the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Sep 1, 2025
Twenty years ago, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, leading to one of the worst disasters in U.S. history. An estimated 1,800 people lost their lives, and 200,000 people—more than 40% of the city’s population—were made homeless. Residents drowned in their homes or climbed onto rooftops awaiting help. Taking into account all the communities on and near the Gulf Coast hit by Katrina, nearly two million people were turned into refugees.
But as strong as the hurricane was, what really caused the majority of the loss and suffering was the way capitalist society ignores the threat of extreme weather and its consequences on populations.
Practically all the deaths happened during the flooding that followed the hurricane. Most of that flooding, and the deaths, could have been prevented.
For decades before Katrina, commercial and industrial development had eroded or removed natural storm dampers such as islands and marshes. On top of that, offshore oil drilling had caused New Orleans to sink. Scientists and engineers had warned that, in the absence of natural storm barriers, the levee system around the city would need to be reinforced to withstand strong hurricanes, as these storms periodically hit the Gulf Coast.
But the politicians who ran the city and state governments did not spend money for the protection of the population—especially poor, working-class people. Democrat and Republican alike, they were, as they are today, political representatives of the same big business interests that profited from the weakening of the city’s storm defense.
So, when Katrina hit as a Category 5 hurricane, the levees were not strong enough to hold against it—and the storm surge breached more than 50 levees and other floodwalls. Flood waters, as high as 20 feet in some areas, inundated 80% of the city.
It was known at least five days in advance that Katrina would make landfall near New Orleans. But the only evacuation “order” was the mayor’s informal call to residents just one day before Katrina hit: “Gas up your car and go.” More than 100,000 residents did not own cars. No mass transportation was available for an orderly evacuation.
Hundreds died in the city’s working-class neighborhoods, which lay below sea level. Money buys high ground in flood zones. So, it was largely poor, predominantly Black working-class neighborhoods that were badly flooded.
The authorities, concerned primarily with protecting the city’s wealthy neighborhoods, made no place for the thousands of flood survivors to go. The commanders of the armed forces sent their troops to barricade off the houses and businesses of the rich. Working-class people looking for food and shelter were called “looters.” They were shot at and forced into makeshift prisons. Thousands of National Guard troops herded, at gunpoint, 35,000 flood survivors into the Superdome and Convention Center.
Millions of people across the country saw, on their TV screens, the centuries-old racism of American society, still alive. Black Americans especially recognized in anger that almost all of the people stuck in the city’s two concentration camps were Black—abandoned to live and die in filth, without enough food and water, without sanitary facilities. There was no medical care for the injured and dying. For a whole week, no help arrived; dead bodies were scattered across the floors. When they did get out, most survivors were forced onto buses and planes and flown to other cities.
After the flood receded, many of the working-class residents were blocked from coming back. Their neighborhoods in ruins, disaster relief money was distributed to advantage more affluent areas. As areas were rebuilt, contractors built and sold more expensive homes. Many workers were forced to leave New Orleans.
And so today, the population of New Orleans is 100,000, or about 20% less than what it was before Katrina. The difference is even more blatant in Black, working-class neighborhoods: Lower Ninth Ward, for example, almost entirely Black, has only one third as many people today as it did before Katrina. In short, capitalists and their politicians used this enormous disaster to push working-class people out of New Orleans and remake the city for themselves.
All the death, destruction and misery that the functioning of capitalist society brought upon working people in New Orleans 20 years ago is in our future also. Weather-related disasters are clearly getting more frequent, and more severe, year after year because of the warming of the earth. That warming trend has been accelerated by the burning of more and more fossil fuels—coal, oil and natural gas—for energy.
It will continue to get worse, as long as big capital has control over society’s wealth and resources and wants more of it for itself. Today, the Trump administration is even denying climate science altogether. Until control of society is wrested from the grip of the capitalist class, we will face a future of ever multiplying climate disasters: fire and flood.