[E-rundbrief] Info 271 - J. Flaherty: Left journalist from inside New Orleans

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 271 - Jordan Flaherty: Notes From Inside New Orleans 
(Left Turn Magazine, 2.10.2005). A 70% African-American city where 
resistance to white supremacy has supported a generous, subversive and 
unique culture of vivid beauty.  Lack of support by federal and provincial 
politics and administration for decades.  This disaster is one that was 
constructed out of racism, neglect and incompetence. As hurricane Katrina 
approached, our Governor urged us to "Pray the hurricane down" to a level two.

Bad Ischl, 3.9.2005

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

===========================================================

Notes From Inside New Orleans

by Jordan Flaherty

Friday, September 2, 2005

I just left New Orleans a couple hours ago.  I traveled from the apartment 
I was staying in by boat to a helicopter to a refugee camp. If anyone wants 
to examine the attitude of federal and state officials towards the victims 
of hurricane Katrina, I advise you to visit one of the refugee camps.

In the refugee camp I just left, on the I-10 freeway near Causeway, 
thousands of people (at least 90% black and poor) stood and squatted in mud 
and trash behind metal barricades, under an unforgiving sun, with heavily 
armed soldiers standing guard over them.  When a bus would come through, it 
would stop at a random spot, state police would open a gap in one of the 
barricades, and people would rush for the bus, with no information given 
about where the bus was going. Once inside (we were told) evacuees would be 
told where the bus was taking them - Baton Rouge, Houston, Arkansas, 
Dallas, or other locations.  I was told that if you boarded a bus bound for 
Arkansas (for example), even people with family and a place to stay in 
Baton Rouge would not be allowed to get out of the bus as it passed through 
Baton Rouge.  You had no choice but to go to the shelter in Arkansas.  If 
you had people willing to come to New Orleans to pick you up, they could 
not come within 17 miles of the camp.

I traveled throughout the camp and spoke to Red Cross workers, Salvation 
Army workers, National Guard, and state police, and although they were 
friendly, no one could give me any details on when buses would arrive, how 
many, where they would go to, or any other information.  I spoke to the 
several teams of journalists nearby, and asked if any of them had been able 
to get any information from any federal or state officials on any of these 
questions, and all of them, from Australian tv to local Fox affiliates 
complained of an unorganized, non-communicative, mess.  One cameraman told 
me "as someone who's been here in this camp for two days, the only 
information I can give you is this: get out by nightfall.  You don't want 
to be here at night."

There was also no visible attempt by any of those running the camp to set 
up any sort of transparent and consistent system, for instance a line to 
get on buses, a way to register contact information or find family members, 
special needs services for children and infirm, phone services, treatment 
for possible disease exposure, nor even a single trash can.

To understand the dimensions of this tragedy, its important to look at New 
Orleans itself.

For those who have not lived in New Orleans, you have missed a incredible, 
glorious, vital, city.  A place with a culture and energy unlike anywhere 
else in the world.  A 70% African-American city where resistance to white 
supremacy has supported a generous, subversive and unique culture of vivid 
beauty.  From jazz, blues and hiphop, to secondlines, Mardi Gras Indians, 
Parades, Beads, Jazz Funerals, and red beans and rice on Monday nights, New 
Orleans is a place of art and music and dance and sexuality and liberation 
unlike anywhere else in the world.

It is a city of kindness and hospitality, where walking down the block can 
take two hours because you stop and talk to someone on every porch, and 
where a community pulls together when someone is in need.  It is a city of 
extended families and social networks filling the gaps left by city, state 
and federal governments that have abdicated their responsibility for the 
public welfare. It is a city where someone you walk past on the street not 
only asks how you are, they wait for an answer.

It is also a city of exploitation and segregation and fear.  The city of 
New Orleans has a population of just over 500,000 and was expecting 300 
murders this year, most of them centered on just a few, overwhelmingly 
black, neighborhoods.  Police have been quoted as saying that they don't 
need to search out the perpetrators, because usually a few days after a 
shooting, the attacker is shot in revenge.

There is an atmosphere of intense hostility and distrust between much of 
Black New Orleans and the N.O. Police Department.  In recent months, 
officers have been accused of everything from drug running to corruption to 
theft.  In separate incidents, two New Orleans police officers were 
recently charged with rape (while in uniform), and there have been several 
high profile police killings of unarmed youth, including the murder of 
Jenard Thomas, which has inspired ongoing weekly protests for several months.

The city has a 40% illiteracy rate, and over 50% of black ninth graders 
will not graduate in four years. Louisiana spends on average $4,724 per 
child's education and ranks 48th in the country for lowest teacher 
salaries. The equivalent of more than two classrooms of young people drop 
out of Louisiana schools every day and about 50,000 students are absent 
from school on any given day.  Far too many young black men from New 
Orleans end up enslaved in Angola Prison, a former slave plantation where 
inmates still do manual farm labor, and over 90% of inmates eventually die 
in the prison.  It is a city where industry has left, and most remaining 
jobs are are low-paying, transient, insecure jobs in the service economy.

Race has always been the undercurrent of Louisiana politics.  This disaster 
is one that was constructed out of racism, neglect and 
incompetence.  Hurricane Katrina was the inevitable spark igniting the 
gasoline of cruelty and corruption.  From the neighborhoods left most at 
risk, to the treatment of the refugees to the the media portrayal of the 
victims, this disaster is shaped by race.

Louisiana politics is famously corrupt, but with the tragedies of this week 
our political leaders have defined a new level of incompetence.  As 
hurricane Katrina approached, our Governor urged us to "Pray the hurricane 
down" to a level two.  Trapped in a building two days after the hurricane, 
we tuned our battery-operated radio into local radio and tv stations, 
hoping for vital news, and were told that our governor had called for a day 
of prayer.  As rumors and panic began to rule, they was no source of solid 
dependable information.  Tuesday night, politicians and reporters said the 
water level would rise another 12 feet - instead it stabilized.  Rumors 
spread like wildfire, and the politicians and media only made it worse.

While the rich escaped New Orleans, those with nowhere to go and no way to 
get there were left behind.  Adding salt to the wound, the local and 
national media have spent the last week demonizing those left behind. As 
someone that loves New Orleans and the people in it, this is the part of 
this tragedy that hurts me the most, and it hurts me deeply.

No sane person should classify someone who takes food from indefinitely 
closed stores in a desperate, starving city as a "looter," but that's just 
what the media did over and over again.  Sheriffs and politicians talked of 
having troops protect stores instead of perform rescue operations.

Images of New Orleans' hurricane-ravaged population were transformed into 
black, out-of-control, criminals.  As if taking a stereo from a store that 
will clearly be insured against loss is a greater crime than the 
governmental neglect and incompetence that did billions of dollars of 
damage and destroyed a city.  This media focus is a tactic, just as the 
eighties focus on "welfare queens" and "super-predators" obscured the 
simultaneous and much larger crimes of the Savings and Loan scams and mass 
layoffs, the hyper-exploited people of New Orleans are being used as a 
scapegoat to cover up much larger crimes.

City, state and national politicians are the real criminals here.  Since at 
least the mid-1800s, its been widely known the danger faced by flooding to 
New Orleans.  The flood of 1927, which, like this week's events, was more 
about politics and racism than any kind of natural disaster, illustrated 
exactly the danger faced.  Yet government officials have consistently 
refused to spend the money to protect this poor, overwhelmingly black, 
city.  While FEMA and others warned of the urgent impending danger to New 
Orleans and put forward proposals for funding to reinforce and protect the 
city, the Bush administration, in every year since 2001, has cut or refused 
to fund New Orleans flood control, and ignored scientists warnings of 
increased hurricanes as a result of global warming.  And, as the dangers 
rose with the floodlines, the lack of coordinated response dramatized 
vividly the callous disregard of our elected leaders.

The aftermath from the 1927 flood helped shape the elections of both a US 
President and a Governor, and ushered in the southern populist politics of 
Huey Long.

In the coming months, billions of dollars will likely flood into New 
Orleans.  This money can either be spent to usher in a "New Deal" for the 
city, with public investment, creation of stable union jobs, new schools, 
cultural programs and housing restoration, or the city can be "rebuilt and 
revitalized" to a shell of its former self, with newer hotels, more 
casinos, and with chain stores and theme parks replacing the former 
neighborhoods, cultural centers and corner jazz clubs.

Long before Katrina, New Orleans was hit by a hurricane of poverty, racism, 
disinvestment, deindustrialization and corruption.  Simply the damage from 
this pre-Katrina hurricane will take billions to repair.

Now that the money is flowing in, and the world's eyes are focused on 
Katrina, its vital that progressive-minded people take this opportunity to 
fight for a rebuilding with justice.  New Orleans is a special place, and 
we need to fight for its rebirth.

-----------------------------------------------
Jordan Flaherty is a union organizer and an editor of Left Turn Magazine 
(www.leftturn.org). He is not planning on moving out of New Orleans.
-----------------------------------------------

Ergänzung:

ORF-Korrespondeten berichten, dass bei der Evakuierung von schwarzen 
Bewohnern aus New Orleans in umgebende Regionen zusätzliche Schwierigkeiten 
bereichten. Denn diese sind überwiegend weiß, erzkonservativ und 
fundamentalistisch religiös. Konflikte mit der von Jordan Flaherty 
geschilderten Lebenskultur aus New Orleans sind - angeheizt durch 
Medienberichte - unausbleiblich. Dazu kommen noch Kommentare von 
Fernsehpredigern und anderen, die die Katastrophe als "gerechte Strafe 
Gottes" für das "Sündenbabel" erklären.

Matthias Reichl, 3.9.2005


Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
     Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
     Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
     Wolfgangerstr. 26, A-4820 Bad Ischl, Austria,
     fon: +43 6132 24590, Informationen/ informations,
     Impressum in: http://www.begegnungszentrum.at
Spenden-Konto Nr. 0600-970305 (Blz. 20314) Sparkasse Bad Ischl, 
Geschäftsstelle Pfandl
IBAN: AT922031400600970305    BIC: SKBIAT21XXX