in praise of looting

[Organic Revolution]

In Praise of Looting

Thursday, September 01 2005 @ 09:10 AM PDT
Contributed by: Admin
Views: 3512

Anarchist OpinionThe devastation wrought on the Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina is clearly evident three days after the winds started blowing and the journalists scampered out from their hotels. Most of New Orleans is under water. The Mississippi and Alabama coasts are obliterated. The situation in New Orleans is dire as thousands of people struggle to survive and get out of the worsening toxic cesspool that the city is becoming.

In Praise of Looting
Blaming Katrina's victims for not being rich

By Harry Looter
For Infoshop News
September 1, 2005

“The Iberville Housing Projects got pissed off because the police started to "shop" after they kicked out looters. Then they started shooting at cops. When the cops left, the looters looted everything. There's probably not a grocery left in this city.”
http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/

The devastation wrought on the Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina is clearly evident three days after the winds started blowing and the journalists scampered out from their hotels. Most of New Orleans is under water. The Mississippi and Alabama coasts are obliterated. The situation in New Orleans is dire as thousands of people struggle to survive and get out of the worsening toxic cesspool that the city is becoming.

In the midst of all of this pain and misery, the media and the authorities have decided that the central story now is the looting and “lawlessness” that are taking place around the city. The poor, mostly black, victims of Hurricane Katrina are being blamed for their response to the situation. Their logical response to having the homes and neighborhoods destroyed is understandable given that this disaster has been happening for a long time in their neighborhoods and lives. The ongoing disaster that they are reacting to is the catastrophe known as capitalism.

The media knows that playing up the looting on TV plays well in Peoria. Comfortable middle class white people watch the New Orleans situation on TV and resort to simplistic Christian judgments about right and wrong. Some of them understand that the “looters” have a moral right to take food and medicine, but they seize on news that looters have taken guns and TVs as evidence that the looters are bad people. The authorities help reinforce these beliefs with their constant pontification about how looters will be punished. This morning the authorities are further demonizing the poor people of New Orleans by suspending rescue efforts because some person fired at a Coast Guard rescue worker. We all know that if some white dude in a rich neighborhood that was under water fired at rescue workers the rescue effort would continue uninterrupted.

What exactly is so evil about taking a package of Pampers or some cans of food from a Winn-Dixie or a Wal-Mart store? These people are trying to survive in neighborhoods that are under water, with no services of any kind. Are the rescue workers, the media, or the state dropping pampers and bottled water into the flooded neighborhoods of New Orleans? Are the on-the-scene Fox News anchors putting down their microphones, rolling up their sleeves, and helping rescue people?

The media and authorities’ obsession with looting is racist, capitalist and simply inhumane. What difference does it make what people take from the stores near their neighborhoods? They have no access to food, clean water, diapers, medicine, shoes, liquor, cigarettes and all the things that they need to get through this crisis. It’s not like these corporate grocery stores are going to go bankrupt because hungry people clear out an inventory that will have to be destroyed once the waters recede. People are “dumpster-diving” from stores who are insured, well capitalized, and which will have to throw away all of their stock anyway.
The Government Can’t Help You

The failure of the American state to respond to this tragedy is abundantly clear at this point. In its typical fashion, the state will turn the situation into a circus before the capitalist profiteers move in. On Friday, American president George W. Bush will fly into New Orleans to perform a photo op while some residents of New Orleans are still trapped in their attics. Many poor residents will be dying as Bush speaks useless words about the catastrophe. The hungry and wet people won’t be fed by Bush’s visit, but perhaps if he falls out of a helicopter while surveying the damage, the residents can make a good jambalaya with the presidential corpse. Meanwhile, there are reports that Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was laughing it up last night at a production in New York City of 'Spamalot'.

The catastrophe in New Orleans once again demonstrates the inability of the state to take care of its subjects, especially its poorest citizens. For all of the talk about “homeland security” over the past few years, very little homeland security was available for the residents of New Orleans. There are reports now about how the government cut back on programs that would have helped New Orleans weather this disaster. The immediate response by rescue workers was hampered by the fact that the Louisiana National Guard is stuck in Iraq, fighting and losing an imperialist war staged by Bush and his Halliburton cronies. The evacuation plan worked for middle and upper class people with cars, but apparently there was no effort to bus poor people out of the city as Hurricane Katrina approached.

If there is a silver lining in this ongoing tragedy, it involves the small acts of mutual aid being done by New Orleans residents for each other. This includes people rescuing people from flooded houses, people helping move sick people to dry ground, people sharing food and materials with each other, and much more. In times of natural or manmade disasters, humans have shown time and time again their ability to help each other out via mutual aid. These responses play out organically and can’t be organized by the state. In many instances, the state’s efforts interfere with this mutual aid and make situations worse. It’s pretty clear in New Orleans that the state totally failed the poor residents of the city.

Looting is not a problem in New Orleans right now. People have a right to take what they need to survive. Even if they take things that aren’t needed for survival, those of us watching from the comfort of our dry homes have no reason to complain about these actions. Finally, let’s remember that looting is a form of wealth redistribution. When rich people loot, they call it capitalism, good business practices, third quarter dividends, the new economy and “giving people job.” When your neighborhood is under water and there are no relief services in sight, taking diapers from a Wal-Mart is not a criminal or immoral act.

Hooray for the looters!

[Xvall]

I concur.

[Ownthink]

Originally posted by Drake [email protected] 5 2005, 06:54 PM
I concur.
That there makes it 3 of us.



:hammer:

[rioters bloc]

four

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Fifthed. I wonder if their insurance covers this?

[Commie Girl]

;) Sixth

[Warren Peace]

Seventh. Viva New Orleans!

If you really want to support the people of New Orleans, check out my thread! (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=40077&st=0&#entry1291932675)

[Bannockburn]

The looting is nothing more than the term the rich called the poor for fearing the have-nots were collecting their fair share. This time guns and alarms weren't enough, they demanded justice.

[Phalanx]

Who respects property, honestly?
Eighth.

[Organic Revolution]

9th? i guess

[Ownthink]

Originally posted by [email protected] 5 2005, 09:30 PM
The looting is nothing more than the term the rich called the poor for fearing the have-nots were collecting their fair share. This time guns and alarms weren't enough, they demanded justice.
When rich people loot, they call it capitalism, good business practices, third quarter dividends, the new economy and “giving people job.” When your neighborhood is under water and there are no relief services in sight, taking diapers from a Wal-Mart is not a criminal or immoral act.


Viva New Orleans! Indeed!

[Bannockburn]

When your neighborhood is under water and there are no relief services in sight, taking diapers from a Wal-Mart is not a criminal or immoral act.

I agree. If that was directed at my previous post, and you perceived it as if I was condemning the actions...I think you need to read it again ;)

[Ownthink]

Originally posted by [email protected] 5 2005, 09:54 PM


When your neighborhood is under water and there are no relief services in sight, taking diapers from a Wal-Mart is not a criminal or immoral act.

I agree. If that was directed at my previous post, and you perceived it as if I was condemning the actions...I think you need to read it again ;)
Not at all! I was just agreeing with what you posted, and kind of adding onto it with that post.


:hammer:

[Bannockburn]

oh okay! I was about to say to myself, "I have to make myself clearer". Glad that's cleared up.

[Organic Revolution]

bumpity bump bump!

[Xvall]

All the popular kids are looting.

[Reds]

Do they not know that if they give them food that would stop most the looting? Silly capitalists.

[praxis1966]

I don't know how the law works in Louisiana, and my understanding of Florida common law might be antiquated, but if a similar situation occured in my home state, the 'looting' would be perfectly legal. You don't even need a natural disaster.

According to the law here, if you are starving and without food, or sick and without medicine etc., you can steal your necessities and can't be convicted for it. I suppose of course that you could be arrested for it, but you can't be convicted (provided you were stealing actual food and not the cash to buy it, and you could prove that you had no other option). The law considers televisions, CD's, radios, and the like luxuries, however.

Legalities aside, the moral trespass has to be the attitudes of the elites towards the poor of New Orleans. Rescue operations are painfully slow. There's a huge lack of available necessities (water, food, shelter fit for humans), which primarily is due to the so-called 'civil' authorities not knowing their asses from a hole in the ground. Not only that, but the cultural elites now insist on talking about how much better off they are, as if they should be grateful for the meager handouts they are receiving.

[Reds]

Do they have these kind of laws anywere else?

[praxis1966]

I really couldn't speak to that end. I was just remembering what I learned in a couple of introductory level state law classes I took here in Florida.

[GoaRedStar]

Great article


Hurricane Katrina disaster shows the failure of the profit system
Statement of the World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board
6 September 2005


The devastation in Louisiana and Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina will forever change the way broad masses of American working people look upon their government and society. The shock of the storm and the subsequent inundation of New Orleans have exposed the rottenness of the existing social order. It was not only the levees that failed, but the social and political institutions on which millions of people rely.

It is now being reported that as many as ten thousand human beings, fellow citizens, or even more, may have perished during the past week. They are dead because of the incompetence, negligence, and indifference of the government. They are dead because the United States is a country in which millions of people live in or on the brink of poverty. They are dead because this is a capitalistic society where the accumulation of vast personal wealth for a small percentage of the population is deemed more important than the welfare of the people as a whole.

With the full dimensions of the hurricane disaster still unclear, the Bush administration and the various state and local governments are engaged in an exercise in mutual finger-pointing, seeking to affix blame for the catastrophe. From the standpoint of the working class, however, they are all guilty: the Republican president, the Democratic governor and mayor, the legislators of both parties at every level. All of them uphold the profit system which is the root cause of the disaster.

American society is organized on the basis of the profit motive. In no other country are the economy, the political structure and the entire culture so completely subordinated to the principle that personal accumulation of wealth is the highest goal. The destruction of New Orleans, by a disaster that was predictable and came with ample warning, demonstrates that the principle of private accumulation is incompatible with a rational and humane society.

Modern society is mass society. Despite the reigning ideology of individualism—or, in the current terminology, “personal responsibility”—hundreds of millions of people in the United States rely upon complex social systems to provide them with the essentials of life: food production and distribution, water, electricity, heat, transportation, education, health care. Failure of these systems, particularly in a major urban area, quickly reduces the population to barbaric conditions.

Working people perform the labor which keeps the social infrastructure operating, but they have no decision-making power over it. These social systems are for the most part owned and controlled by giant corporations for whom profit, not human need, is the determining criterion. Those systems for which the various levels of government are responsible, such as the levees and canals surrounding New Orleans, are likewise subordinated to profit interests, through the control of American politics by the wealthy.

The New Orleans region is a particularly critical nodal point in the US economy. Not only is it one of largest sources of oil and gas, both in terms of domestic production and imports, but it is a hub of transportation for the lower South and for freight shipments throughout the interior of the United States.

Now millions of working people are paying the price, not only in the mass suffering of the survivors of the New Orleans catastrophe, or those in the wider Gulf Coast region, but nationally, where the cost will be registered in economic losses, skyrocketing prices of gas and heating oil, and spreading economic dislocation.

Why was the disaster not prevented?

Why did the US political system prove incapable of allocating the resources necessary to prevent this catastrophe?

Press reports now indicate that the destruction of New Orleans and the deaths of thousands of innocent people could have been prevented by the expenditure of relatively modest sums. About $2 billion was needed for immediate reinforcement and upgrading of the levees and canals, while $14 billion was the estimated cost to restore the ecosystem of the Mississippi delta, which would provide longer-term protection against the impact of hurricanes. But the mania in Washington for tax cuts and deregulation made such expenditures, tiny compared to the cost of the disaster, politically impossible.

The Bush administration repeatedly cut funding for the maintenance and upgrading of the levee system, despite pleas by local and state officials, in order to uphold more urgent priorities: the enormous military budget, including the cost of the war in Iraq, now more than $200 billion, and trillions in tax cuts for the wealthy.

It is symptomatic that as the levees collapsed, Congress was returning from its August break to take up, as its first order of business, a bill to extend or make permanent the virtual elimination of the estate tax, a measure which would funnel hundreds of billions of dollars to only a few thousand families, the richest of the rich.

This neglect of vital public works is the end result of three decades in which the American ruling class has sought to systematically dismantle the extremely limited elements of social infrastructure and a social safety net left over from the New Deal programs of the 1930s. These had been established under Franklin Roosevelt in response to the greatest social and economic crisis of the 20th century, which included not only the financial collapse that produced the Great Depression, but an acute environmental crisis affecting the Great Plains (the “Dust Bowl”).

The New Deal created not only social welfare systems like Social Security and regulatory agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission, but public works programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority, which built dams and levees to curb flooding and provide cheap and reliable electrical power.

Despite the howls of Roosevelt’s enemies within the ruling class, these measures were not socialistic. They sometimes infringed on the short-term profit interests of particular groups of capitalists, or even of the entire capitalist class, but only to forestall a social upheaval from below that would threaten the profit system as a whole.

Today, by contrast, the US political system is dominated by a frenzied drive to destroy all barriers to the accumulation of personal wealth. Taxes have been virtually eliminated on the principal sources of income of the super-rich, such as capital gains and other forms of financial speculation.

The driving force of the shift to the right in the politics of both major parties, the Democratic as well as the Republican, is the economic polarization of American society. The vast majority of the population has been proletarianized, working from paycheck to paycheck for corporate employers, large or small. The sizeable property-owning middle class of Roosevelt’s day—the family farmers and small businessmen—has been largely absorbed into the working class, which now comprises the vast majority of the population. Even the best-paid workers face mounting insecurity, living on the edge, facing the danger that a layoff or serious illness could plunge them into the abyss.

At the other pole of society, there has been an accumulation of wealth in private hands on a scale unmatched in history. In the richest country in the world, less than one percent of the population owns over 40 percent of the wealth. Excluding housing, this privileged elite owns close to 90 percent of the wealth—stocks, bonds and other financial assets, as well as commercial businesses. It is this class which controls both the Democratic and Republican parties and the government at every level—local, state and federal.

The political consequences

Under different circumstances, and with a different political system, the abysmal performance of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other federal agencies would call into question the survival of the government. Certainly, governments have fallen from power for far less.

But the US political system, more than any other nominal “democracy,” is thoroughly insulated from the sentiments of the masses. The only “public” that counts for the Democratic and Republican parties, for the media pundits and the rest of the political establishment, is the ruling elite and its hangers-on among the wealthiest sections of society. With incomes in the high six figures and above, and massive personal assets, they are divided from the working people by an unbridgeable social gulf.

This was reflected in the expressions of scorn and contempt for the working class families who would not or could not leave New Orleans before the storm hit. The political and media establishment cannot conceive of the conditions of those who either had no car, had nowhere to go, or no money to spend, or who were waiting for an end-of-month check.

Even if Bush were to resign the presidency tomorrow, he would be replaced by Cheney or some other Republican or Democratic politician, and the system would go on as before. No serious alternative for working people can emerge in such a fashion. Nor would the replacement of the Republicans by the Democrats in the 2006 congressional elections or the 2008 presidential election make a significant difference.

There is no simple or easy answer to the crisis facing the working class, because the issues are so fundamental. It is necessary for working people to draw basic conclusions about the nature of the social and economic system which has produced imperialist war, attacks on democratic rights, growing inequality and now complete breakdown in the face of a natural disaster.

Mankind has entered the 21st century with science and technology that are continuously being revolutionized, and which carry with them the potential for abolishing poverty, hunger, disease and all other social ills. But this is impossible so long as society is constrained within an economic framework and class structure that developed in the 18th and 19th centuries: the private ownership of the productive assets of society by a small minority of capitalists, whose sole concern is their individual profits.

The choice before the American people is to cling to an anti-social and egotistical individualism, obsessed with the gluttonous accumulation of personal wealth, or to form a new political movement based on the struggle for social equality and the commonweal.

For the working class, this means recognizing that the great questions confronting American society require a struggle for political power. It is not a matter of pressuring the ruling elite, or replacing one section of that elite with another. The working class must organize itself as a political force and make itself the master of society. This requires the creation of a new political party of the working class, independent of and opposed to the Democrats and Republicans, and based on a socialist program.

The majority of the people must decide, not merely the name of the next president—after the ruling elite has carefully vetted the two “choices” to be placed on the election ballot—but how society is to be organized. Workers must ask themselves what the priorities of society are to be: the social interests of the many or the accumulation of personal wealth by the privileged few? Why are hundreds of billions available for a war for oil, but nothing to maintain public services that have proven to be literally a matter of life and death for tens of thousands?

A new political road must be found. The vital next step in this struggle is to build the Socialist Equality Party and expand the readership of the World Socialist Web Site. We call on all those who now see the need to build a powerful political movement of the working class, within the United States and internationally, to contact and join the SEP.


http://wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/stat-s06.shtml

[Organic Revolution]

that was a long, boring artical, sorry to say.

[rioters bloc]

it was long, but i didn't find it boring

thanks for that :)

[Commie Rat]

thw first one was short and to the point without reiteration

[Commandante_Ant]

I am in support of the looting if it is for food, clothing etc.

If it is for guns, televisions etc, then i do not agree with it.

[praxis1966]

I hate to say this, but looting for guns may at this point be necessary. It's getting like the fucking Wild West down there (what with the 'law men' drawing down on people trying to get food), and honest citizens are probably finding it necessary to protect themselves.

[Commandante_Ant]

Good point. In that case, its ok. Has Martial Law been declared yet?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

A de facto martial law was declared before the hurricane even landed.