When the Levee Breaks
I don't have anything to add to what's being said about the catastrophe down south, because... what can I say, really? That it's horrible? Heartbreaking? A national disgrace? All of the above? I wrote a column about it earlier this week, before the magnitude of the disaster hit home. It doesn't run until Sunday, but the text is below, behind the cut. (It's all old news now, but.)
When I wrote this, I was angry. Now I'm furious. Because, you know, the Bush administration and their local lackeys are responsible for this: First, by stealing money meant to rebuild New Orleans' levees; second, and most heinously, by bungling rescue efforts through malicious neglect. These were states that voted red in the last election, man. There's a fine how-do-you-do.
The worst, the absolute worst part, the part that has me livid, is this: They're gonna get away with it.
When the Levee Breaks
As I write, parts of Louisiana and Mississippi are underwater. New Orleans, a once-beautiful town I've yet to visit, is decimated. Guess I won't be seeing the French Quarter for few years. Before the hurricane hit, the survival of that cultural gem was my greatest concern; now I'm just hoping the casualty figures don't climb into the thousands.
The fact that they might - at this point, rescuers are too busy trying to save the living to count the dead - underscores everything that went wrong with Hurricane Katrina. We can't control nature, but we can control our preparation for natural disasters. And we weren't prepared for this one.
From watching the news, it's easy to get the impression that those who remained in New Orleans rather than evacuate were simply deluded and/or stubborn survivalists. Not so. Evacuation requires transportation, money and a place to go. There are many - too many -- people in New Orleans who have none of those advantages. The Big Easy might boast a rich tourist trade and a minority of rich citizens, but it's not a rich city. In fact, it's a city marked by poverty, and never has the chasm between its Haves and Have-Nots been as painfully clear as it has in the past week. Those who stayed behind did so for lack of options, and the federal and state governments offered them none. While the Haves piled into their cars, made hotel reservations and contacted relatives with rooms to spare, the Have-Nots bunkered down, prayed for the best and tried to salvage what little they had.
What was the alternative? Hit the open road, children in tow, and bank on the kindness of strangers? Insurance is the province of the Haves - how does one leave behind worldly possessions? The huge numbers who weathered the storm in New Orleans illustrate poverty, not stubbornness. Look at their faces the next time you turn on CNN: The elderly, the ill, the disenfranchised. How many of those faces are white, by the way? Think about it.
As one Louisiana resident bluntly stated on BoingBoing.net, "The poorest 20 percent... of the city was left behind to drown... Forget the sanctimonious bull--- about the bullheaded people who wouldn't leave. The evacuation plan was strictly laissez-faire. It depended on privately owned vehicles, and on having ready cash to fund an evacuation. The planners knew full well that the poor, who in New Orleans are overwhelmingly black, wouldn't be able to get out. The resources -- meaning, the political will -- weren't there to get them out."
Not surprisingly, when the storm passed and the levee broke, the looting began. It began out of desperation and continued out of need. A need, not just for food (before it spoiled on the shelves) and diapers and other necessary supplies, but for all those things that are always out there yet always just out of reach - appliances, jewelry, guns, luxury items, anything that can be sold a profit. We're a nation of consumers, and we consume at any cost. Are we really weeping that folks are ransacking Wal-Mart? As far as I'm concerned, looters who have either lost everything in the hurricane or who never had anything to begin with are welcome to take those wide-screen TVs back to the ruins of their homes. They're thieves. Hell, yeah, they're thieves. There are worse things to be. Dead is one of them.
While we're discussing looting, here's something to make you go whoa. Two days after Katrina hit, Yahoo! News ran two news photos - taken by different photographers and captioned by different news services -- showing two sets of New Orleans flood victims, one black and one white, dragging containers of food through waist-deep water. The Associated Press caption beneath the image of an African-American man described his "looting" grocery store. The AFP/Getty Images caption under the image of a white couple described their "finding" supplies in a grocery store. Deliberate racism? I doubt it. Nonetheless - whoa.
Of course it's easy for me to sit here and bless anarchy from my dry California home. The shell-shocked people of New Orleans are understandably appalled. "What I want to know is why we don't have paratroopers with machine guns on every street," one exasperated resident-turned-armed-vigilante-in-a-pickup-truck told the media. Forgive me, but... I think it's because they're in Baghdad, man.
Which brings us around to the real criminals in this scenario. Forget the looters. New Orleans' levees have been at the breaking point for a long time now. The federal government knew this, but deflected money meant for repairs to fund the war in Iraq. This is its interpretation of "homeland security." Behold the consequences.
"It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay," Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune in June, 2004. "Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."
Too late. But take heart! Last week, at the height of the disaster, President Bush felt his country's pain and cut short his holiday by two! whole! days! Maybe he really does care, after all. Or maybe he just wants a chance to grab a free wide-screen TV.
ETA: Holy hell. I just opened my e-mail and found that an old and pretty damn dear friend of mine and his family are listed among the missing on Craigslist. MD is a wonderful, bitchy queen of a boy who moved back to New Orleans from San Francisco to care for his elderly parents. He's an artist and a wag. The world is a better place with him in it. Where is he? Holy hell.
When I wrote this, I was angry. Now I'm furious. Because, you know, the Bush administration and their local lackeys are responsible for this: First, by stealing money meant to rebuild New Orleans' levees; second, and most heinously, by bungling rescue efforts through malicious neglect. These were states that voted red in the last election, man. There's a fine how-do-you-do.
The worst, the absolute worst part, the part that has me livid, is this: They're gonna get away with it.
When the Levee Breaks
As I write, parts of Louisiana and Mississippi are underwater. New Orleans, a once-beautiful town I've yet to visit, is decimated. Guess I won't be seeing the French Quarter for few years. Before the hurricane hit, the survival of that cultural gem was my greatest concern; now I'm just hoping the casualty figures don't climb into the thousands.
The fact that they might - at this point, rescuers are too busy trying to save the living to count the dead - underscores everything that went wrong with Hurricane Katrina. We can't control nature, but we can control our preparation for natural disasters. And we weren't prepared for this one.
From watching the news, it's easy to get the impression that those who remained in New Orleans rather than evacuate were simply deluded and/or stubborn survivalists. Not so. Evacuation requires transportation, money and a place to go. There are many - too many -- people in New Orleans who have none of those advantages. The Big Easy might boast a rich tourist trade and a minority of rich citizens, but it's not a rich city. In fact, it's a city marked by poverty, and never has the chasm between its Haves and Have-Nots been as painfully clear as it has in the past week. Those who stayed behind did so for lack of options, and the federal and state governments offered them none. While the Haves piled into their cars, made hotel reservations and contacted relatives with rooms to spare, the Have-Nots bunkered down, prayed for the best and tried to salvage what little they had.
What was the alternative? Hit the open road, children in tow, and bank on the kindness of strangers? Insurance is the province of the Haves - how does one leave behind worldly possessions? The huge numbers who weathered the storm in New Orleans illustrate poverty, not stubbornness. Look at their faces the next time you turn on CNN: The elderly, the ill, the disenfranchised. How many of those faces are white, by the way? Think about it.
As one Louisiana resident bluntly stated on BoingBoing.net, "The poorest 20 percent... of the city was left behind to drown... Forget the sanctimonious bull--- about the bullheaded people who wouldn't leave. The evacuation plan was strictly laissez-faire. It depended on privately owned vehicles, and on having ready cash to fund an evacuation. The planners knew full well that the poor, who in New Orleans are overwhelmingly black, wouldn't be able to get out. The resources -- meaning, the political will -- weren't there to get them out."
Not surprisingly, when the storm passed and the levee broke, the looting began. It began out of desperation and continued out of need. A need, not just for food (before it spoiled on the shelves) and diapers and other necessary supplies, but for all those things that are always out there yet always just out of reach - appliances, jewelry, guns, luxury items, anything that can be sold a profit. We're a nation of consumers, and we consume at any cost. Are we really weeping that folks are ransacking Wal-Mart? As far as I'm concerned, looters who have either lost everything in the hurricane or who never had anything to begin with are welcome to take those wide-screen TVs back to the ruins of their homes. They're thieves. Hell, yeah, they're thieves. There are worse things to be. Dead is one of them.
While we're discussing looting, here's something to make you go whoa. Two days after Katrina hit, Yahoo! News ran two news photos - taken by different photographers and captioned by different news services -- showing two sets of New Orleans flood victims, one black and one white, dragging containers of food through waist-deep water. The Associated Press caption beneath the image of an African-American man described his "looting" grocery store. The AFP/Getty Images caption under the image of a white couple described their "finding" supplies in a grocery store. Deliberate racism? I doubt it. Nonetheless - whoa.
Of course it's easy for me to sit here and bless anarchy from my dry California home. The shell-shocked people of New Orleans are understandably appalled. "What I want to know is why we don't have paratroopers with machine guns on every street," one exasperated resident-turned-armed-vigilante-in-a-pickup-truck told the media. Forgive me, but... I think it's because they're in Baghdad, man.
Which brings us around to the real criminals in this scenario. Forget the looters. New Orleans' levees have been at the breaking point for a long time now. The federal government knew this, but deflected money meant for repairs to fund the war in Iraq. This is its interpretation of "homeland security." Behold the consequences.
"It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay," Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune in June, 2004. "Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."
Too late. But take heart! Last week, at the height of the disaster, President Bush felt his country's pain and cut short his holiday by two! whole! days! Maybe he really does care, after all. Or maybe he just wants a chance to grab a free wide-screen TV.
ETA: Holy hell. I just opened my e-mail and found that an old and pretty damn dear friend of mine and his family are listed among the missing on Craigslist. MD is a wonderful, bitchy queen of a boy who moved back to New Orleans from San Francisco to care for his elderly parents. He's an artist and a wag. The world is a better place with him in it. Where is he? Holy hell.