The following Katrina account was sent to me by a person who knows the writers. I can't attest to its accuracy, but it certainly merits a read. By and large, it rings true. Other people I know who looted (for survival) or who defended themselves against armed thugs had similar stories. Also, the incident on the Crescent City Connection was widely reported in the media.
The story reminds me a little of the
testimonios made famous by Central American writers/respondants like Rigoberta Menchu (who won a Nobel Prize for hers, but who was accused of making some of the story up). As with the events in the
testimonios, the ordeal of the Katrina victims must be considered in the context of class, race, and relations of power within America, not least in places like New Orleans.
Now, a lot of the white people I've talked to about this aren't buying the race thing. To a person, they're not from down there. All those people who are shocked--SHOCKED!--at the introduction of the so-called "race card" into the national dialogue on the post-Katrina situation should remember that in 1991, more than half of Louisiana's white voters voted for ex-Klan leader David Duke for governor. Granted, I think he was running against Edwin Edwards ("Vote for the Crook"), but Duke's relative popularity means something. Specifically, it means that at least 51% of the white people in Louisiana are fundamentally okay with cross-burnings and whatnot. Just something to take into consideration.
The city is/was an amazing place, but a model society it was not. In fact, one of its great charms was how completely, insanely fucked up it was on every level. It was also a magnificently, profoundly apathetic place in general. Just about nobody there, including me, really gave a shit about anything, or did anything about it if they indeed had a concern. That fucked-upness and apathy provided for tons of laughs and some beautiful facets of life (see
Confederacy of Dunces), but it obviously has come at a price.
They call New Orleans "The City that Care Forgot." Well, guess what? Care forgot.
This whole episode reminds me a bit of the Victorian"
discovery of poverty" and its aftereffects in England from about the 1870's to WW2. The early days were the time of Jack the Ripper, Dickens,
Marx,
Beatrice Webb and the
Fabian Society,
Charles Booth, the classic slums, the
workhouses, Poor Laws, and means tests, Social Darwinism, malnutrition, and so on. (
Further reading).
The British Empire was at the apex of its global power and glory, and
laissez-faire capitalism combined with breathtaking imperialism had got it there. The "discovery" of widespread poverty wasn't limited to Britain; before long
trade unions and antipoverty/anti-imperialist activists of all stripes were on the rise all over Europe (note the
1905-1907 First Russian Revolution; that nation was fighting the Russo-Japanese war) and
North and (to an extent) South America.
During WW1, virtually every town in France, England, and Germany lost men to death or disfigurement. Among British soldiers, the rich and the poor were forced to scum it in foxholes together for the first time, which some say contributed to a greater sense of intra-class solidarity. By contrast, German and Russian leaders both had to contend with an increasing sense among working-class troops that the war was not between regular poor folks, per se, but between the elites who controlled both countries--at the expense of the poor. It should have come at no surprise when, as WWI ground on for a near-defeat Russian army, the workers and peasants upped and killed the Czar and Rasputin, and called off hostilities with Germany (
Second Russian Revolution, 1917). Everyone knows what happened after that.
The British, too, were moving Left in response to the condition of the poor and the general unfairness of Imperial British society, but there was no revolution. Many people credit the Britain's legislative and grassroots efforts on behalf of workers and the poor, and the menacing rise of Facism (itself against a background of widespread poverty) in Germany, Italy, and Spain as heading off open socialist revolt in the UK. However, after WW2, the Empire finally crumbled, and Labour won the first postwar election in a landslide on an essentially socialist platform even though Churchill, the conservative incumbent, had just led Britain to perhaps the nation's all-time greatest victory.
This ultra-lightweight breezing over of history is just my way of pointing out that the pendulum swings back and forth according to the realities of the times we live in. Having a massive underclass is an invitation to social upheaval if the problem is ignored. The pot tends to boil over. It's just a matter of time unless you either fix the problem or increase state repression.
For that reason, I'm curious whether Katrina will lead to something of a "discovery of poverty" and/or race and class divisions in the US. It's no secret that
this has been a watershed event for black Americans. I see evidence of the anger everywhere from Kanye West to the pissed off trainer at my gym. And certainly the rest of the world noticed. However, most white Americans say they disagree. Regardless, the story that follows has clear overtones of race and class, both in its style of narration, and in the facts it describes.
To me, the biggest question after Katrina is not "who's fault was it?" but rather, "what does this whole episode say about our society?" To me, it peeled back a shroud and demonstrated that we're even more fucked up than I thought. But depending on the constituency answering the question, the responses will vary as widely as the fortunes of our citizens. Everybody has a stake in the answer, so consensus and decent analysis will be hard to come by.
Meaningful solutions will not come. Not from Democrats and not from Republicans. No matter who wins the next election, I'll probably mourn, although one candidate will no doubt be worse for the nation and the world than the other. But issues of race and poverty have always bitterly divided America, and I guess they always will. To me, the only thing that's uncertain is exactly how much friction we're gonna see going forward. My guess? There's not gonna be much of a revolution.
As a country, we're not exactly famous for being able collectively to cast a critical eye upon ourselves. Sunny optimism sells much, much better here, especially if that optimism means that you get to give away less of your money. When people wonder whether or not we should massively increase government spending on the poor, it's reasonable to ask whether such a sorry bunch of perverted fucking hyenas (the government, that is; not the poor) should be given another dime with which to futher sodomize our national dignity upon the altar of Freedom and Democracy. Think of the government as Zed and our heritage and future as Ving Rames.
On the other hand, if the consensus develops that we, as a nation, can't accept such ongoing deprivation among entire categories of our citizenry, I don't see how reducing the national safety net even further is going to fly. Then again, I've been surprised before, like this time when there was like this huge hurricane, and the government completely fucked up the evacuation, and then completely fucked up the rescue part, and a whole city went down the toilet. It was fuckin'
wild, man. Crazy.
The first line of the second paragraph of Tom Paine's
Common Sense refers to government as "in its best state...a necessary evil." For now, I'll accept that as truth, not least because Paine was probably the greatest and most savage blogger (i.e., pamphleteer/propagandist) of all time. So, assuming that (however regrettably) we
need an institution to govern us, perhaps that institution should put its shoulder into not having a giant, permanent underclass. How to do it? You got me. Social programs are great, but you need to make bank to have em. Maybe we could just sell Kansas (and everyone in it) to the Mexicans and give the proceeds to the poor. Secretly, I think the best idea of all would be to dissolve the US and go back to being either autonomous states, or regional blocs of like-minded former states. I'm not a very good nationalist.
The problem is that I believe that not all of us--probably not even a majority of us--but a
great many of us, either deep down or up front, are basically in it purely for ourselves. And as a matter of practice, many of us straight up just don't give a tuppenny fuck about other people...especially people different to ourselves. There's nothing new in that, unedifying as it may be. But why are we still pretending that we're all one big, happy, whack-a-doodle American family? Probably cause if we didn't, we'd eventually have to gun each other down like dogs. Which reminds me of like this one time, like a week ago, when there was like this huge hurricane, right? And...
Maybe you didn't see the subtitle of this blog or something: DOOM, MOTHERFUCKER, DOOM DOOM DOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyway, without further ado, here's the account of those couple of Katrina survivors. Take it away, Don Pardo!
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Hurricane Katrina-Our Experiences
Larry Bradshaw, Lorrie Beth Slonsky
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".
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 yourself 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.
