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Hurricane Milton Devastates Florida: Rebuild The Climate Movement!

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Astounding residents and meteorologists alike, Hurricane Milton had developed into one of the strongest storms in recorded history before it made landfall Wednesday evening. By Thursday morning, Milton had passed over Florida and into the Atlantic, leaving over 3 million people without power and 4 people dead.

Before making landfall, Milton was the 4th strongest hurricane ever recorded by pressure on this side of the world. News meteorologist Noah Bergren commented, “This hurricane is nearing the mathematical limit of what Earth’s atmosphere over this ocean water can produce.”

Milton hit right after the devastation of Hurricane Helene, which highly damaged Asheville, North Carolina, despite the city sitting 300 miles inland. The deadly, increasingly frequent effects of climate change are playing out in real time, and yet, both political parties are committed to protecting big business over the environment.

Working People Pay The Price

Before Milton hit the west coast of Florida, hundreds of thousands of residents were unable to evacuate. Most Americans don’t have enough money in savings to buy a plane ticket, and alternative options are limited when millions of people try to use congested roads at once. 

Many residents are immobile, disabled, or have limited mobility. Some bosses will compel workers to stay, and thousands of people have nowhere to go as hotels in safe areas quickly booked up.

Working people bear the brunt of the misery caused by storms like hurricane Milton. Major cities in Florida have some of the highest rents in the country, and what little affordable housing that does exist is often in flood-prone areas.

This is on top of the Florida real estate bubble, where home insurance rates are skyrocketing, insurance providers have withdrawn from the market, and the Florida state public insurance option is hollowed out for private profit. Thousands will likely return to their homes, only to find them gutted and impossible to rebuild because of unaffordable insurance.

It’s not the billionaires who end up stranded from hurricanes—they’ve already taken their private jets to their third mansion by the time these storms hit and they have more than enough money to rebuild their damaged homes afterward. Climate change is caused by the billionaires and their polluting corporations, but the working class pays the price.

Political Establishment Gridlocked

Disaster response and FEMA funding are completely gridlocked by Republicans, while the Democrats do little to challenge them. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Mike Johnson from Louisiana, is refusing to hold a special session and to hold a vote on emergency FEMA money. 

Meanwhile, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is dodging calls from Vice President Harris regarding Hurricane Helene storm recovery and preparation for Hurricane Milton because, according to him, it might seem “political”.  

Meanwhile, Trump’s newest xenophobic conspiracy is aimed directly at the Harris campaign, claiming “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants.” Trump’s claims have also suggested that this is so Harris can win votes from undocumented immigrants, another dangerous idea Trump is using to preemptively falsify election results.

Billionaires like Elon Musk are fueling other right-wing conspiracies about FEMA stealing land, which are designed to undermine confidence in Biden and the Democrats. Basically, we can expect massive public disorientation in the wake of Hurricane Milton, which already includes FEMA workers being threatened with violence for carrying out work tasks.

There are glimmers of hope, though, in the form of community-organized disaster response. Groups across the areas affected by Hurricane Helene have organized to pool resources and divvy it out to the neediest residents. These grassroots aid networks show the healthy instinct workers have towards mutually supporting each other, but ultimately working people don’t have enough money between ourselves to rebuild entire cities. 

The money we need to prepare for future disasters and rebuild in the aftermath is in the pockets of the fossil fuel corporations who have done everything possible to make global warming worse for the sake of their profits. We need to take them into democratic public ownership and use their billions in profits to rebuild, not force working people to pay for it out of their own paychecks.

In the absence of government action, labor unions should step in to provide aid as many did during Hurricane Maria. But by doing so, we should expose the rotten priorities of the billionaires and their political representatives who pour billions into destructive wars overseas while neglecting working-class residents at home.

Hurricane Election Season

Hurricane Helene was the first catastrophic event in U.S. history to hit two critical swing states within six weeks of a presidential election, now followed by Milton. 

Research shows that disasters like hurricanes can reduce voter turnout. For every centimeter of rain—less than half an inch—the odds of voting drop about 1 percentage point, according to an estimate published last year. The heavier it rained or snowed, the better Republican candidates fared, according to the same report. 

At the same time, Hurricane Helene hit especially hard in heavily Republican areas of Georgia and North Carolina, which could hurt Trump. A 2022 study found that voter turnout fell below historical averages in heavily Republican counties of Florida after Hurricane Michael demolished the area in October 2018. Voters were confused by polling places being relocated, and weren’t sure where to go on Election Day.

The 2020 election saw record turnout, and this year could see the same in a highly polarized election. We can add climate change to the list of the biggest threats to democratic rights, which include undemocratic institutions like the electoral college undermining the popular vote, millions of voters being blocked from voting because of past felonies, and corporate cash being spent in record numbers on Democratic and Republican campaigns. State governments need to ensure displaced residents have guaranteed access to mail-in ballots and temporary polling stations that are widely announced.

Rebuild The Climate Movement

We urgently need to rebuild an environmental movement that is prepared to take on both the Republicans and Democrats in the fight for the massive changes that are needed to lessen the impacts of climate change. 

Unlike most Republicans, the Democratic Party accepts that climate change exists. The Democrats have opened funds for green energy, but at the same time Biden oversaw the biggest oil and gas boom in US history, undermining any effort to curb emissions. One Democratic party pollster, David Shor, recently tweeted that he “would much rather live in a world where we see a 4 degree rise in temperature than live in a world where China is a global hegemon.” 

To be clear, a 4 degree rise in global temperature would mean extreme heat waves, widespread droughts, major flooding, and significant sea level rise, potentially rendering large parts of the Earth uninhabitable for human life. That is the future that both corporate parties are barrelling toward at full speed.

True political independence from those parties is necessary for the working class to tackle this global crisis head on. We need a new party whose politicians are accountable to the working class and who will fully fund disaster aid, emergency housing, schools, unemployment benefits, and healthcare to make these communities livable for working-class people.

A genuine workers’ party will need to fight for taking the biggest polluters into democratic public ownership, and use their blood-stained profits to instead retool the energy grid with green energy sources, employing union labor. 

But at the end of the day, the capitalist system will never allow for the radical changes that are necessary on the timeline needed to save billions of lives. We need a fundamental change to business as usual. We need socialism, and we need it fast.

​​Socialist Alternative Calls For:

  • Immediate relief for residents affected by disasters. Fully-funded accommodations like emergency housing, meals, schools, and mental health support.
  • Building a mass movement to take the top 100 polluting corporations into democratic public ownership, end all oil and gas drilling, expand free public transit, and immediately transition to green energy with a massive infrastructure program employing union workers.
  • A vote for left independent, anti-war candidate Jill Stein in November, and building a new working class party that doesn’t take a penny from billionaires or fossil fuel corporations.

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