the current and coming disaster. We must organize to ensure that our city and country are not further re-made by the wicked hands of the rich. As the ruling class weaponizes this terrible virus, the working class must organize in solidarity with one another to fight the real disease: capitalism.