Houston, TX – In late August, Hurricane Harvey hit Houston and it caused untold destruction upon the city. Entire neighborhoods were submerged in water, hundreds of people lost their cars to flooding, and there were over three dozen deaths. The city's response was not very good; the well-off middle-class communities received immediate aid, but the working class and predominantly Black and Chicano/Mexicano neighborhoods received little assistance. In Houston's Sunnyside, for example, a predominantly Black neighborhood, there were nearly no FEMA responders and large rescue teams.

Two weeks later, students at UH sent a group of volunteers to donate goods to vital community mobilization and services organized in the wake of Harvey's devastation. This initiative was organized and led by Black organizations, to serve Black communities. Working together, these organizations have gathered and distributed food, water, clothes, and other essential items. They have assisted with overhauling homes destroyed by flood waters.

Patrick Higgins, an organizer with SDS says, “We in SDS are proud to do our part to assist in serving the poorest of Houston. It was poor communities of color hit the hardest by Harvey's rainwaters, much the same as it was in New Orleans before us, much as it has been the past decade all across the U.S. Gulf coast.”

Higgins continued, “While both city and federal government apparently have the military resources to impose a ‘curfew’ of one of the largest cities in the country in order to police poor people more aggressively, state services and brand name aid NGOs are nowhere to be found in Northeast Houston to meet human need. This truly is yet another Katrina, another racist barbarity of the capitalist system, where countless families are left to pick up the pieces of their lives from a manmade disaster only for the system's cheap salesmen to insist on calling these events ‘natural.’”

Students for a Democratic Society is continuing to organize students at the University of Houston to help with the relief effort. Please see their Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/houstonsds/) for updates.

#HoustonTX #StudentsForADemocraticSociety #EnvironmentalJustice #HurricaneHarvey

Fight Back!: It is Friday at 11 p.m. in Houston. How is the weather? What is likely to happen? Lilli Ana Castrillon:“It is raining hard and the wind is very, very strong. It has been this way for four hours now. I believe flooding is going to be all over this part of Texas for the next few days.”

Fight Back!: Harvey is a category 4 hurricane that just reached land in Texas. What are you and other people doing to prepare for this?

Castrillon: “We have supplies; lots of water, candles, food, etc. Enough for the next few days. The place I'm staying is relatively safe. Lots of people have evacuated. We lost power around 8:30 p.m. We can see the floods already.”

Fight Back!: Do you remember when hurricane Katrina refugees were forced to live in the Astrodome?

Castrillon:“Yes it was awful. People went thru a lot. I have a friend that was a reporter for Univision. He said that it was like a refugee camp in a war zone. My friend said it was really, really bad and he could not believe what he was seeing there. Then Barbara Bush, President George W. Bush's mother, said that after all, the people from New Orleans were much better off there because they didn't have much anyway.

#HoustonTX #EnvironmentalJustice #HurricaneHarvey