krebscycle

As FEMA competently reaches out to help victims of Sandy, I find myself getting absurdly, horribly, deeply angry. Why? Because I remember what the Bush administration did to the people of New Orleans.

You know how on summer Sunday nights, you can bounce around TV?

Well, the Science channel had a how on surviving urban disasters. Normally, disaster shows are entertainment. But this one was anything but.

The host, Les Stroud, is usually stuck in the ass end of Ontario for a week, up in the woods or some other remote place. For Katrina, it was about surviving a flood.

Very different show to watch.

Katrina, has been, most of all, a failure of the American spirit.

My mother thinks Ray Nagin is a glib asshole.

“He thinks everything is funny”

Unfair, but then the stupid fucker opened his mouth about 9/11 and he can’t even get the shit off his streets.

But we, as a nation, has failed New Orleans. Black and white.

Where are the Churches. Where are the industrialists? Black America is wealthy and we just stand by and watch the corruption and the failure and say little. It’s easy for Juan Williams to take shots at Sharpton and Jackson, but it was them and Ned Lamont, not the Black Republicans talking about Katrina. Not any Republicans.

Bush’s failure has been complete, moral, economic, inspirational. And he has plenty of company.

But the worst thing about Katrina is not the damage to New Orleans,but the flood of open racism which came after it. It seems that hatred came along with the flood for many people. As if natural desperation really was showing the animalistic negro, and some people ran so hard and fast with it, they decided to pick on Mexicans as well.

If the best were the rescuers, the worst were the hatemongers who reveled in the pain of the survivors of Katrina and they were many and frequent.

When people look back at Katrina, a lot of people will be judged to have done less than they could have.Steve Gilliard

And

Wednesday March 1, 2006 10:01 PM

By MARGARET EBRAHIM and JOHN SOLOMON

Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON (AP) –

    In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, risk lives in New Orleans’ Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage of the briefings.

    Bush didn’t ask a single question during the final government-wide briefing the day before Katrina struck on Aug. 29 but assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: “We are fully prepared.”

    Six days of footage and transcripts obtained by The Associated Press show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.

    Linked by secure video, Bush’s bravado on Aug. 29 starkly contrasts with the dire warnings his disaster chief and a cacophony of federal, state and local officials provided during the four days before the storm.

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And:
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 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.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/09/06/145972/-Another-NO-Story-from-the-inside
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Still miss Steve Gilliard and still cannot forget the helpless anger we all felt watching Bush destroy America.

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WASHINGTON –Black survivors of Hurricane Katrina said Tuesday that racism contributed to the slow disaster response, at times likening themselves in emotional congressional testimony to victims of genocide and the Holocaust.

The comparison is inappropriate, according to Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla.

“Not a single person was marched into a gas chamber and killed,” Miller told the survivors.

“They died from abject neglect,” retorted community activist Leah Hodges. “We left body bags behind.”

Angry evacuees described being trapped in temporary shelters where one New Orleans resident said she was “one sunrise from being consumed by maggots and flies.” Another woman said military troops focused machine gun laser targets on her granddaughter’s forehead. Others said their families were called racial epithets by police.

“No one is going to tell me it wasn’t a race issue,” said New Orleans evacuee Patricia Thompson, 53, who is now living in College Station, Texas. “Yes, it was an issue of race. Because of one thing: when the city had pretty much been evacuated, the people that were left there mostly was black.”

Not all lawmakers seemed persuaded.

“I don’t want to be offensive when you’ve gone though such incredible challenges,” said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn. But referring to some of the victims’ charges, like the gun pointed at the girl, Shays said: “I just don’t frankly believe it.”

“You believe what you want,” Thompson said.

The hearing was held by a special House committee, chaired by Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., investigating the government’s preparations and response to Katrina. It was requested by Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

“Racism is something we don’t like to talk about, but we have to acknowledge it,” McKinney said. “And the world saw the effects of American-style racism in the drama as it was outplayed by the Katrina survivors.”

The five white and two black lawmakers who attended the hearing mostly sat quietly during two and a half hours of testimony. But tempers flared when evacuees were asked by Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., to not compare shelter conditions to a concentration camp.

“I’m going to call it what it is,” said Hodges. “That is the only thing I could compare what we went through to.”

Of five black evacuees who testified, only one said he believed the sluggish response was the product of bad government planning for poor residents – not racism.

http://www.boston.com/…
Quoted in http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/07/170219/-Katrina-Victims-Testify-About-Ethnic-Cleansing-Levee-Bomb-w-Poll-VIDEO-UPDATE
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