Posted on

Global Environmental Crisis: From the Amazon to the Atchafalaya, Indigenous Peoples Lead Fight to Save the Planet

Women in Brazil defend against the invasion of Indigenous territories.

By Nathalie Clarke

Amazonia is the world’s largest tropical rainforest. This 56 million-year-old expanse of forest is home to countless species of life­—many of which are still undiscovered. Indigenous Nations have inhabited the land for over 11,000 years and have helped shape the forest as we know it. Capitalist media often depict the Amazon rainforest as a vast, unpopulated expanse of land ripe for the taking. This narrative gives capitalists cover for the rampant deforestation that they’re carrying out to convert the Amazon into farmland, erasing the lives and struggles of its Indigenous People.

Although agribusiness tycoons have been burning the forest for decades, the recent fires in the Amazon dwarf past ones. Since the election of fascist President Jair Bolsonaro, environmental laws have been loosened allowing the big bosses in the mining and farming industries to do what they will. So far in 2019, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) reports an 80 percent increase compared to 2018.

“The [fires are] a direct result of each of Bolsonaro’s incentives to deforestation and his actions to make the environmental code more flexible, allowing the rural capitalists who, incited by the president, make the Amazon burn in flames, increasing their massive estates throughout the region. […] The trail of fire visible from space is a result of the expansion of agribusiness, leaving a trail of the indigenous peoples’ blood, as well as decimating the native fauna and flora” said the Brazilian group Movement of Revolutionary Workers.

These fires occurred just after the Waorani people of Pastaza won a landmark victory: half a million acres of their ancestral lands were to be protected from oil drilling. TWO WEEKS LATER we see a drastic increase in fires set to the Amazon by greedy agri-capitalists, backed by their fascist right-wing government. This is no coincidence; it’s colonization and genocide.
The fascist Bolsonaro told reporters in 1998: “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry hasn’t been as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated the Indians.”

In Brazil, in Honduras, in Louisiana, and around the world, Indigenous people have led the fight to save the planet—risking their safety and lives. A recent Global Witness report found that 3 environmental activists are killed every week; with Brazil listed as number four on the list of most dangerous places for them. On July 23rd, an Indigenous leader and organizer, Emyra Wajãpi, was found dead in northeastern Brazil. Two men who were members of Brazil’s landless activist group MST were killed in December 2018 in a rural area in the northeast state of Paraíba. The names and stories of Indigenous leaders who have put their lives on the line are innumerable.

But environmental activists don’t just face challenges from logging and mining companies. The capitalist State itself—the police, the government, the law—often criminalizes them because they know that chaining oneself to a pipeline or blocking the path of loggers stops the flow of capital like no protest alone can.

In 2017, 84 members of U.S. Congress suggested that the Department of Justice should be able to prosecute pipeline saboteurs as domestic terrorists according to definitions in the federal criminal code. Bolsonaro’s racist, violent remarks and the criminalization of environmental activists represent a global trend.

We, the global working-class, must understand our role in saving the planet. We, the derrick hands on oil rigs, the foot soldiers in endless imperialist wars, the servers that watch our bosses waste food every single day, the auto-workers and welders, truck drivers and cooks, must see through the lies these fat cat politicians would have us believe. Our neighborhoods and regions are already polluted with toxic chemicals. Our houses get built on toxic soil. Our food sources get depleted. We are demonized for eating meat or for driving a pick-up while the wealthy are allowed to jet off to Europe every other week.

We are condemned for working in oil and gas even though those are the only jobs available in our communities. How have we gotten even the smallest sliver of the pie?

The Guarani people of central-western Brazil said, “We invite everybody to fight alongside indigenous peoples against the genocidal attack which is currently underway, and which has been reactivated by the current government.” Our only answer to the current environmental crisis is ourselves: whether farmers, pharmacists, or food service workers, we are fighters, survivors, hard-workers, and we are infinitely powerful when united.

Posted on

From Gert Town to Gordon Plaza: Residents Demand Non-Toxic Homes

By Nathalie Clarke

Residents of Gert Town, a working-class, Black neighborhood, have been exposed to toxic, radioactive waste for years. There has been no action by city government. Leaked emails from 2013 show city officials discovered the radioactive materials underneath the roads on Coolidge Court and Lowerline Street near the site of an old chemical plant. Because of the Super Bowl, the fat cats and politicians, seeing the potential for massive profits, decided to ignore the problem despite concerns from an environmental consultant.

The land, purchased in 1931 when Gert Town was a white working class area by Thomas-Hayward Chemical Co., has been the site of pesticide and herbicide production, which are both notorious pollutants. Many of the toxic chemical byproducts these chemicals produce remain in the ecosystem for years after the source of pollution has been removed. Basically, it doesn’t matter that the company moved from Gert Town in the 1980s; they left their trash.

The radium-226 found in the soil is an unstable chemical compound that decays and emits radiation. Long-term exposure to radiation is known to increase the risk of cancer and can sometimes cause irreversible damage to DNA. Generations of workers have probably spent thousands of dollars on medical complications—all because of a few greedy CEOs and politicians who serve the interests of the rich bosses and never the workers.

Current residents of the area told the Workers’ Voice they had known for years about the radiation and had been complaining about the dust and smell since the 1980s. “There have been folks getting sick because of this,” one resident told the Workers Voice. “The city would have done something if this was a bunch of white folks on St. Charles,” another resident said.

Capitalism will always prioritize profit over people and the environment. From Cancer Alley to Gordon Plaza to Gert Town, the capitalist ruling class has shown time and time again that they do not value the lives of workers. They care more about stuffing their pockets and hoarding the wealth that we, the working class, produce. Residents of Gert Town deserve fully funded relocation. All human beings deserve homes on land that won’t give them cancer.

Posted on

Science Could Serve the World, but Instead It Serves the Rich

By Nathalie Clarke

Through the development of science, humans have become capable of producing more than enough food every year for every single human being—without risk of ecological disaster. Yet the World Health Organization estimates that one in six children worldwide is underweight due to undernourishment and disease. The scarcity we experience under capitalism is artificial and stems from super-rich billionaires deciding how we practice agriculture, science, and pretty much everything else. Science has become a tool that elites use to get richer and hoard more resources and wealth.

As we are faced with impending environmental catastrophes, federal and private grants continue to disproportionately favor research in fields that benefit the ruling class. According to the National Science Foundation, in 2017, universities in the United States spent only $686,729 on natural resources and conservation. Meanwhile, geological and earth sciences, which largely research ways of drilling and mining for oil and minerals, was allocated over $1,086,382. Electrical engineering, a field where research is often directed towards the production of weapons for the United States military, received a whopping $2,727,498—over half of which came from the federal government.

As they send us into their wars and into their oilfields and their mines, the billionaires who profit off the pillage and plunder of the planet make clear that they do not care about the lives of working people. This is no news—time and time again the ruling class has shown that they view us as worthless (except for the wealth that we produce for them). Science will not be the solution to any of our problems until we have successfully overthrown capitalism, the current system that rewards bosses who maximize profits regardless of the cost to workers. Only with socialism can we finally direct scientific research to solve the urgent problems of hunger, disease, and climate change.

Posted on

1.4 Million Students Hold Global Strike to Demand Climate Change Action Now!

Thousands of middle and high school students walked out of class in Sydney, Australia, kicking off a day of global youth-led protests demanding action on climate change.

By Nathalie Clarke

While capitalist politicians and billionaires twiddle their thumbs and hoard more wealth stolen off the backs of the working-class, students across the world are organizing and protesting elites’ inaction in the face of global climate change. On March 15th, an estimated 1.4 million students from across the world—from Nigeria to New Orleans—walked out of their schools. These internationally coordinated protests—the largest in 16 years—were organized entirely by the students themselves, and took place in 120 countries, 2,000 cities, and on every single continent including Antarctica.

Because our society prioritizes profit over the health and well-being of humans and our planet, species are going extinct at an unparalleled rate, and an estimated 210 million people have been displaced by rising sea levels and climate change-related disasters. Many of the students carried signs and banners directly connected the current ecological crisis with capitalism with slogans such as “Capitalism is killing the planet; kill capitalism;” or “Profit or future.”

Proposals such as the “Green New Deal,” are of great interest to many youth, but we cannot count on Congress to enact anything useful without a mass struggle—and certainly not without a militant struggle against US military spending and imperialist war. While we fight to push back to ultimately to save the planet, the humans and all species, we must rid ourselves of the capitalist system we live under. The super-rich extract every last resource from every human, animal, and plant on Earth in order to fill their pockets and maximize their profits. There’s no compromising with their greed.

March 15: Students from Lusher Middle and High School walked out of school to protest politicians’ inaction on climate change.

These student walkouts illustrate how powerful mass mobilizations of people can be. What if every single lab technician in a refinery or half the workers on the oil rigs across the Gulf South walked out of their jobs and demanded jobs in clean renewable energy? Our planet does not belong to the elites who poison our water, soil, and air. The planet belongs to us, those who have nothing to sell except our labor, those of us who toil in fields, and offices, and kitchens, and restaurants. When we are truly united—one band, one sound, despite our many differences—we win. We just need to wake up and see our power.

Posted on

STOP Evictions in New Orleans! Housing Is a Right!

By Nathalie Clarke

In many cities in the United States, gentrification has been threatening the housing security of workers. New Orleans is no exception–on average, 4.22 evictions occur every day according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. And this number refers only to official evictions, those ordered by a judge, which means it’s definitely an underestimate of how many working-class families wind up homeless. Most tenants know all too well that landlords can also informally evict tenants by paying them to leave or locking them out of their property. These eviction rates are all the more disturbing because in the United States, 75 percent of qualified families do not receive federal housing aid and one in four poor renting families is spending over 70 percent of income on rent and utilities.

Loyola University law professor Davida Finger wrote in the Advocate : “The vast majority of tenants hauled into court on eviction matters are not represented by attorneys and eviction hearings can be completed in a matter of minutes. My research on First City Court evictions over the last several years shows that from 2015, the annual number of eviction cases filed has increased steadily each year. An analysis of demographic information in census bureau tracts where evictions are most heavily ordered shows that Orleans neighborhoods that are primarily African-American are more likely to have higher numbers of evictions ordered.“

In New Orleans, landlords and city officials alike have let gentrification run rampant. Historic working-class neighborhoods like the Bywater and the Treme have become artists’ hubs with accordingly high rents. The price of one-bedrooms increases by 2% every month, and 9.6% every year. Although costs of living in the city are steadily increasing, wages have not risen accordingly. Louisiana is among five states that rely exclusively on the federal minimum wage, which hasn’t been raised since 2009 although it’s lost 9.6% of its value due to inflation.

Basically, workers are earning less, and paying more, which means they often have to work several jobs just to be able to afford a modest home close to their workplace. With workers’ purchasing power decreasing as their costs of living rise, families become more and more at risk of being late on their rent. In Louisiana, landlords don’t need to give their tenants a grace period, and can charge them late fees or give them a five-day notice to vacate, even if tenants are only a day behind.

Recent studies show that to live comfortably in the Big Easy, a family needs to make at least $60,782. Meanwhile, the median household income in New Orleans is $36,964–$23,818 short of what’s needed to live comfortably. Most workers spend 50% or more of their budget on housing, according to the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center. The National Alliance to End Homelessness found that between 2015 and 2016, 6% more people were at risk of becoming homeless because of rent burden.

Why are rents skyrocketing? Part of it is the many once long-term residences being converted into short-term Airbnb rentals for tourists, which benefits landlords at the expense of tenants. The other part is a worldwide trend in late capitalism, gentrification, whereby older, affordable neighborhoods are being invaded by wealthy, educated hipsters who move in and push out long-term residents.

For the rich, the housing crisis has obvious advantages. Not only can landlords make more money by charging more for rent, but even restaurant owners and other rich bosses get a piece of the pie: workers fearing eviction and homelessness will put up with more exploitation at work and will be more afraid to organize. What they forget is that the more they keep us oppressed under the boot of economic exploitation, the less we have to lose. With their endless attacks on our basic rights, the rich bosses simply fuel our fury and are creating a force to be reckoned with. The workers from every industry create the wealth of this city; we will not continue to accept less than what we deserve. Our brothers and sisters currently unionizing in fast food chains, restaurants, bars, and hotels leave the bosses trembling, and we will continue to fight until we break our chains and their world crumbles