New Orleans, Katrina and Race

“This place is going to look like Little SOMALIA.” That’s what Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force told Army Times on September 2^nd... five days after Katrina hit New Orleans. “We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.”

At the same time babies died for lack of milk. Older people died from exposure or dehydration. People with illnesses and/or disabilities died from a lack of medicine or treatments. People died from exposure. Families were torn apart with nothing in place to help them find one another. Too few busses arrive to carry people to relative safety.

Lieutenant General Steven Blum told reporters half of the troops had just returned from assignments overseas and are "highly proficient in the use of lethal force." He pledged to "put down" violence "in a quick and efficient manner."

When did New Orleans join the axis of evil? What did the primarily black citizens of New Orleans do to be compared to Somalia? Did we really expect the National Guard attack the survivors of this American tragedy? Don’t we believe the National Guard’s role is to protect and defend not create a military state for the innocent?

Of course, New Orleans needs to be safe and protected from the criminal elements that exist there. But, is this why the rescue mission was so delayed? The numbers of criminals are quite small compare to the throngs of displaced, law-abiding people. They could have done both simultaneously as they are doing now.

The National Guard should have been in New Orleans before the hurricane with amphibious vehicles, MREs, water and medicine. The National Guard should have been evacuating the victims of Katrina before she hit landfall. Federal, state and local officials knew the threat, knew that the levee was vulnerable, that the poor had no way to get out of its path, and knew Katrina was hurricane of their nightmares. Yet they did so little. Why?

Officials continue to receive a lot of criticism for not having a plan. But they did. The poor, elderly and disabled were to either stay and ride it out, or go to the superdome. We watched an interview with the head of emergency services as people flocked into the Superdome before Katrina made landfall. A reporter asked him about the services the people were going to receive. He said he was there to house them… not to feed them. You see, that was the plan. They made that plan despite knowing how fragile the levee was, despite the mock disaster failure.

There were no plans for food, for meeting hygienic needs, for keeping families together or anything else. That is the kind of planning that officials make for poor and other disenfranchised. The displaced know it and it’s why they are angry. You would be too.

When Katrina peeled the roof off the superdome, she exposed the ugly, hypocritical lie of American equality. Who was left? People who are poor, disabled, and of color. They know why it took five days for government to make a footprint at the convention center and other places where people were herded. They know that, in this society, they do not matter.

It’s not often that mainstream America gets to see what happens to people who fall through the safety net. It is ugly and horrifying. The institutional racism, and discrimination exposed by Katrina should make us realize that we have become complacent. We still have much to do to make America what it should be.

What is happening evokes in us some of the same feelings we had in the ‘60s when we saw young black people bitten by dogs, tear-gassed and attacked with fire hoses. The civil rights movement truly took on a national character when we saw what was happening in the south back then. What’s happening in New Orleans today stirs within us the same emotions and disbelief. And again, white people are shocked at the disparity, and have trouble accepting what is happening right here in America.

Let’s not forget these feelings, because the fight against injustice continues. Nationally, it continues as we continue to look for the living and the dead in the gulf coast, it continues as we discuss the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Locally, it continues when city officials fail to meet consent decrees. It continues when bond issues for new school are up for a vote. And, it continues when your neighbors deny a small group of disabled people a home in your neighborhood.