This morning I give a lecture on Hurricane Katrina. It all happened 5 years ago. I relate it to Stratification, inequality, class difference mixed with race, in America. The students like the subject, it is interesting for them. They are shocked when I get to the part about babies dying for lack of water in the Superdome.
It is a horrifying story. I get angry and sad every time I review it. Overwhelmed at the suffering. Remembering tv shots of people with arms outstretched, standing on their rooftops with signs, “HELP US!” And every face was brown. I remember someone saying, “If those were little teenage white cheerleaders, they wouldn’t have been left there. They wouldn’t have been taken to some deserted highway intersection and left there with no water, food, or protection.”
It is a story of tragedy, of a nation full of itself, floundering in a bureaucracy that did not function at the time most needed by its own people. No one expected Katrina to be this bad. It was a bad girl, coming across Florida as a Categotry 1 and hitting New Orleans as a Category 5. The people who never evacuated were the poorest of the poor. No car, no money, no place else to go = No evacuation.
I cannot imagine being holed up in the Superdome, not being ALLOWED to leave, and my baby dying for lack of water. Can you, really? in America? Can you imagine watching your own mother die for lack of medicine and medical care, and leaving her body covered with a rag, to rot for days? No assistance? This is America?
I do not want this story to die out, as those 1800+ people did 5 years ago. We need to be reminded. My students need to hear it. So it never happens again. It is horrifying.
The Director of FEMA resigned. So did the Supt. of the New Orleans Police Dept. after law suits.
Federal marshalls positioned themselves on top of a bridge and started shooting (black) people trying to walk out of the flooding, over to the safer side, the richer, white areas. This HAPPENED, it is documented, and people testified they did it in court. I know academics who were with them and wrote about it later. The fear of hordes of uneducated black folk streaming into their rich areas was too much. They brought out their guns. People were picked off their rooftops and left on deserted parts of highways with no water or food. What exactly were they supposed to do?
Was there looting? YES. And violence. It was chaos, but it was also unnecessary. That’s the really sad part. The American Federal Corps of Engineers was found responsible for the levee breaches, which then poured Lake Pontchatrain into the lower 9th ward. But they did not have to suffer or pay out a dime, due to protection clauses put in place years before, at the time of another hurricane.
Citizens came with their own boats, volunteering to rescue people themselves, and were turned away. They didn’t have the proper credentials, or clearance. This was bureaucracy at its worst.
Katrina survivors were scattered all over the country. Most of them never returned to New Orleans. Ray Nagin, who screamed over the news for those in Washington to “get off their asses and do something” is no longer mayor.
The city today is back to life, a fun place to visit, full of music and people. Academics take their conferences to New Orleans and have a great time in the French quarter. But in the lower 9th ward, houses are still boarded up. Churches do their best to serve the folks living there. It has not been rebuilt.
This could have been America at its BEST. We have a big heart. People tried to help. There is a lot of love in America, and most people don’t carry around the prejudices we used to. We realize people are people. The interesting thing is, when a tragedy happens, bureaucracy takes over. We expect the government to take care of the situation. And in this case, at this time in our history, it did not. It failed us. Citizen groups eventually organized themselves as relief agencies and many people put in hours and hours administering to the people, taking them water, food and supplies. Because FEMA never came.
Hurricane Earl is building as I write this, in the Caribbean. I wonder, what will prevent this from happening again? What will be the next tragedy?
Doctor Grandma 