Toilers in Central America are also being hit by days of heavy rain. Throughout the affected areas those who work directly on the land or depend on its produce for employment and sustenance are being pounded by this catastrophe. At least 50 people have died, and 20,000 have been driven from their homes, in the worst-hit state, North Carolina. One government official predicts that as many as 15 percent of farmers in the state could lose their farms. The government has declared the eastern two-thirds of North Carolina to be a disaster zone, along with parts of Virginia, New Jersey, and New York.
Capitalist relations shape the differential impact of the floods.
Faced with such natural calamities, the banks and agricultural corporations that hold working farmers in debt-bondage respond by tightening the screws on those they exploit. The wealthier farmers who employ wage labor tend to live on higher ground, both literally and in the economic sense. They are the major recipients of government assistance when it comes. But in North Carolina and elsewhere, workers, farmers, and their families, along with proprietors of small enterprises, bear the brunt of the flooding. Their farms, homes, schools, and jobs are destroyed or jeopardized.