Over on The Black Commentator
Black Commentator
Margaret Kimberly writes in "New Orleans and the Demise of the Democrats" :
"New Orleans itself epitomizes the anguish of Democrats. In 2004 it dodged the hurricane Ivan bullet. This city run by black Democrats only reluctantly opened the Superdome to shelter potential refugees. Despite the Ivan warning they did not develop an evacuation plan for the thousands of residents who don't have cars, the only adequate means of escape. Their plan seemed to consist of hope, denial and wishful thinking that major hurricanes would miss the city and that levees would always hold up.
Republicans won't suffer when Bush is unable and unwilling to help thousands of Americans suffering from a natural disaster. . .
They won't suffer no matter what they do because the Democrats are impotent. If the Republicans fail, the failure will be theirs alone. The Democrats will only win if by some miracle the Republicans find a way to do themselves in politically. . ."
Black Commentator Editor Glen Ford writes in Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/ford09022005.html
What we may see in the coming months is a massive displacement of Black New Orleans, to the four corners of the nation. The question that we must pose, repeatedly and in the strongest terms, is: Through whose vision, and in whose interest, will New Orleans rise again."
UC Irvine history professor Mike Davis writes:
I'm surprised that in all of the press coverage of Hurricane Katrina there is no mention of Hurricane Ivan, which hit New Orleans, Louisiana, about a year ago.
Then as now the city was evacuated, but as the affluent white people fled the "Big Easy" in their SUVs, the old and car-less -- mainly black -- were left behind in their below sea level shotgun shacks and ageing tenements to face the watery wrath.
There was outrage that the poorest had been left to die. Promises were made that evacuation procedures would be put in place, so that if a hurricane were to strike again then no one would be left behind.
One year later and the city has been abandoned, and again no provisions have been made for the poor to survive.
Over the last generation, City Hall and its entourage of powerful developers have tried to push the poorest segment of the population across the Mississippi river.
Historic black public housing projects have been razed to make room for upper income townhouses and a Wal-Mart.
The ultimate goal seems to be to create a tourist theme park -- with chronic poverty hidden away in bayous, trailer parks and prisons outside the city limits.
Now the destruction of housing will mean that many of the poorest who have finally been evacuated may be prevented from returning.. . "
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=7329
Dan Charmas writes
Slum Clearance, the Natural Way: When the New Orleans basin is finally drained, and most of the ramshackle structures that make up the housing stock in the poorest areas are marked for demolition, does anyone in their right mind think that the majority of New Orleans citizens will have an opportunity to return?. . .
New Orleans, when and if it is rebuilt, will rise again as an upper-middle class Disneyland caricature of itself (not that parts of the French Quarter aren't that already), with the kind of insidious development we see across American suburbia.
And the masses of Orleans citizens now taking refuge in shelters across the south will not be able to afford the admission to that party.
It will be a New Orleans not only wiped clean of its history, but of the people who made it. .. "
http://www.dancharnas.com/2005/09/slum-clearance-natural-way.html
On Notes From A Different Kitchen, Ian posts an exhaustively excellent collection of facts documentating this administration's fuckups deliberate and otherwise.
Different Kitchen
I do believe it is time for us to intefuckingact already with the black community and get to work.