Notes from Inside New Orleans
I just
left New Orleans a couple hours ago. I traveled from the
apartment I was staying in by boat to a helicopter to a refugee
camp. If anyone wants to examine the attitude of federal and state
officials towards the victims of hurricane Katrina, I advise you to
visit one of the refugee camps.
In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway near Causeway,
thousands of people (at least 90% black and poor) stood and
squatted
in mud and trash behind metal barricades, under an unforgiving sun,
with heavily armed soldiers standing guard over them. When a bus
would come through, it would stop at a random spot, state police
would open a gap in one of the barricades, and people would rush
for
the bus, with no information given about where the bus was going.
Once inside (we were told) evacuees would be told where the bus was
taking them - Baton Rouge, Houston, Arkansas, Dallas, or other
locations. I was told that if you boarded a bus bound for Arkansas
(for example), even people with family and a place to stay in Baton
Rouge would not be allowed to get out of the bus as it passed
through Baton Rouge. You had no choice but to go to the shelter in
Arkansas. If you had people willing to come to New Orleans to
pick
you up, they could not come within 17 miles of the camp.
I traveled throughout the camp and spoke to Red Cross workers,
Salvation Army workers, National Guard, and state police, and
although they were friendly, no one could give me any details on
when buses would arrive, how many, where they would go to, or any
other information. I spoke to the several teams of journalists
nearby, and asked if any of them had been able to get any
information from any federal or state officials on any of these
questions, and all of them, from Australian tv to local Fox
affiliates complained of an unorganized, non-communicative, mess.
One cameraman told me "as someone who's been here in this camp for
two days, the only information I can give you is this: get out by
nightfall. You don't want to be here at night".
There was also no visible attempt by any of those
running the camp
to set up any sort of transparent and consistent system, for
instance a line to get on buses, a way to register contact
information or find family members, special needs services for
children and infirm, phone services, treatment for possible disease
exposure, nor even a single trash can.
To understand the dimensions of this tragedy, its important to look
at New Orleans itself.
For those who have not lived in New Orleans, you have missed a
incredible, glorious, vital, city. A place with a culture and
energy unlike anywhere else in the world. A 70% African-American city
where resistance to white supremacy has supported a generous, subversive and unique culture of vivid beauty. From jazz, blues and hiphop, to
secondlines, Mardi Gras Indians, Parades, Beads, Jazz Funerals, and red beans and rice on Monday nights, New Orleans is a place of art and music and dance and sexuality and liberation unlike anywhere
else in the world.
It is a city of kindness and hospitality, where walking down the
block can take two hours because you stop and talk to someone on
every porch, and where a community pulls together when someone is
in
need. It is a city of extended families and social networks filling
the gaps left by city, state and federal governments that have
abdicated their responsibility for the public welfare. It is a city
where someone you walk past on the street not only asks how you
are, they wait for an answer.
It is also a city of exploitation and segregation and fear. The
city
of New Orleans has a population of just over 500,000 and was
expecting 300 murders this year, most of them centered on just a
few, overwhelmingly black, neighborhoods. Police have been quoted
as
saying that they don't need to search out the perpetrators, because
usually a few days after a shooting, the attacker is shot in
revenge.
There is an atmosphere of intense hostility and distrust between
much of Black New Orleans and the N.O. Police Department. In recent
months, officers have been accused of everything from drug running
to corruption to theft. In separate incidents, two New Orleans
police officers were recently charged with rape (while in uniform),
and there have been several high profile police killings of unarmed
youth, including the murder of Jenard Thomas, which has
inspired
ongoing weekly protests for several months.
The city has a 40% illiteracy rate, and over 50% of black ninth
graders will not graduate in four years. Louisiana spends on
average
$4,724 per child's education and ranks 48th in the country for
lowest teacher salaries. The equivalent of
more than two classrooms
of young people drop out of Louisiana schools every day and about
50,000 students are absent from school on any given day. Far too
many young black men from New Orleans end up enslaved in Angola
Prison, a former slave plantation where inmates still do manual
farm
labor, and over
90% of inmates eventually die in the prison. It is
a
city where industry has left, and most remaining jobs are low-paying, transient, insecure jobs in the service
economy.
Race has always been the undercurrent of Louisiana politics. This
disaster is one that was constructed out of racism, neglect and
incompetence. Hurricane Katrina was the inevitable spark igniting
the gasoline of cruelty and corruption. From the neighborhoods left
most at risk, to the treatment of the refugees to the the media
portrayal of the victims, this disaster is shaped by race.
Louisiana politics is famously corrupt, but with the tragedies of
this week our political leaders have defined a new level of
incompetence. As hurricane Katrina approached, our Governor urged
us
to "Pray the hurricane down" to a level two. Trapped in a building
two days after the hurricane, we tuned our battery-operated radio
into local radio and tv stations, hoping for vital news, and were
told that our governor had called for a day of prayer. As rumors
and
panic began to rule, they was no source of solid dependable
information. Tuesday night, politicians and reporters said the
water
level would rise another 12 feet - instead it stabilized. Rumors
spread like wildfire, and the politicians and media only made it
worse.
While the rich escaped New Orleans, those with nowhere to go and no
way to get there were left behind. Adding salt to the wound, the
local and national media have spent the last week demonizing those
left behind. As someone that loves New Orleans and the people in
it,
this is the part of this tragedy that hurts me the most, and it
hurts me deeply.
No sane person should classify someone who takes food from
indefinitely closed stores in a desperate, starving city as a
"looter," but that's just what the media did over and over again.
Sheriffs and politicians talked of having troops protect stores
instead of perform rescue operations.
Images of New Orleans' hurricane-ravaged population were
transformed
into black, out-of-control, criminals. As if taking a stereo from a
store that will clearly be insured against loss is a greater crime
than the governmental neglect and incompetence that did billions
of
dollars of damage and destroyed a city. This media focus is a
tactic, just as the eighties focus on "welfare queens" and
"super-predators" obscured the simultaneous and much larger crimes
of the Savings and Loan scams and mass layoffs, the hyper-exploited
people of New Orleans are being used as a scapegoat to cover up
much
larger crimes.
City, state and national politicians are the real criminals here.
Since at least the mid-1800s, its been widely known the danger
faced
by flooding to New Orleans. The flood of 1927, which, like this
week's events, was more about politics
and racism than any kind of
natural disaster, illustrated exactly the danger faced. Yet
government officials have consistently refused to spend the money
to
protect this poor, overwhelmingly black, city. While FEMA and
others
warned of the urgent impending danger to New Orleans and put
forward
proposals for funding to reinforce and protect the city, the Bush
administration, in every year since 2001, has cut or refused to
fund
New Orleans flood control, and ignored scientists warnings of
increased hurricanes as a result of global warming. And, as the
dangers rose with the floodlines, the lack of coordinated response
dramatized vividly the callous disregard of our elected leaders.
The aftermath from the 1927 flood helped shape the elections of
both
a US President and a Governor, and ushered in the southern populist
politics of Huey Long.
In the coming months, billions of dollars will likely flood into
New
Orleans. This money can either be spent to usher in a "New Deal"
for
the city, with public investment, creation of stable union jobs,
new
schools, cultural programs and
housing restoration, or the city can
be "rebuilt and revitalized" to a shell of its former self, with
newer hotels, more casinos, and with chain stores and theme parks
replacing the former neighborhoods, cultural centers and corner
jazz
clubs.
Long before Katrina, New Orleans was hit by a
hurricane of poverty,
racism, disinvestment, deindustrialization and corruption. Simply
the damage from this pre-Katrina hurricane will take billions to
repair.
Now that the money is flowing in, and the world's eyes are focused
on Katrina, its vital that progressive-minded people take this
opportunity to fight for a rebuilding with justice. New Orleans is
a
special place, and we need to fight for its rebirth.
Jordan Flaherty
Jordan Flaherty is a union organizer and an
editor of Left Turn
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