The One and ONLY Nawlins

THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE KATRINA:
In Whose Image Will New Orleans Be Reconstituted?

Yesterday Lance Hill sent out the email below. It landed in my email via the Texas NOW newsgroup. I phoned Dr. Hill at his home in New Orleans and asked permission, which he gave, to post his email and his op/ed piece about the aftermath of Katrina and what it means now.


Email from Lance

Friends:

I am sorry about the long delay in response to all of your many queries, but we only now got an email connection so that we can communicate with rest of the world.

Eileen and I are fine. As you may know, we ignored the evacuation order and spent 33 days under martial law inside New Orleans, leaving only to get medical treatment and supplies to bring back inside the Parish. It was quite an experience. On Friday, September 2nd we filled our car with food and water and began runs into the Morial Convention Center, where more than 10,000 people were languishing outside in the heat with little food or water. Police, guardsmen, and the Red Cross refused to enter the convention center to help people because they claimed it was too dangerous. Their claims of danger were just an excuse to starve people out of the center. The refugees were kind, grateful, and protective of me (I was, though, chased and fired upon by state police on one of my return trips for supplies).

On my fourth and final run I was stopped at gunpoint by city and state police and told not return because they were preparing to bring in food and water themselves, which they did. It was the single most emotionally disturbing day of my life. On the way to the center I drove past a bloated body on one of the city's main intersections: it remained there for ten days.

Eileen and I spent the rest of our 33 days inside taking care of people who had also refused to evacuate, mostly elderly people who would not abandon their pets to go to the shelters and who lived on the historically high and dry alluvial ridges. We also spent a great deal of time trying to communicate to the media what was happening inside. Despite endless threats of "forcible extraction" from our house by a number of law enforcement agencies and guard units, we managed to avoid arrest and forced evacuation. The closest we came was on September 28 when the police kicked in our front door and illegally searched our apartment in response to my refusal to provide identification to a patrolling Oklahoma guard unit.

The "police" turned out to be Tulane University security guards loaned out to the militarily to make arrests in the surrounding neighborhoods. No apology from Tulane and they did not even suspend the officer. But that's another story.

Tulane has sealed off the campus and locked us out of the Southern Institute office building for nearly seven weeks now, though our building took on only 18 inches of water on the main floor. So we have had to set up a satellite office and we are now up and running.

We can only hope that our irreplaceable collection of interviews with Holocaust survivors and veterans of the civil rights movement has not been destroyed by the heat and mold.

Eileen and I left after 33 days to get some "R & R" and returned last Monday. The martial law and curfew orders are, for the most part, unenforced now and most of our neighbors are back and things are returning to normal. We are in good health, though Eileen has permanently lost her teaching position in Orleans Parish schools--along with virtually all the other 5,000 teachers. But we fared far better than most: only today Eileen learned that one of her co-workers lost her husband in the flood.

I have attached an op-ed piece I wrote the second week of the hurricane. It was never published, but I still agree with most of what it, though now I think there is little hope that New Orleans will ever reconstitute its black majority community. The locus for the struggle for racial justice is now, and will remain for years to come, in the predominantly white cities to which New Orleanian blacks have been exiled.

More later
Lance Hill, Ph.D.
lhill@tulane.edu


September 16, 2005
New Orleans

Day 19 of Martial Law
By: Lance Hill

"The niggers are killing each other over in Lafayette," said the pickup driver, referring to the black New Orleanians who had relocated to a shelter in Cajun country following Hurricane Katrina.

The driver was a middle-aged white man employed by a disaster clean-up business, was accompanied by the owner of several local gas stations. I sat quietly observing from the back seat of a Texas National Guard humvee on my way to receive a tetanus shot at a military hospital.

(I had refused to evacuate and, thankfully, the Texans had decided to defy city and state authorities that prohibited providing food, water, or medical assistance to "outlaws" such as myself). "Thank God you guys are here," the driver shouted over din of his diesel engine. "Keep the blacks out," he yelled. "Don't let them back in. We're going make this a beautiful city."

New Orleans authorities will soon suspend martial law and permit the reentry of all New Orleanians to their city. This will result in one the most remarkable political transformation of any major city in United States' history. New Orleans will resurrect under a white political majority in a city where African Americans were 70% of the population only a month ago. This seismic shift is the direct result of Katrina's destruction of tens of thousands of black homes that, notwithstanding massive federal aid and flood insurance guarantees, will never be rebuilt, or will be rebuilt at costs far beyond the reach of most blacks.

The question that will face New Orleanians in the coming weeks is "In whose image will New Orleans be reconstituted?" What will become of black New Orleans and its dynamic culture that gave the world Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, Mardis Gras Indians, brass bands, and uniquely inflected contemporary musical innovations in rap and hip hop music? What will become of the endearing culture of celebration that served as an antidote for the numbing boredom of repressed but and colorless Midwestern lives. The spirit and ethnic diversity of New Orleans is worth saving as much as the Italianate mansions along St. Charles Avenue. But as we rebuild this city there will be tremendous pressure to commercialize, package, and deliver the culture without the people who made it. New Orleans, the city of majestic homes and elegant muscular oaks will no doubt be reborn, but possibly without a soul. Such a spiritual death will result in New Orleans becoming the Orlando of the South. That's when I will voluntarily evacuate.

Since Hurricane Katrina came ashore on August 29, I have traveled by bicycle through hundreds of neighborhoods taking care of strangers (mostly pet lovers who would not leave their pets) talking to people from all walks of life. I do not pretend to know what the nation's perception of the events here have been. We "resisters", as the government has dubbed us (odd, I thought I was a "resident") have gone three weeks without newspapers, Internet access, postal service, landline phones, and receive almost all of our news through one officially designated radio/television station. So I do not know the issues in the national policy debate on the rescue and recovery efforts. But I do know what I have seen and heard on the streets, and it is not encouraging.

There is a growing and powerful "racial exclusion movement" among a significant section of the white New Orleanian community that sees Katrina as an opportunity to eliminate poverty and crime by eliminating black people. It is not a new movement, nor is it the sole province of parvenu gas station owners. Proposals to remove the New Orleans black population enjoyed a measure of support as late as the 1950s. I now hear many members of the old moneyed "carnival royalty" families openly arguing that Katrina provides an opening to depose black majority rule in the same way that their confederate forbearers overthrew the bi-racial Reconstruction government in?

I draw a distinction between a disaster and a tragedy. Disasters are something nature inflicts upon humans. Tragedies are something humans inflict upon other humans in their botched efforts to remedy disasters. The rescue efforts were clearly a tragedy; now we are faced with a second tragedy in the recovery processes both material and moral.

The decisions that will set the course for recovery for decades to come are being made today——with only one percent of the city's voters present. It is not a foregone conclusion that the issues of equity and fairness will make it to the table. The table has already been set, and who will be at it is anyone's guess. The New Orleans African American community finds itself fragmented and living in exile; not only the thousands of poor and unemployed African Americans in shelters, but also the thousands of educated black middle class professionals who comprised the city's political, intellectual, religious, and social justice activist leadership. When these people return things will no doubt heat up, given that the majority of black voters opposed Mayor Ray Nagin's election and his strongest critics, like the rest of the city's residents, have not been allowed back into the city.

There are already ominous signs that the recovery path may end up reproducing privilege inside New Orleans and poverty outside.

Economically secure white New Orleanians have, for the most part, returned to secure their homes, yet no return provisions have been made for poor homeowners and renter. Particularly disturbing is the failure of corporate and institutional leadership in the city to set an example of equity. As thousands of unemployed black New Orleanians sit idle in relocation centers in Texas, many of New Orleans' leading businesses and institutions are rapidly cleaning up with the help of thousands of workers--largely Hispanics imported from Texas. The city is flooded with Latinos who will soon become the new preferred service class. This development does not bode well for the eventual return of the black working poor.

Despite the dearth of outside news, I did listen to President George Bush's speech on the radio when he laid out his recovery plan. His call to build 4,000 new homes for low-income people is a good start; but that will provide housing for less than six percent of the 350,000 blacks that lived in New Orleans before Katrina. What was missing from his speech was a commitment to a specific funding level and the guarantee of equality in outcomes, not simply treatment.

The degrading treatment of black New Orleanians during the rescue phase also raises questions about the recovery process and equity.

To this day, the city and state governments refuse to provide water, food, or medical aid to anyone remaining in New Orleans, though virtually all of those people live in the thousands of homes that sit on historically high ground and have never flooded by way of Lake Ponchartrain. Many of these residents are wondering aloud if we should place our confidence in the same people to plan and direct a recovery process that results in a vibrantly diverse city?

The final task is that of moral recovery. My wife, Eileen San Juan and I originally stayed because we have lived through thirty years of hurricanes and floods and have always stayed to care for our homes and help our neighbors. It is the appalling indifference to the suffering of others that I have witnessed as a "resister" inside the city that convinces me that we urgently need a carefully planned and comprehensive program for "moral and ethical" recovery. My own experience was particularly disturbing.

On September 2nd I awoke to radio news that thousands of evacuees were continuing to languish in the sun at the Morial Convention Center because city officials had ordered police and guardsmen not to issue food, water, or medical support. The news account also reported that two corpses were propped by the front door of the convention center.
I frantically loaded our car with supplies, spay-painted "AID" on all the doors and windows and headed for the convention center. On the way I passed a dead bloated body at Magazine and Jackson. She was wearing white socks with large blue stars. The scene at the convention center was one of unspeakable and shameful suffering.

Women begged me to take their babies who were dehydrating. I had to tell them that there were no hospitals: all medical personnel had been forcibly evacuated, even on dry land. Contrary to official pronouncements that the convention center was too dangerous for police, let along unarmed relief workers, people at the center greeted me like an angel from the heavens. People orderly distributed my goods as others implored me to bring back baby formula, water, and antibiotics. A man approached my car as I tried to leave. His eyes were dark and hollow. "Please mister," he said in daze. "Tell the world what's going on down here. Tell them that people are killing each other just for a drink of water."

Shaken, I raced back to my home to get more water and supplies. A mile from the center a white pick-up truck fell in behind me with two police officers. The unmarked truck had no siren or lights. I decided not to stop because I was sure they would tell me not to come back. Then suddenly, "Boom! Boom! Boom!" The state patrolman had fired three shots into the air from his handgun to force me to stop. I stopped, though furious that they had nothing better to do then chase relief workers. The policeman demanded to know what I was doing and why did I have "AID" painted on my car. I heatedly explained that I was taking food, water, and medical supplies to babies and elderly people who were dying in the sun at the convention center. Then I asked what were they doing heading away from the problem with an empty truck. They let me go.

The moral recovery in Katrina's wake needs to be approached with the same forethought and resources as the material recovery. I have directed an organization for thirteen years that has the simple mission to teach the moral imperative to speak out against the suffering and persecution of others. We have used the history of the Holocaust and the civil rights movement to teach young people the causes and consequences of racism and moral indifference.
Now, we no longer have to reach back decades to find a telling case study of human failure and redemption.

Hurricanes bring out the best and worst of human behavior. It is heartening that so many communities have opened their schools to the 60,000 black New Orleanian students left homeless by this disaster, but plunging children into strange worlds without preparing and training them, their families, and their host schools for the culture shock is a recipe for a second disaster.

The recovery process is not written in stone—yet. The only guarantee for a recovery that does not exacerbate racism and compound inequality, and one that brings New Orleans back to life in both body and spirit, is a national mobilization of African Americans and all those lovers of "the city that care forgot" to relentlessly pressure the federal government for an inclusive and fair decision-making process.

Lance Hill, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Southern Institute for Education and Research
Tulane University
M.R. Box 1692
31 McAlister Drive
New Orleans, LA 70118
(504)220-4609
www.SouthernInstitute.info

Brief biography of Lance Hill

Dr. Lance Hill is the Executive Director of the Southern Institute for Education and Research at Tulane University. Dr. Hill worked as a community activist and labor organizer for twenty years before embarking on an academic career. From 1989 to 1992, Dr. Hill served as the Executive Director of the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism (LCARN), the grass roots organization that led the opposition to former Klansman David Duke's Senate and Gubernatorial campaigns. One of the coalition's founders, Hill directed the organization's extensive television, radio and direct mail campaigns. The New York Times and the New Orleans Times-Picayune credited LCARN with playing the leading role in Duke's ultimate political demise.

In 1993, Hill co-founded the Southern Institute for Education and Research at Tulane University. Over the past ten years the Institute's tolerance education program-the most comprehensive project of its kind in the South-- has provided training to more than 3,600 teachers from 785 schools in the Deep South. The program uses case studies of the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement to teach the causes and consequences of prejudice. With a geographic scope of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida panhandle, the Institute prides itself on successful implementing programs in rural and isolated communities that have been traditional strongholds of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups.

Dr. Hill also directs the Southern Institute's cross-cultural communication training and research program, which teaches advanced skills to improve communication and collaboration among ethnic groups in the United States.
Hill holds a PhD from Tulane University, where he has taught US History and Intercultural Communication. His scholarly research field is the history of race relations and the radical right. He is the author of The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement (University of North Carolina Press, 2004) and "National Socialist Race Doctrine in the Political Thought of David Duke," in The Emergence of David Duke by Doug Rose (University of North Carolina Press, 1994). He has served as a consultant on several PBS documentaries on the radical right and the civil rights movement and has written extensively on racial politics in the South.

Dr. Hill resides in New Orleans with his wife of thirty years, Eileen SanJuan.

Posted here with permission from Dr. Hill (Originally posted on: http://oreaddaily.blogspot.com)

Peace In Rural America?

I am numb and beginning to fear for my safety, living in this small Texas town, all because I am driving The Peace-mobile.

Molly and the Peace-mobile 8-27-05

I turned my old, white, Toyota station wagon into The Peace-mobile by inviting folks to write messages of peace (directly on my car in permanent black marker) to be delivered to Cindy Sheehan and the peace protestors on Saturday, August 27, 2005, up at Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas. I now have messages of peace written in English, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, French, German, and a message from Navahos for Peace. My favorite is: This IS What Democracy Looks Like.

My daughter and I arrived in Crawford, just as the storm was subsiding. Soon after reaching Camp Casey II, Jeff Key, played Taps over the Arlington West project at sundown.

Taps at Arlington West project, Camp Casey II, Crawford TX 8-27-2005

Four Iraq vets (Jeff Key, bugler)

Afterwards, he signed his full name on the hood, and wrote, "Bring em home" inside of a heart. This was our second trip to the camp, and the few hours we were able to spend there were inspiring and well worth the 4-hour drive.

Cindy Sheehan walking among the crosses in the Arlington West project at Camp Casey II

Two days later, on Monday, everything was fine at work, until the business manager saw my car as he walked from one building to the next with the computer maintenance guy, who was there specifically to add server access privileges so that I could fix the security problems in their database. So it wasn’t like they were pondering letting me go at any time before they fired me this morning.

The angry business manager stormed into my office, yelling at me that he had "just gotten his son back from fighting in Afghanistan," and that he was offended by the messages on my car. He demanded to know how and why they came to be there, but I did not choose to be put on the defense. I offered a simplistic answer and also offered the information that other families of soldiers share my point of view about the war. He then said he didn't believe me.

Before leaving work, on my own time, I wrote the angry manager a letter saying I was there only to do my job and that I had not mentioned anything about my personal viewpoints or activities to anyone at work. If anyone else with whom I work was "offended" by The Peace-mobile, they kept it to themselves and focused on the work at hand.First thing when I arrived at work on Tuesday morning, my boss was in a closed door meeting with the business manager (our boss had not been at work the day before.) Ten minutes later, my boss called me into his office and said he had done some “re-thinking about my position,” that they no longer needed my services, and I should collect my belongings and leave immediately. I went back to my office to comply and after a few minutes, came back to his office to turn in my keys. When he asked what I had in the envelope I was carrying, I showed him a copy of the letter I'd given the business manager. I told him his copy was in his email, but he said he had not yet had time to read his email. I offered him my printed copy, as I had also emailed it to myself at home.

After reading the first line or so, he began to stammer, and said, "Working closely together in this office as we do, I need folks to be focusing on their work." I told him I agreed and had mentioned this same concept to the business manager in the letter he was now holding. By his comment, it was now clear to me that I was being fired, not through any wrongdoing on my part, but because the business manager could not "focus" on his work, as he had uncontrollable anger at the messages displayed (peacefully) on my car.

The Peace-mobile

A friend has just reminded me that this same scenario is used when the victim of sexual harassment in the workplace is fired! And, right now I can definitely relate. I had been in this job exactly three weeks, with nothing but praise for my performance. Right now I feel injured. Should I have The Peace-mobile painted over and pretend this really didn't happen? I asked my teenaged daughter after I picked her up from school what she thought, and she said, "Never give up and never give in."

On the way home, a man from a car in the next lane yelled at me, calling me a communist. At a traffic signal, a woman rolled down her window along side me and angrily said her son was fighting in Iraq and she didn't appreciate the signs on my vehicle, and sped away. I am now wondering if my choice of peaceful protest is putting myself and my daughter in danger.

I feel like hauling out the boxes, packing up, and moving away! We have barely tolerated the close-mindedness of this small Texas town, but have not "made any waves," since our arrival here from Baltimore three years ago. At the end of this school year, my daughter will go off to California to attend college, and I was already planning to get the hell out of here. Maybe we should hit the trail now?

It is so rare for me to be afraid of anyone or anything, as I am a seasoned political activist and NOT easily bullied. At the age of 50 and partially mobility impaired, I am feeling vulnerable. And, I am angry about it.

Is this not THE America, where citizens have constitutional protections against being fired for their political beliefs? I am reminded that in a fascist state, not only is dissention not tolerated, it is punished!

Trapped in Nawlins - Story #1

Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's store at the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked. The dairy display case was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside Walgreen's windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry.

The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and the windows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices, and bottle water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.
We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived home yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the Walgreen's in the French Quarter.

We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero" images of the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the "victims" of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we witnessed, were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a fork lift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured and kept the generators running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end, manually forcing air into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators. Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, "stealing" boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that could be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service workers who scoured the commercial kitchens improvising communal meals for hundreds of those stranded.

Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from members of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only infrastructure for the 20% of New Orleans that was not under water.

On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in the French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees like ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and shelter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact with family and friends outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources including the National Guard and scores of buses were pouring in to the City. The buses and the other resources must have been invisible because none of us had seen them.

We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who did have extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute the arrived to the City limits, they were commandeered by the military.

By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked their doors, telling us that the "officials" told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the City, we finally encountered the National Guard. The Guards told us we would not be allowed into the Superdome as the City's primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole. The guards further told us that the City's only other shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, "If we can't go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our alternative?" The guards told us that that was our problem, and no they did not have extra water to give to us. This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile "law enforcement".

Heavily armed members of the New Orleans police department patrol
on Canal Street in the besieged Crescent city on Friday, Sept. 2, 2005.
AP Photo/Dave Martin

We walked to the police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street and were told the same thing, that we were on our own, and no they did not have water to give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a mass meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police command post. We would be plainly visible to the media and would constitute a highly visible embarrassment to the City officials. The police told us that we could not stay. Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp. In short order, the police commander came across the street to address our group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the City. The crowed cheered and began to move. We called everyone back and explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation and wrong information and was he sure that there were buses waiting for us. The commander turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear to you that the buses are there."

We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and hope. As we marched pasted the convention center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we were headed. We told them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and others people in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to the Bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our enthusiasm.

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.
We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the rain under an overpass. We debated our options and in the end decided to build an encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway on the center divide, between the O'Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned we would be visible to everyone, we would have some security being on an elevated freeway and we could wait and watch for the arrival of the yet to be seen buses.

All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the City on foot. Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank further into squalor and disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape the misery New Orleans had become.

Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water delivery truck and brought it up to us. Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so down the freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping carts. Now secure with the two necessities, food and water; cooperation, community, and creativity flowered. We organized a clean up and hung garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made beds from wood pallets and cardboard. We designated a storm drain as the bathroom and the kids built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas, and other scraps. We even organized a food recycling system where individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for babies and candies for kids!).

This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out for you and yours only. You had to do whatever it took to find water for your kids or food for your parents. When these basic needs were met, people began to look out for each other, working together and constructing a community.

If the relief organizations had saturated the City with food and water in the first 2 or 3 days, the desperation, the frustration and the ugliness would not have set in.

Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing families and individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or 90 people.

From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the City.

Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway? The officials responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it.

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, "Get off the fucking freeway". A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.

Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims" they saw "mob" or "riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.

The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with New Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban search and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned.

We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The airport had become another Superdome. We 8 were caught in a press of humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush landed briefly at the airport for a photo op. After being evacuated on a coast guard cargo plane, we arrived in San Antonio, Texas.

There the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief effort continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large field where we were forced to sit for hours and hours. Some of the buses did not have air-conditioners. In the dark, hundreds if us were forced to share two filthy overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with any possessions (often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) we were subjected to two different dog-sniffing searches.

Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been confiscated at the airport because the rations set off the metal detectors. Yet, no food had been provided to the men, women, children, elderly, disabled as they sat for hours waiting to be "medically screened" to make sure we were not carrying any communicable diseases.

This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heart-felt reception given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker give her shoes to someone who was barefoot.

Strangers on the street offered us money and toiletries with words of welcome. Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept, and racist.

There was more suffering than need be.

Lives were lost that did not need to be lost.


distributed Sep 6, 2005, 11:59 by Paramedics Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky
http://www.emsnetwork.org/artman/publish/article_1 8337.shtml

Note: Bradshaw and Slonsky are paramedics from California that were attending the EMS conference in New Orleans. [Larry Bradshaw is the chief shop steward, Paramedic Chapter, SEIU Local 790; and Lorrie Beth Slonsky is steward, Paramedic Chapter, SEIU Local 790 California]

Terrible Tragedy

New Orleans UNDERWATER!

Lake Pontchartrain at top, Mississippi River bottom right

To visit the CNN site where this photo is located click on the link below.
(once the page loads, click on the tab that reads “Before and

After Comparison” at the top left corner of the map)

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2005/hurricanes/interactive/fullpage.nola.flood/katrina.html

A National Disaster

News from Austin:

My friend Hannah and her daughter Kate, both have spare bedrooms in their houses and have gone online (to a disaster relief website: MoveOn.org) and put their names in the hat for each providing housing for a refugee family.

Click on this link Hurricanehousing.org to get on the list to provide housing to a refugee family.

New Orleans Refugee Praying in Houston Shelter

The most comprehensive list of resources (including FEMA) to aid victims of the hurricane is at the CNN link below, with several links to message boards to find missing friends/relatives.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2005/katrina/help.center/

Cargo containers thrown and scattered by

Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

News from Associated Press online:

Soldiers: Storm-Ravaged Areas Are No Iraq
By BRIAN SKOLOFF

GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) - For some soldiers back from Iraq and now helping the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort, serving in the Middle East doesn't seem so bad after all.

“We had it made in Iraq, absolutely had it made,'' said Col. Brad MacNealy of the Mississippi National Guard, who spent a year commanding the 185th Aviation Brigade's 134 helicopters there.

“In Iraq, we had TV, communication, sleeping quarters, showers,'' MacNealy said Sunday. ``Here, these people haven't had a shower. They're using baby wipes. They can't use cell phones... The year we spent in Iraq, the creature comforts were fantastic. I mean, people were complaining there because they didn't have exercise equipment.''

The group is now flying 42 choppers out of the Trent Lott National Guard Training Complex here, delivering food, water, ice, diapers and baby food to people stranded in the bayou.

Communication is a mess here, pilots say. Crews are flying into areas with chopper loads of bottled water and MRE's - meals ready to eat - and finding supplies have already been delivered.

“If they say they've already got stuff, we just fly around until we find someone who needs it,'' said pilot Michael Fair, a chief warrant officer with the Ohio National Guard.

The helicopter crews are given drop locations, then they're on their own.

“There's no communications out there. We don't know much until we get on the ground,'' said pilot Michael Bess, also of the Ohio National Guard. ``If they've already got something, we just circle around the area looking for people who are stranded.''

MacNealy said planning for aid drops is intense and confusing because very few messages get from the outlying areas where folks are stranded with the base's main operation center.

“In Iraq, we had to and did a lot more detailed planning because we were being shot at,'' he said. “Here, it's touch and go.''

But one thing truly separates this mission from Iraq, where commanders are constantly giving “a lot of motivational speeches, slapping soldiers on the backs,'' MacNealy added.

“I have never seen the morale any higher anywhere in the world. You don't have to motivate anybody here. They know their mission. We're here to help our neighbors,'' he said. ``Every time they go out and see a woman crying because she just got food and water for her children, they come back fired up.''

And troops here share at least one other thing in common with the stranded, hungry and thirsty masses.

“These guys are subsisting on the same rations we're bringing out to the people,'' said the Mississippi National Guard's Col. Greg Kennedy. ``Even so, as tough as it is, not one complaint, not one single complaint from anyone.''

© Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

A woman mourns after her long-time partner died
in New Orleans, four days after the disaster.
He died when he ran out of oxygen. He was battling cancer.

News from Houston:

from Houston Area NOW member

I just wanted to say that the relief effort here in Houston and the near-by cities is nothing short of amazing. While I share Hannah's shame for our government I am proud of my city and the people here who are doing everything they can to help those most effected. Our mayor, Bill White has provided the kind of leadership that we wished the President (or King George as a friend of mine likes to call him) would provide. Mayor White personally greeted and welcomed people as they got off the buses. He got systems in place and was already working to respond before Bush even acknowledged the disaster.

There was chaos and problems at first, but thank goodness there were people who had sense enough to step up and take charge. I live close to the Astrodome and the level of work going on there and at the Geo. R. Brown Convention Center is most impressive. There is little disruption of traffic in the area, even though the sound of sirens and helicopters was heard fairly steadily over a two day period. My neighborhood grocery store (one of the closest to the Dome) was full of people with distinctive Louisiana accents this afternoon. I saw a car license plate that said "Bon Ton".

Every charity, every company, every organization I know of is doing something to help. I worked with a Democratic group collecting food and clothing yesterday - this coming week I will be staffing phones and other tasks. We even have special efforts for the GLBT community and those with HIV/AIDS. We are already getting kids enrolled in school, helping to care for displaced animals, taking care of medical needs for what equates to a small town just in the Astrodome (now with its own zipcode: 77230).

The full impact of what this situation will mean for Houston and probably the State of Texas is yet to be known. When you think it through there is so much to consider. There are the immediate needs to get people clothed, housed, and fed and then the long-term considerations having to do with re-establishing lives. Just due to geography, Texas will now become the permanent home of several hundreds of thousands people. I know that efforts are already in place to move some of the folks here to other cities in the state and I hope those cities will be as welcoming as Houston has been. It looks like Austin is on the ball. We are responding to the immediate and are in for the long haul with this.

Many folks in Houston have family from the effected areas. Families are accommodating relatives and friends and total strangers. I heard a great story about Barnes & Noble and how they are helping relocate their New Orleans employees. So many touching stories. My Mother's Mississippi relatives are dealing with the aftermath, although thank goodness they are safe. A cousin and her family rode out the storm in Biloxi (foolishly, I think). Others further inland had their power knocked out for several days. Gasoline is at a premium not only in price but in availability. My brother (the trucker) had trouble finding gas even in Kentucky. He warned me right away that coffee will go through the same situation as 90% of the coffee that comes into the States comes through the port of New Orleans.

Thank you all for any donations or help you can offer wherever you can. As bad off as some of us are, at least we have not gone through the hell so many of gulf coast state neighbors have.

New Orleans suburbian church and neighborhood

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- The Times-Picayune of New Orleans printed this editorial in its Sunday edition, criticizing the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina and calling on every FEMA official to be fired:

An open letter to the President

Dear Mr. President:

We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we're going to make it right."

Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.

Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It's accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.

How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.

Despite the city's multiple points of entry, our nation's bureaucrats spent days after last week's hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city's stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.

Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.

Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.

We're angry, Mr. President, and we'll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That's to the government's shame.

Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don't know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city's death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.

It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren't they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn't suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?

State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn't have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!" Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.
In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn't known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We've provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they've gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."

Lies don't get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You're doing a heck of a job."

That's unbelievable.

There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.

We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We're no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn't be reached.

Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.

When you do, we will be the first to applaud.

New Orleans police car under water

P.S.
On Sunday, Sept 4 the President of Jefferson Parish said on NBC's MEET THE PRESS, that FEMA turned away from New Orleans, the 13 big rigs sent by Wal-Mart, full of bottled water and food, stating they weren't needed!

The Pain In His Eyes

Jeff Key, USMC bugler

After playing Taps on August 27th at Camp Casey II in Crawford, TX... Jeff sat on the ground near the cross memorializing a man in his marine company, who was killed while driving a truck bringing bottled water to his outfit in Iraq.