Recording Katrina

"Making Light" blog commemorates Katrina + 3

2008-08-30T00:43:00.000-07:00

[[ "Making Light" is the blog I first followed the Katrina story on. The blog is published by New Yorkers Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, with additional posts by Jim MacDonald and others.
-- Thomas ]]
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Katrina - Third Anniversary ("Making Light")

Making Light followed this story from the beginning, from the day before Katrina hit New Orleans:
Katrina: Not your usual weather disaster story
28AUG05 O the dreadful wind and rain—They’re talking about this being the kind of storm that can reshape coastlines. Hurricane-force winds could be felt up to 150 miles inland. The Mayor of New Orleans has ordered a mandatory evacuation, and the governors of Louisiana and Mississippi have ordered that all the lanes on the interstates be switched to “outbound.” Best-case scenario for New Orleans still has the levees breaking and the city under fifteen feet of filthy water—and it doesn’t look like we’re going to be a best-case scenario. As of mid-afternoon, the storm’s stats are worse than Hurricane Camille’s—and while Camille was intense, it was also physically small. Katrina is huge.
Katrina
29AUG05 “Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? ‘Times-Picayune’ Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues” by Will Bunch, in Editor & Publisher. A very strong article which lays out Bush & Co.’s consistent policy of stripping funding from levee maintenance and hurricane preparedness in the Gulf Coast area in order to reallocate those funds to the Department of Homeland Security and the war in Iraq.
Apocalypse deferred; likely damage merely “incredible”
29AUG05 Maybe there’ll be a New Orleans to go back to after all. We can hope.

More.

Katrina Commemoration Events

2008-08-29T08:17:00.000-07:00

Via Katrina Information Network.

NATIONAL

• (August 29) Los Angeles, New Orleans and Los Angeles: Fighting for the Right to the City*** Co-sponsored by the East LA Community Corporation, Esperanza Community Housing Corp., Korean Immigrant Workers Alliance, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, South Asian Network and Union de Vecinos. This event will feature a candle-light vigil filled with art, food, theater, speakers, live music and entertainment connecting the struggles for working class people of color in New Orleans and Los Angeles. August 29, 2008 6:30 pm 3245 Wilshire. For more information please contact: Thelmy Perez-213-745-9961 x226

• (August 29) Miami, Trouble the Water Film Screening, Fundraiser and Speak Out*** Co-sponsored by the Miami Workers Center, Vecinos Unidos, and Power U center. Friday August 29, 7:30pm at Shantel’s Lounge (5422 NW 7th Ave). This event will connect the struggles around police, prisons, poverty, and education for communities in New Orleans and Miami. Including Power U Band and open mic. $5 Donation. Contact 305.576.7749 for more info.

• New Orleans/Gulf Coast Tour Youth from New York’s West End and Middle Collegiate Churches are traveling to the Gulf Coast to help with recovery work in the region and to meet with youth advocates. They will spend two days in Mississippi helping to rebuild homes in the Gulfport area and a few days in New Orleans working on green projects and meeting with youth affiliated with Save Our Schools New Orleans and Frederick Douglass High School to understand how communities are rebuilding through the eyes of young people. For more info contactwww.westendchurch.org or www.middlechurch.org.

• (August 29) New York, Commemoration Rally and March*** New York City – Right To The City Alliance, the New York Solidarity Coalition with Katrina/Rita Survivors, Artist Relief, Brenda Stokley, Joetta Rogers and Northeast Survivors Group. The event will start with a rally and press conference at Sarah Roosevelt Park followed by a march starting at 4:15pm. The march will wind through the Lower East Side and Chinatown with short stops in each community and will end with a vigil in front of One Police Plaza. The commemoration will end with a fundraiser at Judson Memorial Church at 7:30 pm put on by the Artist Relief Collective and the Nola Preservation Society. For more information contact Rob Robinson at Picture the Homeless (646) 314-6423 or Brenda Stokley at the New York Solidarity Coalition with Katrina and Rita Survivors (212) 969-0449

• (August 29) Philadelphia-Hurricane Season. Alixa and Naima of Climbing PoeTree are premiering their two-woman show on 8/29/08 kicking off a 50-city national tour. A multimedia piece, Hurricane Season connects issues that surfaced in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the "unnatural disasters" unfolding nationwide and world wide on a daily basis. Hurricane Season tackles global warming, environmental injustice, criminalization, militarism, corporate domination and displacement as they manifest from one gulf to another, with a powerful tale of resistance, resilience, creativity and survival . For more info visit www.hurricaneseasontour.com. Doors open at 7pm, Show starts at 7:30. Location: The Rotunda, 4014 Walnut Street, Philadelphia. Tickets are $10-$20

• (August 29) Providence, RI Commemorative March*** Sponsored by Boston/Providence Right to the City Alliance members including DARE (Direct Action for Rights and Equality) and ONA (Olneyville Neighborhood Association). Second line style action starts at 3:30pm at DARE offices (340 Lockwood St. Providence, RI 02903) Participants will follow the Hurricane Evacuation Route and will make stops along the way which highlight issues of criminalization, foreclosures, gentrification, education, and immigration and will connect the struggles of Providence to New Orleans. For information contact 401-351-3560 or 401-228-8996.

• (August 29) San Francisco Bay Area-No Business as Usual Katrina Anniversary*** Action is Co-sponsored by Bay Area Right to the City. August 29th 10am-5pm. Start at 7th St and Market in San Francisco for rally and march. 1pm cultural performance at Oakland City Hall at 14th and Broadway. Followed by march to rally at Oakland Police Department. Highlighting connections between Bay Area and New Orleans including: criminalization, incarceration and deportation of communities of color; public housing, privatized development/gentrification, and displacement of working class people of color. Contact Robbie at robbie@justcauseoakland.org or 510-763-5877.

• (August 29) San Francisco Bay Area-Katrina Commemoration and Community Forum (Part of Black August) In Solidarity with the Peoples' of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast: Right of Return, Reconstruction, and Self-Determination. Friday, August 29th from 6 – 9 pm at the Eastside Cultural Center, 1227 International Blvd. In collaboration with Huaxtec, Katrina Solidarity Network, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, and Right to the City. Contact 510-533-6609, email mxgmoakland@gmail.com or visit www.mxgm.org.

• (August 29)Washington DC- Rally at FEMA*** Friday, August 29th 11:30 am-1:30pm, FEMA Headquarters, 500 C Street, SE. Mid-Atlantic Right to the City Alliance is rallying at FEMA headquarters to highlight the federal government's failure to protect residents' human rights. Community groups are calling on the government to stop promoting incarceration and demolition of supportive housing, and to invest in a permanent solution to the housing crisis, public education, mental health and other crisis services. Contact awillis@onedconline.org for more info.

*** Denotes activities that are a co-sponsored by the national Right to the City Alliance

Blog Reactions on Technorati: "Supplies for Katrina victims went to Mississippi agencies"

2008-07-07T19:22:00.001-07:00

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/07/07/mississippi.katrina/index.html: Blog Reactions on Technorati: "34 blog reactions to http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/07/07/mississippi.katrina/index.html

Supplies for Katrina victims went to Mississippi agencies

July 7, 2008 - Prisons in Mississippi got coffee makers, pillowcases and dinnerware -- all intended for victims of Hurricane Katrina."

FEMA and a Worthless President
1 hour ago in Robert Stinnett's Paper and Pencil by rstinnett · Authority: 4
instead of to the people who have suffered for years now after the Katrina disaster (which was a disaster in part because of Bush’s ineptness to do anything but sit on his ass while his rich friends were awarded lucrative contracts for rebuilding). The story just boggles the mind

FEMA Doesn’t Like People
1 hour ago in bark, bugs, leaves, and lizards · Authority: 27
Can't take FEMA personally. They screw everyone

JOKERs News - Always the latest News from around the Globe
1 hour ago · Authority: 1
...Katrina aid anger: 'I just want to slap them' Mississippi agencies had a field day with free goods meant for Katrina victims. Prisons, fire departments, colleges and park agencies snatched up coffee makers, cleaning goods and other supplies, a CNN investigation has found. What about the victims?

FEMA-- Brownie's gone but someone is still doing a Heckuva Job. (a screw job, that is.)
1 hour ago in Night Bird's Fountain by nightbirdlizzy · Authority: 30
Then if you have a state government run by good ol' boys (somebody must have tipped them off) they can jump in and claim the loot to plug budget holes in their own agencies. That's what the Bush administration did with millions of dollars in supplies that never made it to Katrina victims

ipku to make upki always
2 hours ago · No authority yet
Katrina aid anger: 'I just want to slap them'

Katrina aid anger: 'I just want to slap them'
2 hours ago in The media and it's attack on the United States · Authority: 1
and park agencies snatched up coffee makers, cleaning goods and other supplies, a CNN investigation has found. What about the victims? They've been left high and dry. "I just want to slap them upside the head," says one aid group official. Source: CNN.com

RealNews: Glover in New Orleans for the "Algebra Project"

2008-06-02T12:14:00.001-07:00

From Danny Glover's speech announcing a Vanguard Foundation grant to Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Fund:

When the hurricane struck the Gulf and the floodwaters rose and tore through New Orleans, plunging its remaining population into a carnival of misery, it did not turn the region into a Third World country - as it has been disparagingly implied in the media - it revealed one. It revealed the disaster within the disaster: grueling poverty rose to the surface like a bruise to our skin.

More on the Algebra Project in New Orleans and elsewhere here.

New Orleans Journal: The New Yorker

2008-05-20T08:42:00.000-07:00

Found this after it ended: New Orleans Journal: The New Yorker, by Dan Baum. From the last post, "What It Means" (June 1, 2007):

The final New Orleans experience I will record in this journal is, fittingly, one of exile. I’m on the outskirts of Houston, stuck in a sterile motel room and pining for the rich, convoluted streets of the Crescent City. The soaring expanses of freeway disorient me; my eyes haven’t focussed on anything farther away than a few blocks in a long time. And, instead of looking at peeling multicolored shotgun houses with oddly dressed people sitting on their porches and others walking dogs in the street, my eye falls on the featureless beige wall of a Best Buy and the acres of parking around Sam’s Club.

But, most of all, I’m lonely. I was in Beaumont, Texas, having vegetarian fajitas at an outpost of the Acapulco Mexican Grill chain, when I noticed a woman at the next table looking at my food. “That looks good,” I heard her whisper to her mother. I kept expecting one of them to lean over and shout, “Hey, babe, what’s that you’re eatin’?,” and for all of us to end up at the same table. But they kept to themselves.

“Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?” an old song asks; another reminds us, “You don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone.” Since Katrina, I’ve often been asked (though never by someone in New Orleans) why the country should bother rebuilding it. Is it really worth the billions it would take to protect this small, poor, economically inessential city, which is sinking into the delta muck as global warming raises the sea around it? But the question of “whether” has been settled—New Orleans is rebuilding itself, albeit slowly, fitfully, and imperfectly. Now it’s only a matter of how and how long. That is better news than perhaps the rest of America fully understands.

Baum's ongoing web site, which he shares with his spouse and fellow freelance writer Margaret Knox, is at http://www.knoxandbaum.com/

Katrina video on Real News Network

2008-05-20T07:31:00.000-07:00

Impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on Substance Use and Mental Health

2008-02-01T20:34:00.000-08:00

Impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on Substance Use and Mental Health:

Gulf State Disaster Area residents aged 18 or older who were displaced from their homes for 2 weeks or longer had significantly higher rates of SPD [severe psychological distress], MDE [major depressive episode], and unmet need for mental health treatment or counseling in the past year compared with residents who were not displaced or who were displaced for less than 2 weeks (Figure 3). Approximately one in four residents who were displaced for 2 weeks or longer reported SPD; rates of MDE were more than 3 times higher among those who had been displaced for 2 weeks or longer compared with those who were not displaced.*

The study found similarly strong effects of displacement on substance abuse including binge alcohol, cigarettes, and illicit drugs.

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* Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Applied Studies. (January 31, 2008). The NSDUH Report: Impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on Substance Use and Mental Health. Rockville, MD.

Bill Quigley's 10 lessons

2007-08-29T07:38:00.001-07:00

At "Facing South," guest contributor Bill Quigley has posted 10 IMPORTANT LESSONS: Katrina, Two Years Later. Excerpt:

One. Build and rebuild community.

When disaster hits and life is wrecked, you immediately seem to be on your own. Isolation after a disaster is a recipe for powerlessness and depression. Family, community, church, work associations are all important --get them up and working as fast as possible. People will stand up and fight, but we need communities to do it. Prize women --they are the first line of community builders. Guys will talk and fight and often grab the spotlight, but women will help everyone and do whatever it takes to protect families and communities. Powerful forces mobilize immediately after a disaster. People and politicians and organizations have their own agendas and it helps them if our communities are fragmented. Setting one group against another, saying one group is more important than another is not helpful. Stress and distress is high for everyone, but community support will multiply the resources of individuals. Build bridges. People together are much stronger than people alone.

Two. Self-reliance.

Your community must be ready to re-settle your property as soon as possible and care for those most in need. Prioritize help for the elderly, the sick, children and women, especially the poor. The prime cure for helplessness is taking control over your own life and joining others to fight for justice. Groups and people will want to treat you like a victim --say you are traumatized and incapable of making basic decisions about yourself. They will tell you they know best and act like they know best. Tell them to get lost.

Three. Tell your own story.

Sharing our stories, successes and failures, is a way to connect and educate ourselves. Connecting with others nationally and internationally who have been through disasters is the very best thing that you can do. Disasters and the corporations that cause them and profit from them do not respect national boundaries. Look for global justice connections. Learn from those who have been through this before. They will tell you - do not let anyone say who you are or what is best for your community --say it yourself.

Those in power will blame circumstances outside their control for what happened and inevitably they will blame the victims of the disaster. Those in power will tell the people's story in ways that makes the powerful look good. If others do not tell the truth --you do it and get your stories out. Real allies help lift up the voices of the people.

...read on.

Bill Moyers Journal: Katrina Revisited

2007-08-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

From the August 17 "Bill Moyers Journal," featuring Mike Tidwell (Bayou Farewell, The Ravaging Tide), and Princeton University professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell ("2005 Racial Attitudes and the Katrina Disaster Study"):

BILL MOYERS: ... Why do we ignore the warnings? We ignored the warnings before 9/11. We ignored the warnings before Katrina. I mean, you wrote in your book that Katrina's arrival was as certain as tomorrow's sunrise.
MIKE TIDWELL: That's right.
BILL MOYERS: How could you be so sure?
MIKE TIDWELL: Because all you had to do was look at the coastal maps going back from the French explorers all the way to the satellite maps from the mid 1970's forward and you saw a land mass, a coastal land mass imploding, disappearing. An area the size of Delaware was subtracted from south Louisiana between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico just since the great Depression. It was clear that there was no longer any land mass buffering the city.

Also:

BILL MOYERS: I've kept in my files since written one week after the disaster. Listen to this. "What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological-- what Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequence of the welfare state. 75 percent of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane. And of those who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects." What does that say to you?
MELISSA HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, it's bizarre and inaccurate empirically. Because in fact, the public housing projects were on high ground. They experienced very little water damage. And most of the residents there who have been shut out by their government, by their city and by our national housing office, is not because of any destruction that occurred because of Katrina but because of the required evacuation that occurred.They were mostly safe.
The people whose homes were destroyed were mostly home owners. But they were poor people. And this is what we can't deal with in America. They worked jobs every day. Most of them stayed because they needed to go to work in the morning. Most of them had to go to work in the morning in the hotels, in the tourist industries, in the restaurants that served to make New Orleans the fun place that the rest of us liked to visit. So they were homeowners who were poor. They were working people who were poor. Because we live in a country where we allow people to work every day and still be poor. To still have the inadequate capacity to leave.
And the third reason why many people didn't leave are very thick social networks. So part of the question you asked is, why didn't people think, oh, this disaster is coming? Well, Betsy, Hurricane Betsy was in living memory in New Orleans. And Hurricane Betsy was a terrible storm that many people had survived. If you had an aunt or an uncle or a grandmother who had survived Hurricane Betsy, she or he refused often to leave.

Also:

MIKE TIDWELL: I think the true tragedy, as we-- as we look at the ninth ward, we look at Lakeview and these neighborhoods that are not being rebuilt, the city of New Orleans is effectively being abandoned. It really is. And we're not doing what we know we can do to save it. The city can be saved. I completely believe that. People should and we can save this city. And we have to do a number of things. We have to restore the wetlands and barrier islands. We've got to make levees that work.
BILL MOYERS: Would you take your family to live there?
MIKE TIDWELL: No, I would not. I would not go--
BILL MOYERS: To move to New Orleans.
MIKE TIDWELL: It's the most dangerous city in the world to live in.
BILL MOYERS: Why?
MIKE TIDWELL: The levees are ineffective. The army corps of engineers says it's going to be 2010 before they even have the levees up to pre-Katrina levels. And then climate change. Hurricanes are getting bigger. We know this. There have been MIT studies, Georgia Tech studies that show that it's already happening. It is a dangerous place to live.
Now, if we resolve the issue of climate change, which we can-- the tragedy is, we can fix New Orleans. There-- it's not a matter of money and technology. We can do it. You know, in the war in Iraq, six weeks earlier, you have the 30 billion dollars to build the levees in the wetlands. And climate change. If we became a nation of hybrid car drivers, ten years from now, we'd cut our gasoline in half. We wouldn't be in Iraq. If Iraq's number one export was broccoli, would we be there? So, the tragedy is we can in fact save New Orleans, but we're not doing it. We can solve global warming, but we're not doing it.
And I think the main thing for people who live in Miami, who live in lower Manhattan, who live in Charleston, all these vulnerable coastal cities, if we allow New Orleans to disappear, if we don't come to the permanent rescue of our fellow countrymen in New Orleans, how are you safe in Miami? How are you safe in lower Manhattan? Who's going to come to save you?

From late March: Katrina Death Toll Passes 4,000

2007-05-11T13:20:00.000-07:00

Robert Lindsay, who's been tracking the Katrina death toll figures for quite a while, wrote on March 30 about testimony by Dr. Kevin Stephens, director of the New Orleans Health Department, at a March 13 hearing of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations ("Post Katrina Health Care: Continuing Concerns and Immediate Needs in the New Orleans Region"). Lindsay:

...Residents reported observing a larger than usual number of death notices in the newspaper, even long after Katrina and into 2006. At the same time, even months after the storm, residents reported going to more funerals than they ever had.

These anecdotal reports caused Stephens and a team to undertake a study to count the number of death notices in the New Orleans Times-Picayune and compare it to a reference year which would serve as a baseline. 2003 was chosen as a reference year. The data can be seen on page nine of the testimony linked above.

In the first six months of 2003, 5,544 deaths were counted. In the first six months of 2006, 7,902 were counted, an increase of 2,358 deaths over baseline in the post-Katrina period. Based on this, we will assign 2,358 deaths as caused by the accelerated death rates that occurred in New Orleans even long after the storm.

Although the population of New Orleans is only 1/2 what it was prior to the storm, the obituaries covered not only New Orleans but also included many of the refugees tossed about to various parts of the country.

Based on this new information, we can add the previous toll of 1,723 to the new post-Katrina figure of 2,358 to posit a new unofficial death toll of 4,081.

(Link to Lindsay's tally of 1,723 added). Dr. Stephens' testimony can be read here (Acrobat .PDF document), the hearing can be viewed here (.wvx file).

Serious weaknesses found in repaired New Orleans levees

2007-05-10T18:04:00.000-07:00

Facing South:

With hurricane season less than a month away, experts from the United States and the Netherlands say flaws in New Orleans' repaired levee system could leave the region vulnerable to another disastrous breach like the one that occurred after Hurricane Katrina, which was the largest civil engineering disaster in U.S. history.

So warns a special report from National Geographic, which had Robert Bea, a University of California at Berkeley engineering professor and former chief engineer for Shell Oil Co., inspect the protective barriers. Bea found multiple weak spots in critical areas, according to the magazine:
The most serious flaws turned up in the rebuilt levees along the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet ship channel, which broke in more than 20 places when Katrina's storm surge pounded it, leading to devastating flooding in the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish. Bea found several areas where rainstorms have already eroded the newly rebuilt levees, particularly where they consist of a core of sandy and muddy soils topped with a cap of Mississippi clay. 'It's like icing on the top of angel food cake,' Bea says. 'These levees will not be here if you put a Katrina surge against them.' ...

More here.

The one-two punch

2007-05-09T09:29:00.000-07:00

...is how New Orleans resident Tim ("Tim's ~ Nameless ~ Blog") describes what happened to a neighbor:

John lost his mother and brother in the past few months. You might say he lost them to Hurricane Katrina. In New Orleans, his story is not typical, but it is not all that uncommon either.

Sunday morning I wandered out of our FEMA Travel Trailer to look at the day. Across our vacant lot, across the lot next door made recently vacant as well, I saw John standing with his hands on his hips. I walked over to say hello. The house that used to stand next to our vacant lot was knocked down last week. The backhoe arrived late one afternoon and parked in the front yard. When I got home from work the next day, nothing but brown dirt remained. The only evidence of the house was a few glass shards and chips of brick.

It's one of those odd circumstances of urban living. We moved here about 6 years before Katrina, before the flood washed the neighbors away. John lived just two doors away. But I don't recall ever meeting him before this day. So as suddenly as the levees breached, as swiftly as the neighborhood had been doused, as quickly as that house between us had been ripped up and carted away, we stood there and talked as if we had been talking like this all along.

John told me that he had lived here since he was 10 years old. His mother and father had built one of the first homes in Vista Park. He said it was the second house on the whole street. He pointed to a white-brick house a few hundred feet away, telling me that was the only other one here back in the early days.

And now, John observed matter-of-factly, it's looking a lot like it did back then. Vacant land all around. A few houses and not much traffic.

John was soft-spoken and alert when I talked to him. But there was a slight slur as one side of his mouth lagged in movement. It was easy to guess that he was in his 60's; I wondered too if he had suffered a stroke recently.

The clear sky radiated a blueness that only occurs on the hottest days. The bright light of morning was tempered by the low humidity and light breeze of what was starting out to be a beautiful day. In stark contrast, John told me about the unhappy journey his life has become since that not-so-perfect-day in August 2005.

The Saturday before Katrina attacked, John and his elderly mother were planning to stay. They had stayed for Betsy. They had stayed for Camille. The street had never flooded and damage was mostly from a few fallen trees.

But Sunday morning John heard panic in the voices of the reporters and meteorologists on the TV. The hurricane had not turned. It was headed here. He heard desperation in the pleas of the Mayor and Governor. He decided to leave his childhood home, still expecting to come back in a few days. John took his mother to the north shore, to a house his brother owned on the relative high ground of St. Tammany Parish.

We all know what happened that Monday.

The weeks and months that followed have continued to be hard on John. Harder still on his family. His elderly mother was not able to return home, and his brother took up the job of filing the paperwork for insurance and government assistance. John was not specific--and I did not press for details--but at some point his brother was not able to go on. He killed himself less than a year after Katrina.

John's mother, now dealing with further grief, had to move to an assisted living facility. "She lasted six months," John says, so plainly that it startled me. As if her death from the one-two punch of a hurricane and a suicide was a given.

"And how about you?" I asked. "How are you getting along?"

He tells the same lie we all tell when asked. "Fine."

There's more at the link.

Where's New Orleans?

2007-05-08T11:19:00.000-07:00

asks Tom Watson:

Two long debates, 18 candidates, four hours of naked ambition. No discussion of the great domestic failure of our times - the ongoing tragedy of the official national abandonment of New Orleans.

You would expect this from the Republicans; they posed as if angling for the mantle of Reagan at his tacky and Disneyesque "library" - all that's missing is the gruesome Leninesque attraction at the center - but they're really jockeying for the legacy of George W. Bush... [...]

Malign neglect is to be expected from the modern Republican Party, but where were the Democrats?

Why wasn't New Orleans front and center for the Democrats; why isn't a central issue on the campaign trail? Why don't all the candidate websites contain a plan, a proposal, the account of some working being done on behalf a great American city that is being allowed to die.

Here's a sad truth: American Idol did a better job in its recent fundraising campaign of highlighting the ongoing horror of southern Louisiana than did Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, and that talkative guy from Alaska in their nationally-televised first debate.

Personally, I'd give John Edwards at least a little more credit than that. From a Bob Herbert column in today's New York Times, reporting on an Edwards campaign visit to New Orleans:

[Edwards] said he would appoint a high-level official to take charge of the rebuilding, and he would have that person “report to me” every day. He said he would create 50,000 “steppingstone jobs,” in parks, recreation facilities and a variety of community projects, for New Orleans residents who have been unable to find any other work. And he said, “We’re also going to have to rebuild these levees.

But point taken. And not just about candidates, but about me.

18 Missing Inches in New Orleans

2007-05-01T13:45:00.000-07:00

18 Missing Inches in New Orleans (from "Armed Madhouse", Greg Palast):

On August 22, 2006, we were videotaping Katrina evacuees still held behind barbed wire in a trailer park encampment a hundred miles from New Orleans. It had been a year since the hurricane and 73,000 POW’s (Prisoners of Dubya) were still in mobile home Gulags. I arranged a surreptitious visit with Pamela Lewis, one of the unwilling guests of George Bush’s Guantanamo on wheels. She told me, “It’s a prison set-up” - except there are no home furloughs for these inmates because they no longer have homes. [...]

That Monday night, August 29, 2005, the sleepless crew at the state Emergency Operations Center, directing the response to Hurricane Katrina, were high-fiving it, relieved that Katrina had swung east of New Orleans, sparing the city from drowning.

They were wrong. The Army Corps, FEMA and White House knew for critical hours that the levees had begun to crack, but withheld the information for a day and night. The delay was deadly.

Van Heerden explained that levees don’t collapse in a single bang. First, there’s a small crack or two, a few feet wide, which take hours to burst open into visible floodways.

Had the state known New Orleans’ bulwark was failing, they would have shifted resources to get out those left in the danger zone. [...]
But why did the levees fail at all if the hurricane missed the city? The professor showed me a computer model indicating the levees were a foot and a half too short - the result of a technical error in the Army Corp of Engineer’s calculation of sea level when the levees were built beginning in the 1930s.
And the Bush crew knew it. Long before Katrina struck, the White House staff had sought van Heerden’s advice on coastal safety. So when the professor learned of the 18-inch error, he informed the White House directly. But this was advice they didn’t want to hear. The President had already sent the levee repair crew, the Army Corp of Engineers, to Afghanistan and Iraq.

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UPDATE, 5/11: Van Heerden is also mentioned here in this blog, in connection with a NOVA program about the Katrina levee disasters.

Brown on White House vs. Blanco: "A chance to rub her nose in it"

2007-01-24T09:42:00.000-08:00

Michael Brown, the hapless FEMA director during Katrina, is making headlines with a new charge, reported by AP and the Baton Rouge Advocate:

Brown, speaking at the Metropolitan College of New York, said he had recommended to President Bush that all 90,000 square miles along the Gulf Coast affected by the powerful hurricane be federalized — a term Brown explained meant placing the federal government in charge of all agencies responding to the disaster. “Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking, ‘We had to federalize Louisiana because she’s a white, female Democratic governor, and we have a chance to rub her nose in it,”’ Brown said, without naming names. “‘We can’t do it to Haley (Barbour) because Haley’s a white male Republican governor. And we can’t do a thing to him. So we’re just gonna federalize Louisiana.”

At the Breaking Point

2007-01-06T22:08:00.000-08:00

Nolalily writes at dKos that "Katrina ain't over. It's still there."

We're teetering on all out anarchy. Seriously. Our murder rate has soared due to many, many thugs (teens and young adults mostly) who have returned to the city without their parents.

Central City (which is the area which is, well, central in the city) has been completely empty since Katrina. Many of these thugs are squatting in abandoned houses. They are engaged in an all out drug war with rivals from New Orleans but worse, other parts of the country who were never here before.

Addicts and punks are robbing people in the populated parts when they need money. This brings crime into our backyard which is a small backyard to begin with.

Yesterday morning, around 5:30am, a doctor and his wife were shot in their home in the Marigny. They were a young couple with a 2-year old son. The husband had started a clinic for the poor and his wife, a Harvard graduate, was a filmmaker. Both were community activists, liberal and well-loved. He played in a band. She died. He collapsed in the doorway, after he was shot, holding his son in his arms. They were quite liberal and open.

Today, many of us are attending meetings concerning the city's welfare and there is a march on city hall planned for this Thursday.

October 26, 2005

2006-10-29T11:12:00.000-08:00

This is the final post of a series by our extraordinary co-blogger Riggsveda, about her experiences as a volunteer in Louisiana in October, 2005.

For a complete listing of the series, go here: "Louisiana Diary, by riggsveda." Navigation links to that listing are provided at the end of each individual post, along with links to the prior and next posts in the series . -- tn

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I didn’t even bother to write an entry this a.m. I woke up over and over again last night, thinking of all the things I would need to do or want to do before I leave, and of course hardly remembered any of it. Except that I woke up un-refreshed and a little burnt out. I did remember to call BTI to confirm my flight home, and wrote notes to both J. and D., the shelter manager till Saturday, that I had put in for a car and a day off Friday, needed to process out Saturday, and would be flying out of Baton Rouge on Sunday. As I was informed, this means I’ll have to move camp to B.R. and stay there Saturday night, which is a pain in the ass. Everybody else has been able to process out in Covington and fly out via the NOLA airport next door, but that would have been way too easy for me. I took another $200 out of my card, and left $133 in the bank. When we reconcile at Financial during outprocessing, I think I can justify it all. Some people, especially the kids who have been camping out in the French Quarter every night, have gone through their money like drunken sailors. Well, the drunken part fits.
J. just came in briefly and I told her I want to go into NOLA for my last run tomorrow. “Send me someplace good”, I told her. This way I’ll avoid being stuck on some pointless 2nd run on a Bravo ERV and risk possibly returning at an ungodly hour.
Earlier there was a birthday celebration for R., who came down with me. He was in tears. It was very sweet.
I’ve been trying to remember some of the things I’ve been seeing over the past few days. In Mid-City, angry graffiti on the side of a house:
“Screw you, Nagin. We made our own plan.”
“Katrina got PMS.”
The broken bodies of rotted and collapsed buildings have become billboards for the anger and pain of the people of NOLA and the towns surrounding it. Sprawled over 4 corners (of an intersection) and down half the city blocks beyond, piles of ruined stuffed animals 6 or 7 feet high, the ruins of a warehouse that held a man's entire livelihood. Delicate little houses with wrought ironwork and still-vibrant paint jobs, broken, rotting, and abandoned for miles. The fluorescent red or orange "X" painted on house after house, a sign left by those who entered searching for bodies or the still-living in need of rescue. At the top is the date of inspection--most are dated around 9/15 or later, some as late as early October. On the left, the initials of the inspecting group.
At the bottom, the number of dead found; usually that was a "0", meaning none. To see a number other than the struck through zero there always gave me a chill. The letters in the right side of the cross still remain a mystery. Sometimes they seemed to indicate a direction, as in "NE". Other times they made no sense at all. And often I'd see "TFW" written (inside a circle). I still don't know what it is. The SPCA would sometimes weigh in, as well. Their messages were easy to decipher: "K-9 moved to corner"; "1 dog alive"; "2 cats under house"; and sometimes "no dogs" or "1 dead cat".
Between these signs and messages, and the words written by the ones who had to leave in anger and bitterness, even the parts of NOLA that are still and lifeless vibrate with a thousand voices, reaching out to communicate with anyone who comes after. "Help! Help! Help!" reads the house on the street in the lower Ninth Ward. Places where not a living thing moves can make the tears come, when you read the stories that have been left there. Holes in roofs torn by the desperate, trapped inside their houses while trying to escape rising waters, still gape to remind us of their terror.
To imagine living here, constantly facing the massive deconstruction on every corner, in every yard, with your entire environment looking like one big landfill;
to live growing numb to the ugliness; to expect mud, cracked earth, endless dust, to always be hacking and coughing, living with low-level respiratory ailments; to wait without hope for salvation from the insurance company, the city, the federal government, to live with price gouging. To live in tents.
At home it has rained endlessly, and been cold. Here, the sun has shone everyday, and the earth is parched. Hurricane Wilma's hellacious winds sent water into the Ninth Ward again Tuesday, and what small progress made there was halted.
I wish I could say I'll miss NOLA, or Louisiana, but I won't. It's too flat for my soul, and I miss the seasons. Fall doesn't exist here, at least in a way that makes sense to a Yankee. The few Halloween decorations I've noticed look as out of place as a Christmas tree in the middle of a bandstand on a summer night. But most of all, I won't miss the constant low-level misery, the endless fighting back against despair that is the lot of every person here. I've come to love the strength, humor, and compassion of the local people. But I don't have enough of any of those qualities to bear their miseries.
Today my ERV got to come back early (3:30) because the kitchen ran out of food, so I had a very pleasant and relaxing day. J., next to me, went up with me to a local store and took money out of our Red Cross cards, then I came back, took a hot shower, enjoyed cake and ice cream and 2 more chicken sandwiches for dinner, and sat down to write in this journal.
Time for bed.

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October 25, 2005

2006-10-29T11:03:00.000-08:00

3 more working days, including today. The cold snap continues---low 40s this a.m, 60s later. After tomorrow it should slowly warm up into the weekend. At least the wind has died down considerably.
I’m still on a high from yesterday. Full of energy, and looking forward to the rest of the week. Some of the new folks are being sent to Kitchen #5 in Westwego to work (leaving @ 7:30) but have to stay here for lack of a shelter (we’re Kitchen #3.) The rest of us, some case management folks and the rest ERV people, continue to plug away at our usual work.

8:28 p.m.—A good day on the ERV with a new driver, S., and Su., M. (an Americorps kid), and T., and old guy from N. Carolina. We did a real good job, down in Mid-City NOLA---got rid of all the food with a little trip to the Municipal Auditorium. Couldn’t reach K. all day because of phone trouble, but he just now called. I’m tired. Not much to say. Saw some zombies (hazmat guys in white suits and gas masks who pull the dead bodies out) who came to eat from the truck, and the most bizarre sight since I’ve been here: a house that had collapsed to the ground so that the only thing visible above the ground was the roof and attic. So much destruction.

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October 24, 2005

2006-10-29T10:58:00.000-08:00

4 working days left. Yesterday I was too beat to finish my entry.
There was the same trouble with getting through on my phone. When it was working for awhile, I got a call from K.’s brother J. as I was handing food out the window of N’s truck. It was a horrible connection and I couldn’t stop to talk, so I got off with a promise to call back. Of course, it wasn’t working when I got back and settled. K. called after I went to bed and I told him to let J. know. Evidently M.’s called a few times, too, but I found no messages on the phone.
Yesterday L. took us on a mobile feed of the Loyola area in Kenner, then we were in Bucktown in Metairie with N. People told us of the problems they were having trying to rebuild, with insurance refusing to pay, saying it’s flood damage, and the authorities are requiring $100+ permits to rebuild, which means first an inspector is needed. Of course, there’s a line for the inspections, which means it can take 10-15 days or more before they even get an appointment, plus the fact that many of these folks haven’t had income since the storm. People are angry, and disillusioned, and traumatized.
One thing I came to terms with yesterday as I heard T. and the apostle P. sniping at N: personality conflicts and head-butting are more common than I thought, and it’s not just me. L. asked me how it was when she got in later, and when I told he, she wasn’t surprised. It’s like having 3 or 4 people in the same kitchen, each with their own ideas about how to do things, and each wanting to control those things. Some folks, like T. and the apostle P., eye folks coming on who they think are new, like M. and I, and take a patronizing attitude, or an “Oh God, here we go again” attitude. Others, like me, see new people with a friendly eye and patiently help them learn. When “P.” found out I had been here longer than he, his eyes got wide. He’d never seen me before. Well, I said, it’s a big shelter.
So this a.m, after a restless night from much loud banging and blowing, I awoke to discover that the wind outside, which had been steady but pleasant and a balmy all yesterday, had turned nasty. Last night it came up so hard it blew over a porta-potty and sheared off a car’s side view mirror. M. just said it’s 48 degrees outside, and when I stepped out earlier, the trees were flagged and there was much violence. Yes, it’s practically freezing outside.

8:15 p.m.---Turned out to be a great day. I rode with L. again this a.m.,, and a couple of women I didn’t know, one new, one with a little experience, and we only had the 1st run. Instead of looking for a 2nd ERV like yesterday, I hitched a ride back to the shelter with someone who was finished (since L. was going out scouting), and decided to try to get a car to go to Wal-Mart and try to get a new pair of sunglasses to replace the ones that broke this a.m. on the truck. When I asked for one, the only one available was about to be used to ferry a guy to Harvey for outprocessing, and R. told me I could have it if I rode the guy down there. I jumped at it, and on the way back stopped at a Target in Harvey, then later got off Rt. 10 at Tchoupitoulas St., which goes right into the French Quarter. I drove in, marked the parking and landmarks like the French Market and Café du Monde, then got out and took I-10 back into Kenner. The combination of getting out of the shelter, doing some shopping for myself, and finally seeing the French Quarter (not much, admittedly, but I was worried about being gone too long) was like getting an IV tonic. I was transformed into a happy, happy woman by the tiniest things. I made a to-do list of my plans for while there on Friday. Thinking about getting out of here is like imagining a great cloud breaking inside my head, and the sun coming through.
Lots of new people have arrived in the last few hours, and some who have been here a long time are getting ready to leave. The place is loud with many animated conversations.
I have new p.j.s from Target, Halloween socks, a Halloween hand towel, and just took a shower using new body wash, a new poof, new conditioner and new face cleanser. I feel and smell delicious.
Oh, Sunday, come soon!

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House Dems unveil post-Katrina wish list

2006-10-20T15:45:00.000-07:00

Chris Kromm ("Facing South," Institute for Southern Studies):

Democrats on the House Katrina Task Force yesterday released a report summarizing their recommendations for improving the sluggish-at-best recovery effort along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Titled 'Response, Relief, and Recovery: Katrina and Beyond,' the report offers legislative proposals that task force members intend to champion once Congress returns to work after the Nov. 7 election, when Democrats need to pick up 15 seats to regain control of the House and set the agenda for Gulf recovery.

'This report is a detailed plan of action for how we in Congress can better help Louisiana and the entire Gulf Coast recover from Katrina and Rita,' said U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.), who spearheaded the effort along with Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.). 'Better levees, reforming FEMA, and fast-tracking coastal restoration and comprehensive hurricane protection projects are all included. This report is also a blueprint for how we can better respond to disasters in the future, wherever they may strike.'

October 23, 2005

2006-10-17T10:39:00.000-07:00

Sunday. 5 working days left. I’m so anticipating getting home. The little world here is making me claustrophobic. I just finished telling J. about my plans for my day off, Friday. Going to the French Quarter, doing a walking tour, hitting the Café du Monde for beignets & café au lait, trying a real NOLA Hurricane, maybe seeing a cemetery, and on the way home, getting a drive-through daiquiri. I realized I was getting better when I noticed myself laughing and getting animated. It’s the first time I found myself excited about anything for a long time---since before I was sick.
I may take a couple sick days when I get home, using the strep throat diagnosis from the clinic and just telling them I hadn’t had a chance to recover. Which is probably closer to the truth than I want to admit, anyway.
Today I admit I dread who I’ll be assigned with. I still don’t know why everything was so hard yesterday. When a driver is off, it makes everything difficult.

9:18 p.m.---So tired. Went out on 2 ERVs today. AM was great! Back with L. and 2 new folks: older woman, B., and young Americorps number, M. It went like a dream.
We got back to the yard about 2:00, and L. didn’t need to go out again. She put us on another ERV driven by N., who I didn’t know, with 2 crew members: T., and some guy who introduced himself as “P. the Apostle”. Okay... There was some problem between them and the driver, (many snarky comments that seemed out of line), but we did all right. I felt bad for N., who seemed a little out of her depth, stuck with a couple crew people not at all inclined to make her life easier. We didn’t get back until 7:20. I didn’t really eat all day till after I got my shower.
So tired. Finish this tomorrow.

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October 22, 2005

2006-10-06T02:51:00.000-07:00

My first day back on the ERVs. I lost my wonderful laminated map of NOLA, and despite a search of the trucks, can’t turn it up. Went to mention it to J. and she said, “Good luck”. And it’s a good thing, because she said, “Oh, I forgot to put you on the list” for an assignment. Christ. She sleeps right next to me, you’d think she could remember me.
Last night I had a lot of trouble getting through to call K.---the call kept dropping. When I finally got through he didn’t mention any problems on his end. Now I tried again and it’s started all over again. The problem appears to be with my company’s (Cingular’s) receiving end. They are the worst. J., who sleeps next to me, also has Cingular, and I had the same problem trying to call from his phone. Possibly there is work being done on the towers at home, but it’s a lonely feeling.
One of the things M. asked me when I was venting to her was if I had developed any friendships with anyone down here. Sadly, no. I try to get on with everyone, but I just can’t seem to become animated enough to want to hang with anyone. It’s been a problem all my life—not being able to form superficial relationships, easy alliances. I need to get to know someone well before I want to commit. Not a good way to relate in a situation like this. But small talk bores me and I feel awkward and artificial when I make it, even though I know it’s the first step toward establishing a relationship. Plus, it’s hard getting attached to someone as I started to do with J. and R., then seeing them go.
Oh, well. It’s cold and breezy today, just the opposite of yesterday’s hot and humid. I’ve spent as much time down here chilly as I have sweaty. Unexpected.

LATER (9:20 p.m.): Got in at 7:40 p.m. Had a real problem with my driver, M., who was so over-controlling and obsessive-compulsive, while trying to act as if he wasn’t. Scatter-brained while trying to run everything. A driver is an organizer, someone who oversees the operation, keeps it moving, and pitches in to help when and where needed. The crew should be left to handle the way the back is run. He jumped in, trying to do everything, and not trusting us to do any of it right. We were supposed to have 3 in the back, but lost 1 along the way, so it was me and C., a young Americorps volunteer, and M. It was a difficult day between us. I hope I don’t ride with him again. When we came back to clean the ERV he became really weird, and compulsively clean-freakish about it. When I tried to explain that we (the crew) had already cleaned the shelf on which the cambros sat, as he was about to clean them again, he actually ran his hand over the shelf repeatedly, looking for proof. The whole thing, which usually takes just 10 or 15 minutes, probably stretched out to a half hour. As a result, and with the new unproved protocol (clean the ERV and go back to the yard in the dark to load up on water and snacks) we got back much later than necessary---we unloaded our food at 5:00 p.m.) No matter what I said or did, it rubbed him the wrong way, and he kept saying he didn’t want to step on my toes. C. and I got along wonderfully. She learned fast and knew just what to do though it was only her first day. My conversation with her later made me sure the problem hadn’t been with me. And the more I tried to get him to tell me what he wanted me to do (so he could get his way) the worse things got.
I think this work naturally brings me into contact with men who don’t like to feel women are telling them what to do. I run into this more and more. K. pointed out that I’m not used to working with men who are bossy and maybe that’s why it’s hard for me to get used to this kind of entitlement that they carry around when they are with women.
On another note, the area we went into today, Lakeview, was truly a moonscape. Cars lying rear end up against trees, or across fences. People coming back to their houses to see them for the first time. It was a pretty well-to-do neighborhood, and it must have been pretty once. A man cleaning out his house and crying came up to the window of our ERV and spoke to me while sobbing about the ruination of the house. It was heartbreaking. I held his hand, put my hand on his shoulder, and cried with him. We were all in tears. I still can see him.
The doctor I saw was right. This area is in tremendous need. I told W. about it, and he was encouraging.
I feel bad about M. My second run-in with someone since I’ve been here.
I need to stop taking this so seriously.
I need a drink.

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(Some of) Houston vs. New Orleans

2006-09-22T12:30:00.000-07:00

Writing for "THE THIRD BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS" blog, Fitch N. DarDar writes:

I guess the hospitality of Houstonians has now taken a nasty turn.

Gun dealers in the Lone Star State are now encouraging Houstonians to take up arms against people they are calling 'Katricians.'

It's nice to see opportunistic Houstonians making a move to take back the city from outsiders. Here's an excerpt from the story:
'When the 'Katricians' themselves are quoted as saying the crime rate is gonna go up if they don't get more free rent, then it's time to get your concealed-handgun license,' warns the radio ad by Jim Pruett, who co-hosts a bombastic talk-radio show and owns Jim Pruett's Guns & Ammo, a self-styled 'anti-terrorist headquarters' that sells knives, shotguns, semi-automatic rifles and other weapons. As Pruett describes the dangers posed by 'Katricians,' glass can be heard shattering, and a bell tolling ominously.

Fitch adds:

Yep, Barbara. This is really working out well for them.

"It looks really good down there"

2006-09-14T15:37:00.000-07:00

Scout Prime ("First Draft"), New Orleans Lower 9th Ward --One Year Later:

On my last day I had asked lb0313 if I really needed to post all the videos I took on this trip. Surely people must know how bad it is here I thought. Then something happened on the plane.

I hadn't spoken with the woman sitting next to me during the flight but when we landed in Chicago she asked if I lived in NOLA. I said no I'd been down there working. She said she had been in NOLA to drop her son off at Tulane for his first year. Then she said, 'It looks really good down there.'

I took a breath and asked if she had been to Lakeview or Gentilly or the Lower 9th or St. Bernard Parish. She said no. She had been in the CBD and the Quarter. I told her well it's pretty bad outside those areas. She asked why and I started to explain about the problems with insurance and the federal money not coming to people. She stopped me and said, 'No, No. Why aren't businesses coming back. I would think they'd be clamoring to invest there.'

I simply said, ' No one knows if the levees are safe for a hurricane or even a tropical storm so they don't want to invest only to have it all washed away again.'

She looked away and never said another thing. I think it hit her where she'd just left her son.

Via Avedon Carol ("The Sideshow").

October 21, 2005

2006-09-14T10:13:00.000-07:00

I cranked most of the evening after that. It made me feel bad, acting that way, but it seems nothing gets through to our “supervisors” when someone tries to get their ear. This a.m. I’m on shelter chore duty. I just swept the entire floor and mopped half of it. Finally someone (no, two people) offered to help, and I’m letting them have the rest of it while I rest. I’ve been at it for 2 ½ hours, and I’m bushed.
I spoke to MH person M. this a.m. for over an hour in her car. It was a good hour. I explained all my concerns about the shelter and went over all the kvetches I’ve been making to others. Then explained that my concern is that I hate myself when I start talking like that---that I’d promised myself to remain aloof from all dramas, intrigues, and politics while here.
She validated how I felt, because she sees it, too, which made me feel better. She advised me to try to keep a sense of humor and to take care of my own needs.
Funny though, I’ve kind of lost interest in expressing my concerns to K., M., or J. I’ve lost interest in anything except making it through the next 9 days. The last 3 are non-work days---Friday, my next day off, Saturday, for outprocessing, and Sunday for the flight home. So it’s really only 6 more hard work days.
I can make it.

Life in a shelter is:

Discovering earplugs.
A constant search for privacy.
Overhearing all the little dramas and gossip that go on, and sometimes finding yourself pissed that you discover others conning the system or getting special treatment while you work so hard and play by the rules.
Discovering you’re on your own, even when you’re sick and depending on medical personnel to get you treatment.
Having a kitchen that makes only coffee and provides salty, starchy, sugary snacks as the primary food; getting ecstatic at the sight of tuna or a bag of lettuce.
Eating the food doled out on the trucks to the needy for dinner (and lunch if you’re on the ERV crew) and finding out how little the procurer/”dieticians” in charge of the menus care for the health or tastes of their clientele.
Unexpected kindnesses from people you don’t even know.

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