Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Poor and Elderly Die in California Heat Wave

Richard Mellor | 05.08.2006 17:34 | Analysis | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements

California refuses to provide air conditioners for the elderly and frail as the US spends $11 million and hour in Iraq.

Richard Mellor
AFSCME Local 444 retired
 http://laborsmilitantvoice.com

California’s deadliest heat wave in 57 years has finally ended and as of July 29th, 126 deaths were confirmed due to the weather. The fact is that these deaths were not so much heat related, they were, like the thousands who died in the Katrina disaster, deaths that were the product of social inequity; deaths caused by the free market, not by nature.

If workers went on strike in the water industry in order to combat the attacks of capital on their standard of living and consumers died of thirst, the corporate media would not call this a “natural” disaster. If deaths occur due to smoke inhalation or fire during a firefighters strike, this would not be called death by natural causes. The capitalist press would be quick to blame workers for our greed and lack of social responsibility. But when thousands die in New Orleans or hundreds die due to cold or heat, it is an act of God or nature, not the failure of a system and the class that perpetuates it.

The victims in California, as in any heat wave, are the frail and the elderly according to state officials. The death count was so high, Roni Java of the State Office of Emergency Services called it “unprecedented”. “We don’t have any records of this kind of loss of life.” she tells the San Francisco Chronicle. (1)

Elderly people that lived alone or folks living in SRO’s (Single Room Occupancy Hotels) were among the victims and the state made some effort to check on these vulnerable people. But as anyone who has called OSHA knows, state agencies that are supposed to protect workers or consumers, in other words, that don’t function as agencies to increase the profit of business, are under-funded, understaffed, and, in many cases, just window dressing.

As more and more of the public sector is being privatized, handing over to the private sector what should be public functions means officials are placing the burden of responsibility on individuals, on the relatives and children of workers and the middle class whose lives have become increasingly stressed due to increased work hours, long commutes brought about by skyrocketing house prices, and other pressures of a society in which profit is paramount; where making money and the accumulation of wealth for a few is more important than quality of life for the many.

“The state can’t guarantee an air conditioner in every room…” says Howard Becker a doctor with the Department of Health Services and he points out that what we need is for people to check on older neighbors and people living alone, a “socially coherent network of people checking up on each other.”
No one would disagree with that. And society functions to the extent that it does because humans in the main are collective creatures, we cooperate and help each other in many individual and collective ways, day in day out.

But the state is exactly the institution that can guarantee an air conditioner in every room. It is the only social institution that can do that. And not only air conditioning, a small venture compared to the invasion of a country, but providing other guarantees that are essential to civilized living such as heat and housing and health care and education and transportation.

In the halls of Congress and state legislatures, the capitalist class and their representatives in the Democratic and Republican Parties ensure that their interests are guaranteed. While public expenditure on the poor and elderly, the sick or disabled, or education and public transportation finds itself on the chopping block, one item that is guaranteed not to be there is interest paid to moneylenders, the interest on public debt.

The Savings and Loan scandal that cost millions of Americans their savings and cost billions in taxpayers dollars to repair, (some $300 billion by some estimates) was made possible through the intervention of the big business politicians in Washington who voted to de-regulate the industry in 1982.
Ron Dellums, the new mayor of Oakland California and darling of the progressives, voted to deregulate the industry as well as voting against HR 27 in 1987 that would have restricted risky investments by S&L’s. Barbara Boxer, another liberal favorite voted against that measure. (2) The few thousand millionaires and billionaires that control society ensures the “state” guarantees them their health and welfare and ensures that we pay for it.

Despite decrying the failings of big government through their mouthpieces like Rush Limbaugh and Fox’s O’Reilly, the capitalist class recognizes that the state or what we call government, is an institution that represents their interests and use it to do so. The US capitalist class didn’t just defeat the British in the revolutionary war; they created a new form of state that better suited their economic interests. As working class people, it is important to recognize that a capitalist state cannot serve our interests; that it will never provide health care for its people, or eliminate poverty, that it will never provide a decent education for all, and that without being forced, it is incapable of even preventing the deaths of sick or elderly people in one state in the mighty USA by providing air conditioners.

While recognizing this, it is just as important to recognize that through struggle we can win certain reforms from this state, that we can force temporary concessions from big business. But once we recognize that “their” state, a government that serves “their” economic interests, can never fully serve ours, can never resolve much of the crisis that we see around us from California to the Middle East,
We must have an alternative.

Collectively we have the labor power, the technology and the human ingenuity to solve the many dilemmas we are faced with every day. From housing to education, hunger to health care. Millions die each year not due to hunger, but to the failure of the so-called “free market” to allocate resources in a planned and rational way whether it be food, water, concrete and steel or even human labor power.

The fight to win air conditioners for the elderly in California is part of a wider struggle for working people to take control of the resources of society and the planet, of what we call the means of production, the farms, the factories, the building of houses and communities, the education of our children, and the private banks and financial institutions where the resource we call capital is stored. It is a struggle to take these resources and collectively decide where and how we use them based on human need and not profit and we plan how we use them in a collective and rational way. This is the only solution.

It is important to reject the idea that organized society cannot provide such a simple thing as an air conditioner for elderly Californians; it is just not a high priority for those who control government. Society, organized in a different way, can eliminate global poverty; Warren Buffet and Bill Gates cannot; they can only perpetuate it.


(1) SF Chronicle, (7-29-06)
(2) Who Robbed America? A Citizen’s Guide to The Savings and Loan Scandal: Michael Waldman
7-29-06

Richard Mellor
- e-mail: aactivist@igc.org
- Homepage: http://www.laborsmilitantvoice.com

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech