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| 7/9 |
| 2005/9/6-7 [Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:39520 Activity:nil |
9/6 Relief efforts: Callous, racist, and inept.
http://www.dissensus.com/showpost.php?p=27528&postcount=30
http://www.dissensus.com/showpost.php?p=27529&postcount=31
\_ "sheroes" is one of the stupidest words I've ever heard. -tom
\_ Sexist!
\_ this sounds fabricated. |
| 7/9 |
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| www.dissensus.com/showpost.php?p=27528&postcount=30 HMGovt HMGovt is offline Marshall-Marchetti-Krantz Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Cambridge Posts: 187 Default Ugly report of survivors vs. authorities in NOLA Hurricane Katrina-Our Experiences Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreens 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 che eses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and manag ers had locked up the food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled t he City. Outside Walgreens windows, residents and tourists grew increasi ngly thirsty and hungry. The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and the windows at Walgreens gave way to the looters. The cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, f ruit juices, and bottle water in an organized and systematic manner. Instead they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporari ly chasing away the looters. We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived hom e yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage of loo k at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video image s or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the Walgreens in the French Quarter. We also suspect the media will have been inundated with hero images of th e National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the victi ms of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we witnessed were t he real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working c lass of New Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a fork lift to car ry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured and kept t he generators running. The electricians who improvised thick extension c ords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in or der 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. Refinery workers who broke into boat y ards, stealing boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs i n flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that could be foun d to ferry people out of the City. And the food service workers who scou red the commercial kitchens improvising communal meals for hundreds of t hose stranded. Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from member s of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only infrastructur e 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 Fr ench Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees li ke ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and shel ter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact with family and frie nds outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of re sources 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. So we poured our money and came up w ith $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spendi ng the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the sick, el derly and new born babies. We waited late into the night for the imminen t arrival of the buses. We later learned that t he minute the arrived to the City limits, they were commandeered by the military. 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 conv ention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the Ci ty, 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 been descended into a humanitarian and health hell hole. The guards further told us that the Citys only other shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and that t he police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, I f we cant go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our alternativ e? The guards told us that that was our problem, and no they did not hav e extra water to give to us. This would be the start of our numerous enc ounters with callous and hostile law enforcement. We walked to the police command center at Harrahs on Canal Street and wer e told the same thing, that we were on our own, and no they did not have water to give us. We would be plainly visible to the media and would constitut e a highly visible embarrassment to the City officials. In short order, the police commander came across the street to add ress our group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pont chartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the City. We called everyone back and explained to the command er that there had been lots of misinformation and wrong information and was he sure that there were buses waiting for us. The commander turned t o the crowd and stated emphatically, I swear to you that the buses are t here. We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with grea t excitement and hope. As we marched pasted the convention center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we were h eaded. Families immediately grabbed t heir few belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled aga in. Babies in strollers now joined us, people using crutches, elderly cl asping walkers and others people in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 mile s 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 t he foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inche d forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the comm anders assurances. We questioned why we couldnt 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 Superdome s in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, yo u are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans. |
| www.dissensus.com/showpost.php?p=27529&postcount=31 HMGovt HMGovt is offline Marshall-Marchetti-Krantz Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Cambridge Posts: 187 Default CONTINUED Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the r ain 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 OKeefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned w e 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 turne d away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prev ented and prohibited from self-evacuating the City on foot. Meanwhile, o nly two City shelters sank further into squalor and disrepair. We saw workers stealing trucks, bu ses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car that could be hotwired. All we re packed with people trying to escape the misery New Orleans had become . Someone stole a water delivery tr ick and brought it up to us. A mile or so down the freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a t ight turn. Now s ecure with the two necessities, food and water, cooperation, community a nd creativity flowered. We organized a clean up, and hung garbage bags f rom the rebar poles. We de signated a storm drain as the bathroom and the kids built an elaborate e nclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas, and other scraps. This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When in dividuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out for y ourself 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 communi ty. 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 uglines s would not have set in. Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing families and individuals. From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was t alking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news o rganizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being ask ed 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. Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was corr ect. 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 fucki ng freeway. A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to bl ow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up hi s truck with our food and water. Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enfo rcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed in to groups of 20 or more. Our we must stay together was impossi ble 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, cur few and shoot-to-kill policies. The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with N ew Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban search and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport and manage d to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apolo gized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards. They explained t hat a large section of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were s horthanded and were unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned. We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. We 8 were caught in a press of humani ty as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush landed br iefly at the airport for a photo op. After being evacuated on a coast gu ard cargo plane, we arrived in San Antonio, Texas. There the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief effort co ntinued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large field where we we re forced to sit for hours and hours. In the dark, hundreds if us were forced to share two filt hy overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with any possessions (often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) we were su bjected to two different dog-sniffing searches. Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been confiscat ed 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 rec eption given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker giv e 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. |