New Orleans' poor are failed yet again
The Ottawa Citizen - Sept 03, 2005
Don Sawyer
A harried journalist reports seeing a child die in its mother's arms as a U.S. military Humvee in the background speeds through the rubble. A helicopter aborts its mission when it comes under fire from the ground. Thousands of people lie listless on the ground in broiling heat, deprived of food and water for days.
These scenes are not from Baghdad, Afghanistan or tsunami- stricken Thailand. All of these have occurred -- and still are occurring -- over the last few days in what once was New Orleans. How could a city of 1.5 million people in the wealthiest country in the world have come to this?
It's a sordid story of everything that is wrong with the U.S.: Racism, short-sightedness, grotesque inequality, misallocation of funding, abandonment of the underclass, disregard for the environment, military adventurism and, above all, stunning hubris.
Banned from the New Orleans tourist brochures full of Mardi Gras jollity, quaint French Quarter bars, street musicians and wrought- iron balconies is the real New Orleans. This New Orleans is 75 per cent black, overwhelmingly poor, and stuffed into some of the most decrepit and shameful housing projects in all of North America.
Few visitors toured the decayed downtown of shuttered buildings, abandoned businesses and lost hope. Fewer still wandered into the inner-city schools with their crumbling walls, scarce materials and untrained teachers.
The vast majority of New Orleans residents have always been ignored and marginalized. Is it any wonder that in the fiasco of an evacuation "plan" these people were again forgotten and abandoned?
Asked by ABC's Diane Sawyer if George W. Bush "blamed" those who had stayed behind for their condition, Mr. Bush reportedly answered "This is not the time to blame."
I strongly disagree. This is precisely the time to lay blame, and it is certainly not on the victims who have been without fresh water, basic sanitation, food, any coherent assistance, information or leadership for five days while they watch their children and elders die before their eyes.
And there is plenty of blame to go around, starting with the local and state government officials who ordered an evacuation of New Orleans on Saturday, apparently oblivious to the fact that tens of thousands of people had no cars or means of escaping the city.
Where was the fleet of busses before the storm rushing to the poorest neighborhoods and moving people to safety? Where were the emergency provisions for exactly this kind of disaster, one that has been predicted for years?
And much of the blame falls squarely on the Bush regime itself. The local National Guard, which is trained and mandated to deal with precisely this sort of domestic crisis, has been decimated through deployment to Iraq. Urgent requests last year to strengthen hurricane protection around New Orleans were met with $10 million U.S., one-sixth of what was requested. The White House argued it needed the additional money to strengthen its "homeland security initiatives against terrorism."
Blame also goes to the engineers and developers who ignored the need for protection provided by natural barriers and continued to channel the Mississippi to provide more land for urban expansion and greater ease of navigation. Resulting erosion carried away barrier islands, huge swaths of marshland dried up, and nearly 4,000 square kilometres of natural bulwark against storm damage disappeared.
This is truly a disaster of enormous proportions. Thousands are dead or will die. One of North America's great cities has been destroyed. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people who have lost jobs, homes, family members and whole neighborhoods will never be the same.
And most astonishingly, this country that can mount an invasion and occupation of another country half the globe away seemed, until some aid arrived yesterday, utterly helpless to even provide the most basic emergency relief to the suffering thousands left behind.
Instead of taking blame for its stunning and tragic inability to provide just fundamental protection and assistance to its citizens, the White House fulminates against "lawlessness" and looters.
Maybe President Bush can be excused for missing the desperation of the tens of thousands of people caught in the chaos on the ground since his only view of one of America's greatest disasters was from 25,000 feet on Air Force One as he sped to Washington (cutting his vacation short by two whole days), before he visited Mississippi yesterday.
But is he so out of touch or emotionally numbed that he cannot understand the fury and anger felt by people who have been marginalized all their lives and have now, once again and in most dramatic fashion, been deserted and discarded?
The New Orleans disaster reveals the true level of venality, incompetence and outright stupidity of the leadership of the United States. As always, what is most unfortunate is that the poor and powerless are the ones that suffer from it.
Don Sawyer is a writer and educator living in Salmon Arm, B.C. He immigrated from the United States 35 years ago. His daughter is executive director of the Youth Empowerment Project, a program helping inner-city New Orleans youths acquire the skills necessary to escape the cycle of hopelessness and poverty after leaving prison.
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