Hurricane - September 23, 2005
Judy Smith
September 23rd Commentary-Judy Smith
So what can I say- as Rita comes on land today and rain has been falling in New Orleans for 24 hours? I woke up this morning to stories of the Texas Coast that sounded too much like New Orleans: folks haven’t been able to evacuate, clogged roads, no gas, ambulance drivers talking about coming back later to get the bodies.
Katrina and now Rita- the storms themselves are only the leading edge of the story. I was in Texas over Labor Day weekend when Katrina unfolded, visiting friends from 30 years ago. Between swapping stories and laughing at pictures, some friends spent time at the convention center helping New Orleans evacuees get the papers they needed to file for food stamps and other relief. They shared the frustration of all involved at the red tape, the difficulty of getting people what they needed even then, in another state, days after the evacuation.
Already the imagery coming from New Orleans had stopped me as I walked through the Salt Lake Airport. The front page pictures in the newspapers on the racks I had seen before: white guys in military uniforms, pushing out supplies from military helicopters while all the people below- young black people- scrambled and grabbed what they could. Was it Somalia? Dafur? Or some other third world relief effort? Those pictures of families trapped on their roofs, waiting and waiting for rescue- wasn’t that the monsoons in Bangladesh or India?
Nope, that was natural disaster in the US, the one super power left in the world, with a federal government in the hands of people who don’t really believe in government, who had been steadily cutting all the programs that the folks on the roofs and scrambling in the streets had to depend on. These same people kept the hearts and minds of some by continually threatening crisis and disaster, pouring millions into homeland security, while actually cutting the programs that would have rebuilt the New Orleans levies.
I go on the net to find that the first relief workers into many black neighborhoods were Mexican army guys or Canadians and emergency supplies from around the world were sitting on docks because US officials wouldn’t give permission to get them in. I read my usual bloggers and find them all talking about President Bush still being on vacation, on stage in California- and my mind immediately goes to the picture in Fahrenheit 9/11 where Bush is reading to grade school kids while he hears of the attacks on the World Trade Center. He just keeps sitting there-looking dazed.
When I am back in Montana the stories just keep coming. Bush’s friend- the head of FEMA with no related experience-resigns. Bush tries to regain some ground flying over and finally visiting new Orleans but he is obviously more worried about rebuilding his friend Senator Trent Lott’s house than addressing the needs of all the black people with nothing left.
The bloggers pass on the story of Gretna Louisiana, a white suburb of New Orleans, that had armed officers turn back trapped black evacuees as they walked over the Mississippi Bridge three days after Katrina hit. One story that stays with me I heard on the radio- a woman in the Houston Convention Center who calmly stated that she believed, as white people in boats passed by her family on their house roof, that they were being purposefully left to die, like in the German holocaust.
Hard to hear- but that story says so much. Not that it was actual policy to abandon the black population of New Orleans. But that it happened that way because of lingering white racism, de-facto segregation and black poverty and because those who’s job it was to make it different weren’t prepared or able to do so. Those were white people in control of billions of dollars.
And now there’s Rita and the stories begin again- a bus of seniors that burned as it was sitting on a clogged Texas highway- the oxygen tanks went up from a spark. President Bush is heading down this morning to look over the scene a bit earlier this time. It’s his home state and political base and he knows his poll numbers are way down. The one attribute some folks thought he had- ability to handle a crisis- has come into question so no vacation this time.
Yes, there are also wonderful stories of people reaching out during all this-saving others lives and offering support and resources. Lots of money, emergency supplies and even housing has been donated all over the country. But private charity and human to human caring can’t be the answer to this level of devastation. While I give what I can to different relief efforts, I keep saying “but this is the government’s job. This is why I pay taxes-this is what I expect as a citizen of a wealthy country.”
I can be generous and say some of all this systems failure was due to human error and human error is forgivable. But much of this systems failure is due to other factors: cutting government revenue to a point where public safety can not be assured- whether it is levee failure, unavailability of significant emergency materials, transport or personnel; distain for essential government services so that people with no experience are put in senior positions because of their relationships to those in power, and racism-the willingness to let certain people, most usually people of color, live in poverty rather than fund the programs that provide them the tools to move forward.
These cannot be forgiven-they must be challenged and changed.
I was again traveling last weekend and was in a room with a TV and not much to do so watched CNN news. There was the news person and there was a meteorological scientist talking about his prediction that hurricanes would be more intense because the temperature of the water of the oceans has increased- a measure of global warming. It was a serious, very straight forward discussion; no counter points or undermining comments from the newsperson as I have seen before. Following this discussion came the weather- and ominously, there was Rita, around the Florida Keys, a major tropical storm-predicted to become a hurricane. OK- global warming is now mainstream enough to be on CNN-I’m not sure about Fox.
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