In The Wake of Katrina

There's nothing there. And the situation for musicians was a joke. People thought there was a New Orleans music scene -- there wasn't. You worked two times a year: Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. A lot of things about life in New Orleans were a myth. - Cyril Neville

WHAT FOLKS NEED

1. canned goods

2. children and/or adult clothing

• water

• linen

• personal care products

• first aid supplies

• alcohol & peroxide

• herbal remedies such as Oregano oil (good for mold)

• Echinacea and Golden Seal for cold and flu

• Garlic oil pills are natural antibiotics.

Good News!

MALONE BULLDOZES OVER KATRINA RED TAPE

Cyril Neville says no to N'awlins

December 15, 2005

BY DAVE HOEKSTRA Staff Reporter

Cyril Neville boarded Amtrak's City of New Orleans train with a full head of steam. He joined singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie earlier this month for the first leg of a 12-day journey from Chicago to New Orleans, playing concerts along the way to raise funds for victims of Hurricane Katrina. Neville, however, won't be on the train when it rolls into his old hometown. He won't be going home at all.

Neville, 56, percussionist-vocalist and youngest member of the Neville Brothers -- the first family of New Orleans music -- has vowed not to return to New Orleans. During a heartfelt conversation before embarking on the train journey, Neville explained he and his wife, Gaynielle, have bought a home in Austin, Texas.

Cyril Neville joins his nephew Ivan Neville, as well as the Radiators and the Iguanas (who are scheduled to play at FitzGerald's in Berwyn on New Year's Eve), as popular New Orleans acts who have settled in Austin. Some even perform in an ad hoc band known as the Texiles. They sing a different song about the promised recovery of New Orleans.

"Would I go back to live?" Neville asked. "There's nothing there. And the situation for musicians was a joke. People thought there was a New Orleans music scene -- there wasn't. You worked two times a year: Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. The only musicians I knew who made a living playing music in New Orleans were Kermit Ruffins and Pete Fountain. Everyone else had to have a day job or go on tour. I have worked more in two months in Austin than I worked in two years in New Orleans.

"A lot of things about life in New Orleans were a myth."

Cyril Neville and his family lived in the Gentilly neighborhood. Their home now is uninhabitable.

"I am not a fish," he said. "I cannot live under 6 feet of water. In the 9th Ward and Gentilly they are going to do mass buyouts, bulldoze everything and make it green space. In my estimation, those are golf courses and other places where African-American people won't be welcome. There's nothing wrong with my house except that water destroyed everything we had in it. The foundation is fine. The house is still there. Same thing with our neighbors. So what are they talking bulldozing?

Lasting impact

"For a lot of us, the storm is still happening."

The Neville Brothers performed at September's "From the Big Apple to the Big Easy" hurricane benefit concert at Madison Square Garden in New York. Cyril Neville wore a T-shirt saying, "Ethnic Cleansing in New Orleans." Before the storm hit, 68 percent of New Orleans' 451,000 residents were black, according to wire reports. By early December, about 100,000 people had returned -- and Mayor Ray Nagin has acknowledged they are mostly white.

When the storm hit New Orleans at the end of August, the Neville Brothers were performing in New York. The family and band first regrouped in Memphis, Tenn. "Memphis was the same scene as New Orleans in that there were three clubs with 3,000 musicians trying to get gigs," Neville said. "New Orleans has Tipitina's, House of Blues and the Maple Leaf. The decision to go to Austin was a no-brainer. There was a good music scene."

None of the Nevilles is back in New Orleans. Art and Aaron are residing in Nashville temporarily (their future plans are uncertain), and Charles has lived in rural Massachusetts for 10 years.

"Up until the storm, Aaron, myself, Art and Kermit Ruffins were some of the only musicians who had 'made it' who were still living in New Orleans," Cyril Neville said. "Now you got cats that come down there every now and then to be king of a parade or whatever. They couldn't find helicopters to get people off of roofs, but they found helicopters to bring certain people in for photo ops. I'm not mad at anybody, but at the same time we put a lot into that city and never got what I think we should have got out of it."

Austin holds promise

Alligator Records recording artist and 2005 Grammy nominee Marcia Ball is a longtime staple of the Austin music scene. She was born in Orange, Texas, and reared in Louisiana. (She's also on the New Year's bill at FitzGerald's.) Neville singled her out as one of the Austin artists who embraced New Orleans musicians.

"Austin has so much to gain from Cyril," Ball said in a phone interview from New York. "He was always the social conscience, the message man. He's worked with kids and set up educational groups. He's already approached Austin High School. Austin is a different kind of town than New Orleans, which has been a dead-end street for a lot of people for a long time. You can be the best graduate in a New Orleans public high school and there's nothing for you."

"New Orleans and Austin musicians have had an affinity for each other's groove for a long time, going back to my days with the Meters when we played Armadillo World Headquarters [in Austin]," Neville observed. "On any given night we would end up with five or six guitar players onstage with us, be it the Winter brothers [Edgar and Johnny] or the Vaughan brothers."

Cyril and Gaynielle Neville now appear in a weekly Tuesday set called "New Orleans Cookin' & Jukin' " at Threadgill's in Austin. Gaynielle cooks red beans and gumbo, and they perform with their group Tribe 13, which includes Austin vocalist Papa Mali.

"The way we have been accepted in Austin is such a pleasant surprise," Neville said. "We were treated like family."

Neville linked up with the Guthrie family about 18 months ago. He was looking for songs for an upcoming solo album and discovered the Native American rock band Blackfire. They had recorded Arlo's "Mean Things Are Happening in This World."

"That song jumped out at me, so I did my version," Neville said. "For years I have wondered how can I get in contact with Arlo and Willie Nelson -- people who have the same kind of attitude and consciousness I have and who want to use their art the same way I'm trying to use mine. I got that consciousness from Woody Guthrie."

Joined up with tour

Neville heard about this month's "Ridin' on the City of New Orleans" benefit and finally called Arlo. "Arlo asked me, and I came," he said of his participation on the tour, playing the Dec. 5 concert at Chicago's Vic Theatre and the Dec. 7 show in Kankakee. "I had obligations for the end of the tour, but I had these days free, so I came to do what I could.

"People are talking to me, but some of the people I know went through much more than I did. There are 3,000 children missing in New Orleans. [The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children places the figure at 1,300.] Hundreds of bodies are waiting to be identified. The people of New Orleans have been scattered to the four winds. Their lives were determined by people in Washington and Baton Rouge before the storm hit. Without African Americans having ownership, economic equity and the same type of things the French Quarter gets -- like tax cuts -- the city will never be the same. The 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th Wards should have their own tourist commission. Build our own hotels and restaurants in those areas. The key is ownership. Then I would think about going back and living there. But we're still practicing American democracy. How can we ever bring it to somebody else?"

dhoekstra@suntimes.com |

Copyright © The Sun-Times Company
All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

NBA star brings trucks to haul away debris despite resistance from FEMA

When former Utah Jazz all-star Karl Malone brought his logging company in Arkansas into Pascagoula, Mississippi, to clear out debris left behind by Hurricane Katrina, his team was met by a brick wall named Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and orange cones nicknamed the Army Corps of Engineers. Both said Malone wasn't authorized to bring his machinery into the area to clear private property.

Bob Anderson, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, said FEMA and the corps by law could only allow approved contractors to clear debris and that only government agencies could work on "public rights of way."

The Mailman wasn't trying to hear it.

"There was a lot of red tape, and I ain't got time for that," he told AP. "I found out that if you're going to do something good, just go ahead and do it. Once I get in my machine, no one is going to get me out. We just said 'the hell with it.' FEMA didn't approve, but we did it for the people."

Malone, an experienced truck driver and logger born in Bernice, La., spent 12 hours a day behind the wheel of his heavy machinery clearing 114 lots via the 18 vehicles he brought into Pascagoula, including a backhoe, three bulldozers and several RVs for him and his crew.

"We were totally self-contained with our own food and everything," said Malone. "We didn't want to take even one bottle of water away from these people. When we told them we were doing this for free, they looked at us like we were crazy or something."

Malone said landowners were told that debris had to be moved out to the street before it could be hauled away.

"How is a landowner who just lost everything going to pay $15,000 or $20,000 to have a lot cleared?" he asked. "I mean, there were two or three houses on top of one another in some places."

The one-time power-forward, who spent 18 seasons with the Utah Jazz and one with the Los Angeles Lakers, said he was moved by the indomitable spirit of the people who vowed to rebuild.

"Everything about this just felt right," the NBA vet tells AP. "My mom died two years ago, and in our last conversation, she told me that one day I would have to step up on a grand scale and help people. I knew this was it."

Coming soon. . .the story of two couples, one from Atlanta who is helping the other couple from New Orleans who are victims of Katrina.

• THE MISSISSIPPI - DELTA STORY

• COMPELLING VIDEO!

IN THE WAKE OF KATRINA

On Sunday, September 11, I was at PETMART getting food for my cat, CAUSTIC. I met the two ladies at the left. The one on the right has a tube in her nose and I immediately asked if she was from New Orleans. She was and the other lady and her husband took this couple in after the storm. Their dog must be shipped to their daughter out West because their friends who are helping them out have a bigger and badder dog and the two do not mix. - Joan Cartwright, Editor, GaiaNews - WORDS WE SPEAK

One benefit of this tragic catastrophe for millions is the opportunity for people to help other people and the beauty of them doing so, openheartedly.

While fulfilling Jury Duty on September 12, I met a young lady who has 19 of the 23 relatives of hers from New Orleans still living in her home. She is certain they will all find housing in the next week. Until then, her children are sharing their room with five of their cousins, ages 14 to 1.

I connected her with my daughter, Mimi Johnson of CAUSTIC DAMES who are collecting baby clothes for victims of Katrina.

I believe these stories will warm our hearts for years to come creating more love, peace, harmony and happiness in America. Diva Joan Cartwright

AFTER KATRINA

• Page 1

• Page 2

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WAS KANYE RIGHT?

KATRINA WORDS

• Long wary of next-door New Orleans, the town stands by its decision to bar the city's evacuees.

• Page 2

• Page 3

  Rep. CYNTHIA McKinney

New Orleans is already displaying signs of a demographic shift so dramatic that some evacuees describe it as "ethnic cleansing."

Purging the Poor
by Naomi Klein

Outside the 2,000-bed temporary shelter in Baton Rouge's River Center, a
Church of Scientology band is performing a version of Bill Withers' classic "Use Me"--a refreshingly honest choice. "If it feels this good getting used," the Scientology singer belts out, "just keep on using me until you use me up."

Ten-year-old Nyler, lying face down on a massage table, has pretty much the same attitude. She is not quite sure why the nice lady in the yellow SCIENTOLOGY VOLUNTEER MINISTER T-shirt wants to rub her back, but "it feels so good," she tells me, so who really cares? I ask Nyler if this is her first massage. "Assist!" hisses the volunteer minister, correcting my Scientology lingo. Nyler shakes her head no; since fleeing New Orleans after a tree fell on her house, she has visited this tent many times, becoming something of an assist-aholic. "I have nerves," she explains in a blissed-out massage voice. "I have what you call nervousness."

Wearing a donated pink T-shirt with an age-inappropriate slogan ("It's the hidden little Tiki spot where the island boys are hot, hot, hot"), Nyler tells me what she is nervous about. "I think New Orleans might not ever get fixed back." "Why not?" I ask, a little surprised to be discussing reconstruction politics with a preteen in pigtails. "Because the people who know how to fix broken houses are all gone."

I don't have the heart to tell Nyler that I suspect she is on to something; that many of the African-American workers from her neighborhood may never be welcomed back to rebuild their city. An hour earlier I had interviewed New Orleans' top corporate lobbyist, Mark Drennen. As president and CEO of Greater New Orleans Inc., Drennen was in an expansive mood, pumped up by signs from Washington that the corporations he represents--everything from Chevron to Liberty Bank to Coca-Cola--were about to receive a package of tax breaks, subsidies and relaxed regulations so generous it would make the job of a lobbyist virtually obsolete.

Listening to Drennen enthuse about the opportunities opened  up by the storm, I was struck by his reference to African-Americans in New Orleans as "the minority community." At 67 percent of the population, they are in fact the clear majority, while whites like Drennen make up just 27 percent. It was no doubt a simple verbal slip, but I couldn't help feeling that it was also a glimpse into the desired demographics of the new-and- improved city being imagined by its white elite, one that won't have much room for Nyler or her neighbors who know how to fix houses. "I honestly don't know and I don't think anyone knows how they are going to fit in," Drennen said of the city's unemployed.

New Orleans is already displaying signs of a demographic shift so dramatic that some evacuees describe it as "ethnic cleansing." Before Mayor Ray Nagin called for a second evacuation, the people streaming back into dry areas were mostly white, while those with no homes to return to are overwhelmingly black. This, we are assured, is not a conspiracy; it's simple geography--a reflection of the fact that wealth in New Orleans buys altitude. That means that the driest areas are the whitest (the French Quarter is 90 percent white; the Garden District, 89 percent; Audubon, 86 percent; neighboring Jefferson Parish, where people were also allowed to return, 65 percent). Some dry areas, like Algiers, did have large low-income African-American populations before the storm, but in all the billions for reconstruction, there is no budget for transportation back from the far-flung shelters where those residents ended up. So even when resettlement is permitted, many may not be able to return.

As for the hundreds of thousands of residents whose low-lying homes and housing projects were destroyed by the flood, Drennen points out that many of those neighborhoods were dysfunctional to begin with. He says the city now has an opportunity for "twenty-first-century thinking": Rather than rebuild ghettos, New Orleans should be resettled with "mixed income" housing, with rich and poor, black and white living side by side.

What Drennen doesn't say is that this kind of urban integration could happen tomorrow, on a massive scale. Roughly 70,000 of New  Orleans' poorest homeless evacuees could move back to the city alongside returning white homeowners, without a single new structure being built. Take the Lower Garden District, where Drennen himself lives. It has a surprisingly high vacancy rate--17.4 percent, according to the 2000 Census. At that time 702 housing units stood vacant, and since the market hasn't improved and the district was barely flooded, they are presumably still there and still vacant. It's much the same in the other dry areas: With landlords preferring to board up apartments rather than lower rents, the French Quarter has been half-empty for years, with a vacancy rate of 37 percent.

The citywide numbers are staggering: In the areas that sustained only minor damage and are on the mayor's repopulation list, there are at least 11,600 empty apartments and houses. If Jefferson Parish is included, that number soars to 23,270. With three people in each unit, that means homes could be found for roughly 70,000 evacuees. With the number of permanently homeless city residents estimated at 200,000, that's a significant dent in the housing crisis. And it's doable. Democratic Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, whose Houston district includes some 150,000 Katrina evacuees, says there are ways to convert vacant apartments into affordable or free housing. After passing an ordinance, cities could issue Section 8 certificates, covering rent until evacuees find jobs. Jackson Lee says she plans to introduce legislation that will call for federal funds to be spent on precisely such rental vouchers. "If opportunity exists to create viable housing options," she says, "they should be explored."

Malcolm Suber, a longtime New Orleans community activist, was shocked to learn that thousands of livable homes were sitting empty. "If there are empty houses in the city," he says, "then working-class and poor people should be able to live in them." According to Suber, taking over vacant units would do more than provide much-needed immediate shelter: It would move the poor back into the city, preventing the key decisions about its future--like whether to turn the Ninth Ward into marshland or how to rebuild Charity Hospital--from being made exclusively by those who can afford land on high ground. "We have the right to fully participate in the reconstruction of our city," Suber says. "And that can only happen if we are back inside." But he concedes that it will be a fight: The old-line families in Audubon and the Garden District may pay lip service to "mixed income" housing, "but the Bourbons uptown would have a conniption if a Section 8 tenant moved in next door. It will certainly be interesting."

Equally interesting will be the response from the Bush Administration. So far, the only plan for homeless residents to move back to New Orleans is Bush's bizarre Urban Homesteading Act. In his speech from the French Quarter, Bush made no mention of the neighborhood's roughly 1,700 unrented apartments and instead proposed holding a lottery to hand out plots of federal land to flood victims, who could build homes on them. But it will take months (at least) before new houses are built, and many of the poorest residents won't be able to carry the mortgage, no matter how subsidized. Besides, it barely touches the need: The Administration estimates that in New Orleans there is land for only 1,000 "homesteaders."

The truth is that the White House's determination to turn renters into mortgage payers is less about solving Louisiana's housing crisis than indulging an ideological obsession with building a radically privatized "ownership society." It's an obsession that has already come to grip the entire disaster zone, with emergency relief provided by the Red Cross and Wal-Mart and reconstruction contracts handed out to Bechtel, Fluor, Halliburton and Shaw--the same gang that spent the past three years getting paid billions while failing to bring Iraq's essential services to prewar levels [see Klein, "The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," May 2]. "Reconstruction," whether in Baghdad or New Orleans, has become shorthand for a massive uninterrupted transfer of wealth from public to private hands, whether in the form of direct "cost plus" government contracts or by auctioning off new sectors of the state to corporations.

This vision was laid out in uniquely undisguised form during a meeting at the Heritage Foundation's Washington headquarters on September 13. Present were members of the House Republican Study Committee, a caucus of more than 100  conservative lawmakers headed by Indiana Congressman Mike Pence. The group compiled a list of thirty-two "Pro-Free-Market Ideas for Responding to Hurricane Katrina and High Gas Prices," including school vouchers, repealing environmental regulations and "drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge." Admittedly, it seems farfetched that these would be adopted as relief for the needy victims of an eviscerated public sector. Until you read the first three items: "Automatically suspend Davis-Bacon prevailing wage laws in disaster areas"; "Make the entire affected area a flat-tax free-enterprise zone"; and "Make the entire region an economic competitiveness zone (comprehensive tax incentives and waiving of regulations)." All are poised to become law or have already been adopted by presidential decree.

In their own way the list-makers at Heritage are not unlike the 500 Scientology volunteer ministers currently deployed to shelters across Louisiana. "We literally followed the hurricane," David Holt, a church supervisor, told me. When I asked him why, he pointed to a yellow banner that read, SOMETHING CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT. I asked him what "it" was and he said "everything."

So it is with the neocon true believers: Their "Katrina relief" policies are the same ones trotted out for every problem, but nothing energizes them like a good disaster. As Bush says, lands swept clean are "opportunity zones," a chance to do some recruiting, advance the faith, even rewrite the rules from scratch. But that, of course, will take some massaging--I mean assisting.

This article can be found on the web at:

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* * *

A Forwarded Letter from a Friend

Greetings to all,

I am requesting a huge favor from all on my e-mail list that are in a position to help.  I have a cousin Ana that lives in Picayune Mississippi, a half hour from New Orleans. She and her family are unfortunate victims of Hurricane Katrina.  I have been very concerned because I had not heard from her, until yesterday.

Ana's home is one of the few left standing in the neighborhood. It has become a refuge for much of her family and neighbors, even though the house is roofless as a result of the hurricane.  Ana had been without power for several days, until yesterday, and has endured 104-degree temperatures, while attempting to bail the water out of her home.  Her daughter, grandson, and son-in-law lived in New Orleans and were blessed to have escape with their lives.

Ana explained that when her daughter attempted to go downstairs, during the hurricane, she was shocked to find her kitchen relocated to where her bathroom was and vice a versa.  She was further horrified to find several dead bodies floating through what was left of her living room. 

I am asking anyone that is in a position to help with canned goods, children and/or adult clothing, water, linen, personal care products, first aid supplies, alcohol, peroxide, and herbal remedies such as Oregano oil (good for mold), Echinacea, Golden Seal for cold and flu, and garlic oil pills, which are natural antibiotics.

My major concern is that my cousin, Ana, is diabetic and she sustained a terrible cut on her foot, during this tragedy, and has not had any professional medical treatment.  She is traumatized and does not want to leave her home, family and community, especially in lieu of the madness taking place in the neighboring town, New Orleans.

Needless to say, they are devastated, financially. The medical center where Ana was employed was completely destroyed.  Consequently, they are in dire need of survival supplies because stores are closed indefinitely.  In the midst of this tragedy, she has become sort of the intermediary in her community and has been the glue holding things together. 

I humbly request your assistance in whatever manner you can assist us in assisting others during this time of serious challenge.

I am  sure all have witnessed the Red Cross take up huge donations, and I am equally sure that all have witnessed that the people that appear to need the most help receive the least help and/or donations.  In the interest of time and desperation I asked that everyone please send any and all contributions directly to Ana. 

I only have the sizes for Ana and her family, however their are other families also in dire straits and Ana will equitably distribute to others what she receives.  Most of Ana's clothes where destroyed, and her daughter and family lost every thing.  I have included their sizes: 

Ana sizes- tall woman's, 18-20, and shoes 12, and her grandson age 13 and shoe size 13, and 30 waist and 33 length, her daughter wears size 12-14, and 11 shoes size, and her son-in-law's waist 34 and length 32 inches.

Anything that you can send at this time toothpaste, bar of soap, bag of rice any thing would be greatly appreciated.  Although currently Ana can not receive her mail directly to her home, every couple of days she goes to the post office to check her mail. Her full name is:

Ana L. Payne Allen
521 Weems
Picayune, Mississippi 39466

I would like to thank in advance all those that are able to assist and support us during this time of crisis and chaos. Much appreciated.
Myra Ashera

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* * *

Awash in Inequity
Interview with JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN by DEBORAH SOLOMON

Q. As a renowned scholar of African-American history, a field that some say you virtually invented, how do you think Hurricane Katrina has altered our view of race in this country?

A. The tragedy is that Katrina changed our view at all. We should have known the things that Katrina brought out.

Q. Like the fact that blacks in New Orleans live in the lowest and most flood-prone elevations, while whites occupy the higher and safer land?

A. Yes, but we don't have any interest in that. We have more interest in who won the last football game, and who won the last basketball game, and who's on TV, and who's in Hollywood. It's a fundamental problem of this country today, the lack of critical thinking and judgment on the part of the American citizens.

Lawrence F. Kaplan just published an essay in which he laments the decline of national greatness not among our leaders but among our citizens, among ordinary Americans who have lost all sense of civic responsibility.

It was never any different. It has been the same since 1619. That was when the first ships arrived from West Africa with blacks on them. We got off to a bad start right then!

Q. How can you, as a man who was born in Oklahoma at a time when lynchings were common, and who later worked with Thurgood Marshall on Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark case that outlawed segregation in public schools, claim that we have made no progress in advancing the rights of African-Americans?

A. I'm not saying that! I'd jump out the window if I thought we had made no progress. What I am saying is that the changes have been superficial, and we are still a segregated society when it comes to schools and the neighborhoods where we live.

And of course, you are a teacher yourself. In fact, you are said to be the most decorated professor in this country. I hear you have so far earned 130 honorary degrees.

I think it's up to 137. But that's not the way you measure anything. Some of it is conscience pay. I don't want to belabor the point, but giving out awards makes the givers feel good. It is easier to give me an honorary degree than to make certain that all blacks have a decent place to live.

You yourself live rather nicely in Durham, N.C., where you're a professor emeritus at Duke University and have a building on the campus named after you.

I call myself retired now, and I try to act my age.

Q. How, exactly, does one act at 90 years old?

A. You go fly-fishing all day. Or you write all day. Your history of a slave family, "In Search of the Promised Land," just came out, and next month you're publishing your autobiography, "Mirror to America."

Q. Do you ever get tired of working?

A. I have never experienced fatigue the way other people do. I remember the first time I experienced fatigue. It was in 1960, and I was in Australia. I thought I was going to die.

Q. Now that you are a widower, who prepares your meals for you?

A. His name is John Hope Franklin.

Q. Yes, I've heard of him. How's his cooking?

A. Pretty good. I had a big cookout on Labor Day. I had six people over for dinner. I did Hawaiian chicken, and baby back ribs, and we had corn on the cob, and potato salad, which I am ashamed to say that I did not make myself but bought at Harris Teeter supermarket. Isn't that awful?

Q. Unforgivable. Have you ever missed a day of work?

A. No. For what?

Q. What do you think about before you fall asleep at night?

A. I don't think about the past much. And I never think about whether I am going to wake up or not the next morning. I'm too busy trying to read the last pages of the newspaper before it falls in my face.

* * *

A different view

The following is a message from Tobias Wolff to his father, Robert Paul Wolff, professor in the Afro-American Studies Department at University of Mass, Amherst, and contains an eyewitness account of two friends of Tobias who were trapped in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

From: tobiaswolff@mindspring.com
To: rwolff12@comcast.net
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 11:07 PM

Two friends of mine-paramedics attending a conference-were trapped in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. This is their eyewitness report. --PG

Hurricane Katrina -Our Experiences - Larry Bradshaw, Lorrie Beth Slonsky

Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's 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 cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside Walgreen's windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry.

The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and the windows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices, and bottle water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.

We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived home yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the Walgreen's in the French Quarter.

We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero" images of the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the "victims" of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we witnessed, were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a fork lift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured and kept the generators running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in order 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. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators.

Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, "stealing" boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that could be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service workers who scoured the commercial kitchens improvising communal meals for hundreds of those stranded.

Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from members of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only infrastructure 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 French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees like ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and shelter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact with family and friends outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources 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.

We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who did have extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute the arrived to the City limits, they were commandeered by the military.

By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously abysmal. 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 convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the City, 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 descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole.

The guards further told us that the City's only other shelter, the  Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, "If we can't go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our alternative?" The guards told us that that was our problem, and no they did not have extra water to give to us. This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile "law enforcement".

We walked to the police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street and were told the same thing, that we were on our own, and no they did not have water to give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a mass meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police command post. We would be plainly visible to the media and would constitute a highly visible embarrassment to the City officials. The police told us that we could not stay. Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp. In short order, the police commander came across the street to address our group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the City.

The crowed cheered and began to move. We called everyone back and explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation and wrong information and was he sure that there were buses waiting for us. The commander turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear to you that the buses are there."

We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and hope. As we marched pasted the convention center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we were headed. We told them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and others people in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles 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 the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.

We questioned why we couldn't 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 Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the rain under an overpass. We debated our options and in the end decided to build an encampment in the middle of the Pontchartrain Expressway on the center divide, between the O'Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned we 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 turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the City on foot.

Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank further into squalor and disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape the misery New Orleans had become.

Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water delivery truck and brought it up to us. Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so down the freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping carts.

Now secure with the two necessities, food and water; cooperation, community, and creativity flowered. We organized a clean up and hung garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made beds from wood pallets and cardboard. We designated a storm drain as the bathroom and the kids built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas, and other scraps. We even organized a food recycling system where individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for babies and candies for kids!).

This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out for yourself 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 community.

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 ugliness would not have set in.

Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing families and individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or 90 people.

From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being asked 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.

Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it.

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct. 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 fucking freeway". A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.

Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims" they saw "mob" or "riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" was impossible 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, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.

The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with New Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban search and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned.

We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The airport had become another Superdome. We 8 were caught in a press of humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush landed briefly at the airport for a photo op. After being evacuated on a coast guard cargo plane, we arrived in San Antonio, Texas.

There the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief effort continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large field where we were forced to sit for hours and hours. Some of the buses did not have
air-conditioners. In the dark, hundreds if us were forced to share two filthy overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with any possessions (often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) we were subjected to two different dog-sniffing searches.

Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been confiscated 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 reception given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker give 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. There was more suffering than need be. Lives were lost that did not need to be lost.

* * *

Update on Moss Point/Escatawpa

After receiving the e-mail that Asha sent yesterday, i contact our SOS point person in Mobile, who spent most of the day with Cynthia Wright assessing the situation and delivering a few supplies.  Her assessment is the same as Asha's in Hattiesburg, that although there are some places that are saturated with supplies and support many predominantly Black areas are still lacking.

Sent: Friday, September 16, 2005 11:35 PM
Subject: update from Mississippi

We located a great church in Hattiesburg Mississippi, one of the areas particularly impacted by Katrina. The church, Mount Carmel Baptist, which is headed by Rev. Kenneth Farley (sp?), has an amazing relief program which is being spearheaded by their youth minister, Antonio Benton (601-606-9168.  They have tremendous storage space which is exceedingly well-organized and they are servicing a number of the most impacted rural, Black areas including towns in Greene County, Prentiss, and Lumberton.  We dropped off a small amount of supplies today and Akil will have confirmation on a truck tomorrow AM.  Our plan-and there are drivers & workers in place--is to pack up the items from where they're currently being held in Jackson on Sunday from 1130 until whenever.  On Monday morning, the items will head 90 miles downstate to Hattiesburg where we're confident many, many of our people will served.  Mount Carmel has already reached some 10,000 families/people.  We have some video footage of the trucks being unloaded in Jackson and some of Hattiesburg and some of Antonio describing what people need.

• CLEANING SUPPLIES AND DISINFECTANTS

• CLOTHES FOR TEENAGERS

• WATER

• FOOD--CANNED GOODS, FLIP TOPS AND OTHERWISE

• ALSO TO CONSIDER:  TOYS FOR CHILDREN

Friends/Family:

This is some of what I learned today from our trip to Algiers, located on the West Bank, across from New Orleans. 

Although the area was severely damaged and is largely uninhabitable, the levee on this side didn't break and there were no floods.  The loss of life--I don't know how many people--that everyone I spoke to in Algiers described, occurred because of white vigilantes who began killing people who were trying to get to dry land from (especially but not exclusively) the 9th ward. 

We met with Malik Rahim who lives in Algiers, and who said, "Some of my neighbors were part of the vigilante groups." He went on to report that there was a body that lay dead from a bullet wound for a week just outside the former health care clinic.  His attempt to bury the body was thwarted because he had no lime for the body, and because military personnel intervened and wouldn't allow him--or a licensed professional--to do so. Algiers borders Jefferson Parish, the one which so heavily supported David Dukes and the one which is still heavily Klan controlled.

In Algiers we saw extreme military and federal presence (ATF, FEMA et al), but almost no relief work was being done.  There was a small area where food was being handed out, but it was at intimidating barbed wire check point that was protected (by my estimate) 8 or 9 soldiers with trained M16s.  One resident of the community was among them asking for food. Others sought their food, clothes and hygenic supplies from the Common Ground collective, a group spearheaded by Rahim, put a call out to local organizations like Pastors for Peace and Veterans for Peace.  PFP and VFP have been the primary providers of food and water in Algiers, using Malik's small home as their command center.  His home has no barbed wire around it.  No arms are allowed in his home, and there has been no crime or violence done to him, his home or the volunteers by community members.  Neither has there been looting (Similarly, Norris Henderson of the Juvenile Justice Project and Voice of the Ex-Offender in New Orleans reports that his office, largely undamaged, was broken into, but no computers or anything was taken except water).

As well, the collective has set up an emergency health clinic and a mobile health clinic that goes into New Orleans. These are the only health care outlets in the area for remaining community members.  The Red Cross, FEMA and other official and governmental agencies are not present in this capacity. Doctors--one of whom flew in from San Francisco and will have to leave shortly--requested assistance from the Louisiana Department of Public Health, but were denied.  The Department, noting that the emergency clinic--the only one in the area to service people needing heart, diabetes, asthma and pain meds--refused assistance because the facility is housed in a mosque.  They cited

Before we left we spent time in the clinic.  There was a young man so thin it broke your heart--especially to be in the south.  He'd come into the clinic because he needed a shelter.  The volunteer who attended him had called every shelter in all the surrounding areas but there was no room at the inn.  A doctor made him a peanut butter sandwich which he ate fast as light. Malik told the young man he could stay at his place, "but you gotta volunteer bro." The young man agreed.

The Bourbons uptown would have a conniption if a Section 8 tenant moved in next door. It will certainly be interesting.

GOD WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS WITH WONDERS TO PERFORM!

-- Eskimo teachings

We also learn that this country and the Western world have no monopoly of goodness and truth and scholarship, we begin to appreciate the ingredients that are indispensable to making a better world. In a life of learning that is, perhaps, the greatest lesson of all. John Hope Franklin

In the interview to the left, Franklin speaks on The decline of national greatness

It's a fundamental problem of this country today, the lack of critical thinking and judgment on the part of the American citizens.

OPPORTUNITY FOR SPIRIT

Subject: Einstein on Race and Racism a new book out July 25th. http://www.einsteinonrace.com
 

I heard one African survivor of Hurricane Katrina say, "Hell, we [African people] built this country."  Amen. HAWK (J. D. Jackson)

Authors' Preface To "EINSTEIN ON RACE AND RACISM"
By Fred Jerome and Rodger Taylor

More than one hundred biographies and monographs of Einstein have been published, yet not one of them mentions the name Paul Robeson, let alone Einstein's friendship with him, or the name W. E. B. Du Bois, let alone Einstein's support for him. Nor does one find in any of these works any reference to the Civil Rights Congress whose campaigns Einstein actively supported. Finally, nowhere in all the ocean of published Einsteinia -- anthologies, bibliographies, biographies, summaries, articles, videotapes, calendars, posters and postcards -- will one find even an islet of information about Einstein's visits and ties to the people in Princeton's African American community around the street called Witherspoon.

One explanation for this historical amnesia is that Einstein's biographers and others who shape our official memories, felt that some of his 'controversial' friends, such as Robeson, and activities, such as co-chairing the antilynching campaign, might somehow tarnish Einstein as an American icon. That icon, sanctified by Time magazine when it dubbed Einstein the 'Person of the Century,' is a myth, albeit a marvelous myth. In fact, as myths go, Einstein's is hard to beat. The world's most brilliant scientist is also a kindly, lovably bumbling, grandfather figure: Professor Genius combined with Dr. Feelgood! Opinion-molders, looking down from their ivory towers, may have concluded that such an appealing icon will help the great unwashed public feel good about science, about history, about America. Why spoil such a beautiful image with stories about racism, or for that matter with any of Einstein's political activism? Politics, they argue, is ugly, making teeth grind and fists clench, so why splash politics over Einstein's icon? Why drag a somber rain-cloud across a bright blue sky? Einstein might reply, with a wink, that without rain-clouds life would be very, very short. Or he might simply say that a bright blue sky is a fairy tale in today's war-weary world.

Yet, despite Einstein's clear intention to make his politics public -- especially his anti-lynching and other antiracist activities -- the history-molders have seemed embarrassed to do so. Or nervous. 'I had to think about my Board,' a museum curator (who doesn't want his name used even today) said, explaining why he had omitted some of the scientist's political statements from the major exhibition celebrating Einstein's one hundredth birthday in 1979.

When it came to how to handle Einstein's ashes or his house on Mercer Street, everyone involved meticulously adhered to his wishes. But when it involved his ideas, and especially his concerns about what he called America's 'worst disease,' the fact that Einstein wanted his views made as public as possible seems to have slipped past his historians.

Readers may judge for themselves how much of this oversight is due to forgetting and how much may be due to other motives (including, perhaps, disagreement with Einstein's point of view). It is not so much the motive for the omission, but the consequence that concerns us. Americans and the millions of Einstein's fans around the world are left unaware that Einstein was an outspoken, passionate, committed anti-racist. 'It is certain -- indeed painfully obvious -- that racism has permeated US history both as idea and practice,' as the historian Herbert Aptheker states. 'Nevertheless,' he adds, 'It always has faced significant challenge.'

Racism in America depends for its survival in large part on the smothering of anti-racist voices, especially when those voices come from popular and widely respected individuals -- like Albert Einstein. This book, then, aspires to be part of a grand un-smothering. (ALSO SEE AMAZON)

"There is, however, a somber point in the social outlook of Americans. Their sense of equality and human dignity is mainly limited to men of white skins. Even among these there are prejudices of which I as a Jew am clearly conscious; but they are unimportant in comparison with the attitude of the 'Whites' toward their fellow-citizens of darker complexion, particularly toward Negroes. The more I feel an American, the more this situation pains me. I can escape the feeling of complicity in it only by speaking out.

"Many a sincere person will answer: 'Our attitude towards Negroes is the result of unfavorable experiences which we have had by living side by side with Negroes in this country. They are not our equals in intelligence, sense of responsibility, reliability.'

"I am firmly convinced that whoever believes this suffers from a fatal misconception. Your ancestors dragged these black people from their homes by force; and in the white man's quest for wealth and an easy life they have been ruthlessly suppressed and exploited, degraded into slavery. The modern prejudice against Negroes is the result of the desire to maintain this unworthy condition."