Skip to main content

From a reader:

Grieving for the Loss of Lives from the Maui Fires… and Angry at the System

Updated

Editors’ note: Wildfires that started on August 8 on the island of Maui in Hawai`i quickly spread and have caused widespread destruction, including the burning down of the town of Lahaina on the western coast. More than 90 people had been reported killed as of August 13, and the number of casualties continues to climb. This is described as the deadliest wildfire in the U.S. in more than a century. Various factors are reportedly involved in the ferocity and magnitude of the fires, including strong winds from a hurricane near Hawai`i and the effects of global climate change. We received this correspondence on the fires from a reader in Hawai`i.

As I'm grieving for the loss of life on Maui, the evacuations and loss of homes and means of living, the loss of habitat and land, I'm also filled with anger! As I'm seeing the photos of Lahaina I feel like I'm seeing Nagasaki. That the fire happened on the day before August 9, the day that the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki (in 1945) isn't lost on me. The anger I feel at a system that dropped the bomb is the same anger I feel at a system that fundamentally denies climate change. A system that now places our whole planet at the brink of extinction through either war or climate change. Hawai`i is in the crosshairs of both.

"That the fire happened on the day before August 9, the day that the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki (in 1945) isn't lost on me. The anger I feel at a system that dropped the bomb is the same anger I feel at a system that fundamentally denies climate change. A system that now places our whole planet at the brink of extinction through either war or climate change."
Maui destruction of whole city of Lahaina, August 9, 2023.

 

Maui, August 9, 2023.    Photo: AP screen grab

Destruction three years after nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

 

Nagasaki, November 1945.    Photo: U.S. Army Air Forces via japanairraids.org

This week's hurricane was predicted to be nothing but a strong wind—but instead ignited a full-scale disaster; a disaster that was predictable (even while the moment couldn't be predicted). Climate change has brought less rainfall to Hawai`i and has decreased humidity, bringing about extreme fire conditions. Hawai`i's farmland has become non-profitable and has been abandoned, while invasive plants that are known to be tinderboxes for fire have been left to grow rampantly. Expansion of tourism and underfunding of infrastructure (including emergency services) is well known but ignored.

As the disaster continues and state services are completely incapable of controlling the fires or providing necessary services to the thousands who are left houseless or have been evacuated, who are we told to depend on and thank? The federal government and its military. The system. The same system that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The same system that denied climate change for decades—and continues to expand drilling for fossil fuels, deep sea minerals, and more. A system that is compelled to expand, expand, expand. A system that has a name: capitalism-imperialism.

So what do we do now? The people of Hawai`i ARE largely dependent on the military to do search and rescue, to drop water from helicopters, to provide financial help to those who need it. But we're also being told to just "get out of the way," or at most give money and pray and let the system that got us into this in the first place "rescue us," even while they continue to perpetuate (and even plan) more devastating disasters in our futures.

NO. We cannot just stand aside and wring our hands, hoping the next disaster doesn't hit too close and interrupt our comfortable lives. It's up to us to refuse to tolerate these continual outrages and injustices and search for a radically different and better society and world! And it's up to us to ACT on that, while searching for a REAL solution.

If you're one of those dreaming of a far better world, I urge you to read the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America and the Interviews with Bob Avakian, “Heart and Soul & Hard-Core for Revolution,” both available at www.revcom.us. Do your own study. Refuse to retreat into fear and hopelessness and instead fight for a whole new world where humanity and the planet can flourish. I, for one, don't think this is a pipe dream, but I do know it will take millions of people. And that depends on each of us.

...we have two choices: either, live with all this—and condemn future generations to the same, or worse, if they have a future at all—or, make revolution!

—Bob Avakian

See also:

DONATE to revcom.us. 
DONATE to the revolution.

DONATE

From the genocide in Gaza, to the growing threat of world war between nuclear powers, to escalating environmental devastation… the capitalist-imperialist system ruling over us is a horror for billions around the world and is tearing up the fabric of life on earth. Now the all-out battle within the U.S. ruling class, between fascist Republicans and war criminal Democrats, is coming to a head—likely during, or before, the coming elections—ripping society apart unlike anything since the Civil War.

Bob Avakian (BA), revolutionary leader and author of the new communism, has developed a strategy to prepare for and make revolution. He’s scientifically analyzed that this is a rare time when an actual revolution has become more possible, and has laid out the sweeping vision, solid foundation and concrete blueprint for “what comes next,” in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.

The website revcom.us follows and applies that leadership and is essential to all this. We post new materials from BA and curate his whole body of work. We apply the science he’s developed to analyze and expose every key event in society, every week. Revcom.us posts BA’s timely leadership for the revcoms (revolutionary communists), including his social media posts which break this down for people every week and sometimes more. We act as a guiding and connecting hub for the growing revcom movement nationwide: not just showing what’s being done, but going into what’s right and what’s wrong and rapidly learning—and recruiting new people into what has to be a rapidly growing force.

Put it this way: there will be no revolution unless this website not only “keeps going” but goes up to a whole different level!

So what should you give to make 2024 our year—a year of revolution?
Everything you possibly can!
DONATE NOW to revcom.us and get with BA and the revcoms!

Your donations contribute to:

  • Promotion of BA on social media and the Bob Avakian Interviews on The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show
  • Strengthen revcom.us as an accessible, secure, robust website able to rise to the challenge of meeting the extraordinary demands of navigating the storms and preparing for revolution in this pivotal, unprecedented year
  • Fund revcoms to travel to national “hotspots,” where extreme contradictions are pulling apart the fabric of this country and creating the possibility of wrenching an actual revolution out of this intensifying situation
  • Expand the reach and coverage of revcom.us
  • Printing and distribution of key Revcom materials including the Declaration “WE NEED AND WE DEMAND: A WHOLE NEW WAY TO LIVE, A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT SYSTEM” and the Proclamation, “WE ARE THE REVCOMS (Revolutionary Communists)”

More ways to donate

DONATE