|
Thanks so much for forwarding 'Notes from inside New Orleans' from Jordan
Flaherty Seamus.
I've been thinking of nothing else for over a week. Early BBC TV coverage in
Britain was very poor, in my view, while the BBC 'World Service' Radio was
already building up an incredible picture of refugees in number. What Jordan
relates here is what returning ordinary Brits have told of being trapped in
the city.
What an utter present sadness. Thank goodness for people like Jordan telling
it how it is and already thinking about the future.
Rupert
Notes From Inside New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty
Friday, September 2, 2005
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 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 is a union organizer and an editor of Left Turn
Magazine (www.leftturn.org). He is not planning on moving out of New
Orleans.
-----------------------------------------------
Below are some small, grassroots and New Orleans-based resources,
organizations and institutions that will need your support in the
coming months.
Social Justice:
www.jjpl.org
www.iftheycanlearn.org
www.nolaps.org
www.thepeoplesinstitute.org/
www.criticalresistance.org/index.php?name=crno_home
Cultural Resources:
www.backstreetculturalmuseum.com
www.ashecac.org/
http://198.66.50.128/gallery/
www.nolahumanrights.org
http://www.freewebs.com/ironrail/
http://www.girlgangproductions.com/
Current Info and Resources:
http://neworleans.craigslist.org/about/help/katrina_cl.html
_________________________
Séamas Cain
http://alazanto.org/seamascain
http://seamascain.writernetwork.com
|
