NOLA rescue worker email calls it "economics of disaster"

[NVMojo]

from Boing Boing blog:

August 30, 2005

The poorest 20% (you can argue with the number -- 10%? 18%? no one knows) of the city was left behind to drown. This was the plan. Forget the sanctimonious bullshit about the bullheaded people who wouldn't leave. The evacuation plan was strictly laissez-faire. It depended on privately owned vehicles, and on having ready cash to fund an evacuation. The planners knew full well that the poor, who in new orleans are overwhelmingly black, wouldn't be able to get out. The resources -- meaning, the political will -- weren't there to get them out.

White per capita income in Orleans parish, 2000 census: $31,971. Black per capita: $11,332. Median *household* income in B.W. Cooper (Calliope) Housing Projects, 2000: $13,263.

The email attributed to a rescue worker reads:

There are dead animals floating in the water, pets left behind. Surely people thought they would be back to collect the pets. Not so. The rescuers smell like gas when they come back in; there's gas in all of the water that consumes the area. Fires are burning all over the place. Our teams are tired and they are thirsty and they are hungry. And they have a place to sleep and water to drink and food to eat. I can only imagine how the people without these "luxuries" are feeling right now.

more...

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/30/email_attributed_to_.html

[newswolf56]

1. "Left Behind to Drown": a classic expression of Bush policy...

toward low-income workers, fixed-income elderly and the disabled. That is why the coverage of this disaster is so important: we must see its hideously multiplying consequences for what they are -- a horrific portrait of capitalism in action, from Bush's savage reductions in levee-improvement and disaster-relief funds to the veritable abandonment of the city's poor to the ever-worsening conditions in the stinking Black Hole of the SuperDome.

(This rescue worker's blog is a poignantly eloquent post: thank you.)

[sunnystarr]

11. Like Bush would extend his pinky to save a Democrat.. duhhh (nt)

[Spinzonner]

2. Why didn't they use all the parked buses now under water

to evacuate people without transportation ?

Besides saving people, it would have saved the buses.

Yes, getting the drivers to provide their services instead of evacuating personally would have been an issue but I think a lot would have volunteered, especially if the buses were expedited through traffic (maybe a single lane on the inbound side of the highways).

[ticapnews]

6. That would have cost money...

Who is going to pay for the gas? Who is going to appropriate the buses? Who is going to organize and inform all of these poor people that they are leaving?

I heard a snippet of an interview on CNN radio with a woman who yelled at the reporter for asking why she had stayed. What was she supposed to do, she asked? She lives paycheck to paycheck, has no money to go elsewhere and has (had?) a job that she had to do to earn money.

What happens to her and her family now?

Multiply that by a few hundred thousand...

[lvx35]

7. I recall reading that the busses were used to get people to the Dome.

apparently not enough of them, though! :(

[jimshoes]

8. This whole situation

is from the lack of "top down" leadership. When the guy at the top don't give a shit, noone else is going to either. This is what has happened in New Orleans. A real leader would have been on the job and on site before the storm even hit because the odds of disaster were so high. A real leader would have a plan. Our "leader" had none, unless you call fundraising and ducking grieving mothers a plan.

[nofurylike]

3. hit exactly on the head. vulgarly ugly truth. thank you for posting. eom

[nofurylike]

4. vulgarly ugly truth: genocide. eom

[izzie]

5. One wonders if Home Land ever thought about terror on the dikes

This looks like an old joke.Where are the plans? Some one must have thought about this.

[Nothing Without Hope]

9. Plans to allow New Orleans to be damaged by storms and floods date back

at least several years, judging by the massive cuts or blocks in project/grant funds to protect the city or provide disaster relief. In addition to the other threads I and others have posted on how the Bush Administration cut funding for disaster protection and relief, here's a new one. So far it only has 3 votes, and it's buried in the Editorial Forum - it deserves a wider audience:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x151655
Thread title: 9/28/04 La should have received FEMA disaster mitigation grants, but got 0
paineinthearse Editorials Tue Aug-30-05 12:25 PM

Even just the excerpt given in the OP shows that this is a long-term policy of the Bush Administration. No explanation for denial of the funds was given. The money still went to places like Texas and California, but despite all evidence suggesting that they should be first in line, NOTHING for New Orleans. it's more than an outrage, it's more evidence suggesting a conspiracy of some kind. (see this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4519574&mesg_id=4522199
Thread title: Think about the implications of this: Nat'l Guard in Iraq, NorthCom HERE.

[Nothing Without Hope]

10. oops - too laate to edit. The second link in my post should be this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4519574