Climate disaster in Bangladesh
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10 SOCIALIST ACTION SEPTEMBER 2015 (continued from page 5: “Climate disaster in Bangladesh”) dering it unfit for cultivation.
As for the shrimp, they are now victims of infec tious diseases. The “market” doesn’t care: if neces sary, capital will bring destruction elsewhere. But the local population is sunk into poverty. This problem is in fact not recent; it dates back to the early 1990s. In a region where shrimp aquaculture has been developed, nine villages resisted, under the impetus of a woman who was murdered by the police. These villages have become an island of greenery, biodiversity, an exam ple of food sovereignty, a living condemnation of the agro-industry. It is this type of struggle in which we are engaged for the defense of the peasantry, but also precarious workers, street vendors and the urban poor or indigenous peoples (Adivasis).
We [also] have provided aid to the textile workers who were victims of the collapse in Dhaka of the Rana Plaza industrial building in 2013 (aid to the hos pitalized first, and then the purchase of sewing ma chines for women workers with lifetime disabilities), or to villages affected by floods or exceptional cold in the north. n with Moscow.
One of the biggest employers in my hometown is a plant making triggers for warheads, operated by Honeywell and unionized in the IAM. They recently moved in to a giant new facility—leaving an environ mental mess behind at the old. Both the bosses and union bureaucracy are enthusiastic supporters of “modernizing” the nuclear arsenal because it means huge profits and some decent paying jobs.
That’s why we also need to pay attention to this oth er crisis. We must develop a Just Transition program to protect the nuclear industry workers as we advo cate eliminating new production, and dismantling ex isting stockpiles—just as sane and serious worker cli mate activists are starting to do for the vast economic restructuring needed to stop climate change. n