Aug. 29 marks 20 years since Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast, becoming one of the most destructive hurricanes in U.S. history. The devastating toll it exacted on the majority-Black, working-class city of New Orleans will go down in history as one of the worst capitalist disasters in recent memory.
Over 1,300 people died in New Orleans, with over 200,000 displaced. Hurricane Katrina, as severe as it was, was not primarily a natural disaster. It was a brutal, man-made disaster facilitated by the capitalist system that defunded the public infrastructure needed to protect that city, then followed up with state-sanctioned neglect. The capitalist state deliberately sacrificed the city's poor and Black people on the altars of corporate profit.
What would have been a severe weather event on its own became catastrophic when the storm surge caused a failure in the levees protecting the city, plunging over 80% of the city under water. The levees had known design flaws and had not been properly maintained. In hard-hit areas like the historic Black community in the Lower Ninth Ward, flood waters rose as deep as 15 feet, leaving residents trapped in their attics awaiting rescue for days.
Lower Ninth Ward native Shaundreca Carter experienced the horrors firsthand. She recalls hearing a "big boom" sound, which many attribute to the breaking of the levees. She initially evacuated, but then returned to the Lower Ninth, out of fear for her neighbors' lives.
Her grandmother's house was 15 blocks from the levee. "We went into survival mode," Carter said. "We thought we would be gone for a week, but I realized there would be no home to go back to." She recalls finding dead bodies in the floodwaters and using a tire to swim and rescue people. She was running out of supplies for her family. After taking soap and diapers from a Walgreens for her children, police threw her on the ground and threatened to kill her for "looting."
The city did not provide evacuation transportation for those without cars
Despite warnings about the severity of the storm, New Orleans was woefully unprepared. Less than one day before Katrina made landfall, the city instituted the first-ever mandatory evacuation order, but did not provide any transportation for the quarter of the residents who did not own cars. An estimated 100,000 to 150,000 people hunkered down, either in their homes or in the few shelters across the city.
Thousands of people flocked to the Superdome and the Convention Center, where they were left to fend for themselves in squalid, dehumanizing conditions under the watch of armed guards. The stranded people speak for themselves and show us the conditions they were forced to endure in the Spike Lee documentary "When The Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts."
When the levees broke in New Orleans, the capitalist state didn't just fail -- it revealed its true character. From the George W. Bush administration's criminal neglect to the unprepared local agencies, the government left the working-class and Black residents to die. While people drowned in their homes and died of dehydration, the National Guard was deployed not to save lives, but to protect property -- to shoot and kill so-called "looters" desperately searching for food and water. Police murdered two innocent civilians on Danziger Bridge, treating survivors as enemy combatants in their own drowned city, while the racist media demonized the victims to justify the police violence that followed.
Poorly built levees responsible for devastating flooding
When building the levees, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers prioritized cost-cutting measures over effective structural design. The USACE eventually admitted that design flaws in the levees caused the majority of the flooding in New Orleans. When it came time to rebuild, the so-called "Road Home" program funneled billions to private contractors while systematically shortchanging Black homeowners, perpetuating the displacement and theft of their wealth.
The initial relief efforts were grossly inadequate. FEMA, state, and local governments were unprepared and, at many times, unwilling to help. President Bush infamously ignored the request for federal funding for two whole days.
National Guard brought in to protect property, not to rescue the people
Thousands of National Guard and federal troops were brought into the city. Instead of protecting the people in crisis, they protected property and shot at "looters." Then-Governor Kathleen Blanco affirmed, "These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will."
The corporate media shamelessly upheld this racist narrative, portraying Black New Orleanians as violent criminals, while providing cover for the federal agents and police who committed the biggest crime of all by committing acts of neglect and violence against a people in crisis.
Malik Rahim, a Black Panther and founder of the prominent post-Katrina relief organization Common Ground Relief, reflected on the traumas of the storm that still reverberate for survivors every hurricane season: "If an evacuation order is given, if you don't have money or have a place to go, what are you gonna do? Run back to the Super Dome or the Convention Center, knowing the horrors that once happened there?"
New Orleans becomes a poster child for "disaster capitalism"
A year after Katrina, half of the city's population remained displaced. Capitalist interests seized upon the so-called "blank slate" left behind in the storm's wake to enrich themselves. This plundering of public services made New Orleans a poster child for what writer Naomi Klein famously dubbed "disaster capitalism" in her book Shock Doctrine. The book explains how elites use crises to sweep through policies that benefit them -- often under the guise of community recovery -- while the impacted community remains paralyzed in survival mode.
Capitalists used the catastrophe of Katrina as a pretext for the systemic dismantling of the social and public services that working-class New Orleanians relied on.
Public housing demolished and not replaced
One of the first, and most controversial undertakings of this new privatization scheme was the gutting of public housing. The infamous "Big Four" housing projects -- Calliope, Magnolia, Lafitte, and the St. Bernard projects, in addition to the St. Thomas and Iberville developments -- were once home to over 7,000 units. While they were afflicted by poverty and had their share of problems, the projects were a crucial backbone of the city's Black working class and held a culturally iconic status. Public housing offered stable, affordable housing to low-income residents and gave them many rights and protections.
The mass displacement of working-class New Orleanians coincided with developers' appetite for turning a profit. They pushed to convert public housing into "mixed income" housing. In 2007 the New Orleans City Council voted unanimously to tear down the "Big Four" under the guise of an "urban renewal strategy" despite the buildings being structurally sound and mostly not touched by Katrina's waters.
Major protests broke out. Demonstrators clashed with police, and even chained themselves to housing units. Ultimately, however, the developers got their way, and the city's once-ample public housing stock was replaced by mixed-income developments with a significantly reduced number of units. Where the Housing Authority of New Orleans once managed 7,000 units, now there are 450 units. Many of these units are privately owned Section 8-eligible units, which don't have the tenant rights and protections of public housing.
Black residents pushed out of their neighborhoods
In the past twenty years, New Orleans, a once-affordable hub for Black working-class culture, has transformed into a fast-gentrifying city with a severe affordability crisis. In 2004, the average one-bedroom rent was $662; today, it's between $1,100-$1,400.
Before Katrina, most New Orleanians spent less than 30% of their income on rent; today, about 40% spend more than half of their income on rent. The affordability crisis, driven by the developer class, exploded in the years after the storm, and gentrification has pushed many longtime Black residents out of their neighborhoods and made housing unaffordable for the city's working class. Rahim calls the developers "disaster vultures," noting "They take people's property, and give it away to organizations so they can build gardens on someone else's property that was stolen from them."
Public schools replaced with a privatized, all-charter system
The same opportunists took advantage of the post-disaster paralysis to overhaul New Orleans' public school system. The neighborhood-based public school system was replaced by an all-charter system, where schools are managed by charter management organizations with no ties to the local community.
Over 7,000 public school teachers, mostly Black women, were laid off en masse, dismantling the teachers' union. Veteran teachers from the community were replaced with young Teach for America recruits with little experience. Capitalist interests, with the backing of corrupt local officials, succeeded in their scheme to privatize what were formerly the city's public goods.
Years later, even as New Orleans has cosmetically "cleaned up" and the city's flagship tourism industry has rebounded, the quality of life for working-class residents remains inadequate, with crumbling infrastructure, pothole-laden streets, and disgraced municipal services, like the notoriously corrupt Sewage and Water Board and the universally-despised utility monopoly Entergy.
43% of Black children live in poverty
Today New Orleans has the highest income inequality of any major city. Close to a third of the city's children live in poverty, but for Black children that number is 43%.
Shaundreca Carter reflected on the twentieth anniversary of Katrina: "Twenty years later, my community is still a disaster. It was once a thriving community, but now it is just a food desert. Going back to the Ninth Ward is triggering. It's heartbreaking."
The city is home to an unusually high number of vacant lots, an estimated 15,000, which includes 6,000 vacant homes. If the working class had democratic control over the city, these units could be repurposed to rational ends. Empty buildings could be transformed into housing to shelter the thousands of unhoused residents, and the eyesores of vacant lots could be developed into health clinics, daycares, community centers, or public parks.
More extreme weather predicted, yet Trump is cutting services
As the capitalist-driven climate crisis escalates, the threat of mass displacement looms large. The Trump Administration's recent cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the National Weather Services (NWS), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are only exacerbating the depth and breadth of destruction, as seen with the preventable loss of life caused by the Central Texas floods this summer, or Hurricane Helene in North Carolina in September 2024.
The capitalist system has shown itself to be utterly inept in the face of life-threatening disasters. The scale of climate disaster we are experiencing demands a holistic, proactive approach that prioritizes human life, not a "wait-and-see" game playing with our lives.
It's time to demand 'people first' hurricane policies
This hurricane season, organizers with the Louisiana branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation launched the Cut the Check! campaign demanding people-first hurricane policies for New Orleans. The demands to the City of New Orleans include: the spending of the remaining $600 million in FEMA funds allocated ten years ago for infrastructure repairs, increased funding for emergency preparedness, an expansion of the city-assisted evacuation program, and full transparency and accountability procedures. The campaign has been endorsed by a diverse coalition of community organizations, and even candidates running in this year's city council and mayoral races.
The horror stories of Hurricane Katrina reveal the brutal, racist character of this system that prioritizes profit over people. Every natural disaster becomes a man-made disaster once it makes landfall on capitalist shores.
As climate change intensifies and hurricanes become more frequent and severe, the need for a system that protects human life is more urgent than ever. Under a socialist system, safety, preparedness, and the health of historically oppressed communities would be a priority. We need a centrally planned emergency preparedness and response system that can make proactive investments in infrastructure to reduce flood impacts and save lives. It's on us as working-class people to unite, organize, and demand the just future that we know is possible.