A Lesson from Hurricane Dorian

Workers Don’t Need the Bosses But the Bosses Can’t Survive Without Workers

Class determined who suffered as Hurricane Dorian laid waste to Abaco Islands. Baker’s Bay, located among the islands, is a playground for millionaires. The Mudd is the adjacent neighborhood of immigrant Haitian workers who maintain this exclusive playground.

The Baker’s Bay Golf and Ocean Club is a development that comprises amenities for the rich. Townhomes sell for millions; individual homes for tens of millions.

The Mudd was built with abandoned construction materials on low-lying, flood-prone ground. It is ravaged periodically by fires. The Bahamian government calls it “an unregulated community.” Most of the residents, Haitian workers, are illegal according to the government and are subject to deportation.

In communism, the collective labor of our class will provide for our collective well-being, no matter what nature has to dish out.

The homeowners had the Haitian workers prepare their sturdily built houses for the storm, while the owners monitored the hurricane from afar. Their residences suffered some damage but remained intact.

Meanwhile, the trapped workers in the Mudd watched their shacks leveled. Many died, joining 28 other Haitian migrants, who drowned in February when their boat capsized. The Haitian workers had to evacuate. There is nothing to return to in the Mudd.

Now the club management is complaining that they can’t find workers to get the resort up and running. The racist xenophobia of the club’s bosses is disgusting!

“And these workers are the ‘bad people’ the president says we have to worry about?” said a Boeing worker who helped distribute our pamphlet on the communist answer to the bosses’ xenophobia.

The U.S. government is looking for any excuse to get Haitian workers kicked off the rescue boats headed for the U.S.

This same government is trying to deport tens of thousands of Salvadorans, Hondurans and Nicaraguans. For decades, these workers have built and maintained the storm water tunnels, new Metro lines and train stations and people-movers at Dulles International Airport in Washington, DC.

This is part of the attempt to end the temporary protected status (TPS) of hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came to the US fleeing poverty, armed conflict and natural disasters in their home countries. It will directly affect 195,000 Salvadorans, 46,000 Haitians and tens of thousands of others. Ending the TPS is part of the ongoing attack by US bosses on immigrant workers.

A similar dynamic played out during the recovery efforts after Katrina in New Orleans (USA). Mexican immigrants provided the labor. The fancy areas were rebuilt, while the black, poorer neighborhoods were left to rot.

Around the world, workers build the playgrounds for the rich bosses, and everything else, for that matter. The working class is left to suffer and die from “natural disasters.” Then the bosses complain that they don’t have enough workers to rebuild.

In communism, there will be no playgrounds for millionaires. In fact, no millionaires!

No worker will be considered a foreigner. The word will be meaningless when there are no nations or borders.

Workers will expend their labor building decent, collective housing that can stand up to the weather. No shantytowns for immigrant black workers or any workers!

Workers have built everything everywhere. The bosses would like us to think that we can’t function without their “expertise,” when just the opposite is true. Only the working class can meet the needs of our class. The international working class has the knowledge and skills to bring food, clean water and air, and excellent healthcare to every part of the globe.

Haitians demonstrate in Washington, D.C. in February 2019 against termination of Temporary Protected Status

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