What the California wildfires should teach us
When wildfires struck again in drought-plagued Southern California in mid-May, the media were filled with analysis about their causes and reports about the government's massive response. But other disasters--this year's wildfires in West Texas, for instance, which have been many times more destructive--get a fraction of the attention.
Mike Davis, author of Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster and In Praise of Barbarians: Essays Against Empire, talked to Alan Maass about the class dynamics behind the different faces of disaster response--and the mad priorities of a free-market system that does exactly the wrong thing for working people and the environment.
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What should we know about the wildfires that grabbed the media's attention in mid-May?
As disasters become more frequent across the country, it's clear that the ones that affect celebrities and wealthier people take the foreground, and push the others into the margins.
But the situation with the most recent Southern California fires was extraordinary--you had 23 Marine helicopters, dozens of other firefighting aircraft, fire departments from all over the state, federal fire agencies. The message being sent to the people who live in their McMansions in the midst of the chaparral or the housing developments recently inserted into the back country is: Don't worry, you can count on us.
The wildfires in Southern California are some of the most destructive in the state's history--particularly the ones in San Diego County in the last decade, where several thousand homes were destroyed. But the message being sent is to keep building--because we can beat fire.
More at http://socialistworker.org/2014/05/28/what-the-wildfires-teach-us .
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