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9-23-04

Poor, Black, and Left Behind

By Mike Davis

The evacuation of New Orleans in the face of Hurricane Ivan looked sinisterly like Strom Thurmond's version of the Rapture. Affluent white people fled the Big Easy in their SUVs, while the old and car-less -- mainly Black -- were left behind in their below-sea-level shotgun shacks and aging tenements to face the watery wrath.

New Orleans had spent decades preparing for inevitable submersion by the storm surge of a class-five hurricane. Civil defense officials conceded they had ten thousand body bags on hand to deal with the worst-case scenario. But no one seemed to have bothered to devise a plan to evacuate the city's poorest or most infirm residents. The day before the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast, New Orlean's daily, the Times-Picayune, ran an alarming story about the "large group…mostly concentrated in poorer neighborhoods" who wanted to evacuate but couldn't.

Only at the last moment, with winds churning Lake Pontchartrain, did Mayor Ray Nagin reluctantly open the Louisiana Superdome and a few schools to desperate residents. He was reportedly worried that lower-class refugees might damage or graffiti the Superdome.

In the event, Ivan the Terrible spared New Orleans, but official callousness toward poor Black folk endures.
TomDispatch

Yeah, 9-23-04

posted by degustibus at 7:51 PM

 
No Cake at the Superdome -- Let them eat shit.

We need to understand that the capability has been there from the start to drive water and food right up to the convention center, as those roads have been clear -- it's how the National Guard drove into the city.

Let me say this again: The government is intentionally not allowing food or water in.
Mitch Cohen

posted by degustibus at 12:23 PM

 
Giving

Okay, pony up, but where to put the bucks?

I consulted my brother who's got a much more eleemosynary spirit than I -- he volunteers at the Salvation Army, does good in many ways.

I tell him it's a toss up between the Red Cross and the Sally. He tells me that the international head of the Sally gets $310 a week, a car and a house, just like every other officer in the Salvation Army.

The head of the Red Cross gets $250,000 a year.

My Hurricane Katrina disaster relief donation is going :: Here
posted by degustibus at 6:27 PM

 
& Hope is a thing with wings & pigs fly

If one good thing comes out of this tragedy, it will be the repudiation for decades of the idea that people who don't believe in government have any place running the government.
--Jeffrey Dubner

posted by degustibus at 1:37 PM

 
What Went Wrong? It Was Privitised.

Now we know why there was no FEMA presence --

New Orleans' seemingly unintentionally accurately named 'catastrophic hurricane disaster plan' was privatised last year.

IEM, Inc., the Baton Rouge-based emergency management and homeland security consultant, will lead the development of a catastrophic hurricane disaster plan for Southeast Louisiana and the City of New Orleans under a more than half a million dollar contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Lenin's Tomb

I think this may mean a lot of work for lawyers.

"So America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job" Paul Krugman, NYT

No: Not so much a can't-do government, but a sold-out, won't-do government, your Ownership Society.

This way to the egress, folks.
posted by degustibus at 1:14 PM