Notes From Inside New Orleans

[beetbox]

Notes from Inside New Orleans

By JORDAN FLAHERTY

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

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

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

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

http://www.counterpunch.org/flaherty09032005.html

[whistle]

1. These "refugees" are Americans, but they have certainly not....

...been treated like Americans. Perhaps this is just a sign of things to come as fewer and fewer Americans retain their civil and human rights under this government. It begins with the most vulnerable, the elderly, the ill and those of color, but eventually spreads to all persons who are without privilege and all rights are removed.

[DrZeeLit]

5. I'm so happy to hear you call these proud people AMERICANS....

...they are NOT refugees.

Marginalizing them will NOT make them go away.
They are AMERICANS -- they work, pay taxes, vote, live and die in this land.

Thank you for saying so.
I hope more people catch onto this -- especially the media.

[cliss]

2. Thanks Beetbox,

for the sad reminder of what was, and what now is.

[beetbox]

3. Jitterbug Perfume

one of my favorite fiction reads.

New Orleans, a place I have visited on a few occasions seemed so very erotic and beneath the skin in such a literal world.
We have lost so much of our dreams and rituals. Down there the supernatural still was manifest.


"A 70% African-American city where resistance to white supremacy has supported a generous, subversive and unique culture of vivid beauty. From jazz, blues and hiphop, to secondlines, Mardi Gras Indians, Parades, Beads, Jazz Funerals, and red beans and rice on Monday nights, New Orleans is a place of art and music and dance and sexuality and liberation unlike anywhere else in the world."

[Lisa]

4. "a way to register contact information or find family members"

Oh, geez. I witnessed a mass evacuation way back in 1989 (fire-threatened community). The #1 desire of the people getting off the buses and aircraft, even ahead of water and food, bathrooms and a place to sit down, was to know what had happened to their families! At the time, limited technology meant that the only tool available was a fax machine linked to a landline -- and bulletin boards with sign-in sheets. It made a huge amount of difference -- evacuation centers in multiple places were able to swap updated lists almost instantaneously.

When I looked into it, I learned that disaster planning experts were way ahead of me, of course, and had "information" right up there as a key need.

With the rise of the internet and cell phones, I thought that exchanging information would be even faster, so the families wouldn't have to wait for news. But ... if the information isn't even being collected, and nobody seems to realize it's important ... I thought that FEMA and other such groups would have plenty of people on staff who know way more about this than I do. Have things really gotten that bad? Are they assuming that people don't have anyone who'd be concerned about them?