Ugh

Look! Rich white people can recover from Hurricane Katrina in style. All is good with the world!

The interior sections of the Times are just loathsome.

What A Joke

It's barely worth commenting on Dick Cheney slamming Obama for not responding more boldly over the BP oil spill. It's certainly not surprising that the architect of the Bush Administration's non-action on any issues that concerned the deaths of poor or brown people would be a hypocrite. But the sheer gall of saying this when the whole Bush Administration clearly didn't care about New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina because black people weren't going to vote for Republicans is just outstanding.

New Orleans, Four Years Later

At Erik's request, I'm posting the intro to my Global Comment piece on New Orleans here. I did several interviews for this story, including one with James Perry, who's trying to replace Ray Nagin as mayor of New Orleans--and has my full support (if I lived there, I'd vote for the guy. If you do, you should.)

Four years. It’s a presidential term; it’s the length of a high school or college education.

It’s also the amount of time that has passed now since Hurricane Katrina swept across the Gulf Coast and devastated the city of New Orleans, driving thousands of citizens from their homes. Many still have not been able to return.

I spent four years of my life in New Orleans. They were four years that shaped me into the person that I am today. I learned about racism and I learned about jazz. I learned about poverty and class divisions, and I learned about real friendship. I learned what it was like to really fear your home being wiped out by a hurricane, and I learned what it was like to struggle to pay rent. I haven’t been back, but the city remains in my heart.

After the storm, many Americans opened their hearts (and in some cases, their homes) to New Orleans. We have a new president now, perhaps partly because Katrina exposed George W. Bush’s basic incompetence and lack of empathy. Those of us who have been paying attention have gotten quite an education from the government’s handling of Katrina, watching the initial fumble grow into four years of neglect.

According to James Perry, Executive Director of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center and candidate for mayor of New Orleans, the Obama administration has made an effort to do better by New Orleans. He notes, though, that, “The thing that’s difficult about that for Louisianans and New Orleanians is that four years out, we’re tired of waiting.”

Please read the whole thing over at GC--they support me and pay at least some of my bills. Thanks for your support as well. New Orleans needs you still.

Neil Boortz, Racial Exterminationist

While Noon suggests Treason in Defense of Slavery Yankee as the worst person in the world for his disgusting talk about Ted Kennedy, I'd like to nominate Neil Boortz for the position.

As we reach the 4th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is not rebuilt, people are still displaced, and parts of the city remain a disaster zone.

And that's OK with some conservatives. Boortz tweeted this today:

Obama wants to rebuild New Orleans. Why? Build it and they will come. They? The debris that Katrina chased out.

Gee, what does Boortz mean by "debris." I just don't know....

It's real disturbing to see the dehumanizing of working-class African Americans. And isn't it just fantastic that leading Republican commentators think of African-Americans as "debris." No doubt he'd use other words in private. If black people are "debris," would Boortz have a problem wiping them out of the nation? Somehow, I think he wouldn't be too upset.

Trying to Punish Whites Who Openly "Hunted" African-Americans after Hurricane Katrina

Of all the horrible, awful stories that we've heard about Louisiana in the wake of Katrina over the last three years, but this story is the worst, most disturbing, and most infuriating yet:

after Hurricane Katrina, white vigilante groups patrolled New Orleans, blockaded streets, and shot at least eleven black men. It “was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it,” said one vigilante

Everybody knows racism's still around in this country, and I've never lived in the deep South, so maybe I'm just naive (though I've heard some pretty awful stuff from rural Ohio), but I've never heard people saying things like what the white Louisiana residents say in that video. Check it out, and though I don't usually push these things, take the 30 seconds it takes to fill out the petition asking the government to investigate these shootings.

Katrina and Gustav

It's the anniversary of a lot of things, but right now the one topmost in my mind is Hurricane Katrina. With Gustav shooting New Orleans the death look as I type, I can't write any more about Obama or Palin. All I can do is hope that it doesn't happen all over again.

I have a picture of the French Quarter as my background on my laptop right now and on my Twitter page. I miss New Orleans all the time, but never more so than when she's threatened.

There's not much we can do about Gustav yet, but there are places you can donate that are still trying to rebuild New Orleans from Katrina, which struck three years ago now.

And cross your fingers, knock wood, and pray to anything you might believe in that Gustav fizzles before it causes any more destruction.

My Private Casbah and WOC PhD have more.

Something better to do than snipe at each other.

Click here, sign the petition, encourage your reps to vote for the Gulf Coast Civic Works act, and let's start rebuilding properly, what, three years after Katrina?

This has been your regularly scheduled reminder that there are many more important things in the world than calling each other names.

Bush and Burma

Quite an offer W made to help Myanmar after their cyclone. He did such a fantastic job reconstructing New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Why wouldn't the Burmese take advantage of this generous offer!

The thing is, I fully believe that the U.S. will do a better job in Burma than they did in New Orleans. Why? Because helping Myanmar recover serves their policy goals in a way that New Orleans never did. New Orleans was full of black people in a mostly Republican state. Driving them out just made Louisiana a Republican redoubt. Bush has never shown any interest in assisting African-Americans and he sure didn't after Katrina. What survived in New Orleans? Exactly what white people like. Bourbon Street, the French Quarter, the spaces of partying. Turn New Orleans into Disneyland for adults, who cares.

On the other hand, a bigger U.S. presence in Burma would serve the nation's policy interests but undermining the military dictatorship and key ally of China while rebuilding the nation's reputation around the world.

Sorry to be so cynical, but it's not as if the Republicans haven't said all of this themselves.

Bush's Incompetence on Film

By chance this week, I watched When the Levees Broke in my Hurricane Katrina in Historical Perspective class and then No End in Sight at home. These two films are great documents to show the historical incompetence of the Bush administration. Plenty of people have talked about both films so I won't go into much detail here. But I think watching them back to back is extremely powerful.

When the Levees Broke, Spike Lee's documentary on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is possibly the best documentary I have ever seen. That's a strong statement I know. But that film has unbelievable power. It's actually not that great for discussion I think, or at least it wasn't with me leading it, because it is just too overwhelming. After each of the 4 episodes, one just feels completely devastated. Michael Eric Dyson, in his book about Katrina, Come Hell or High Water, explores Kanye West's assertion that George Bush doesn't care about black people. Essentially, Dyson says, that regardless of Bush's actual feelings toward African-Americans, he doesn't care about them as a political group. That disinterest dominated hurricane relief efforts. As we all know, relief was slow and inadequate and hundreds if not thousands of people died as a direct result. In the aftermath, Bush was conducting fundraisers and talking about Iraq, Cheney was hanging out on his ranch in Wyoming, and Condi was shopping. None of them cared. Today, Hurricane Katrina relief funds are running out with most of the city not yet rebuilt and much not even cleaned up. Nothing more is coming either. Disgusting.

Watching No End in Sight only reinforced When the Levees Broke. Again viewing the aftermath of the Iraq invasion and the multiple ways the Bush administration sabotaged their own war through ideology, contempt for the Iraqis, inexperience, incompetence, disinterest, malfeasance, and idiocy. While I still believe that it is a very hard case to make that this administration is the worst in American history, it sure is awfully close and I pray the worst in my lifetime. Because I don't want to live through something worse.

I was thinking about Fahrenheit 9/11 after watching these films. The problem with that movie is the conspiracy theory aspect to it. Why focus on conspiracy theories when this administration has done so many horrible things that are easily documented and clear to the public? Accusing it of conspiracies almost serves its interest because it draws attention from their actual evil.

FEMA Trailers

I am utterly disgusted, but not in the least surprised, to hear about the high levels of formaldehyde contamination in FEMA trailers in trailers provided for refugees of Hurricane Katrina.

I am less critical of FEMA than many commentators; I think the problems emanate from the highest reaches of the federal government. But not just from there. They also stem from our own indifference to the poor. A natural disaster is just another event in the news cycle. One week it's a hurricane, the next a school shooting. We see news as entertainment and we need something new to keep us sated. But it takes a long time to fix people's destroyed lives. We don't elect a government that will take the necessary measures to find permanent housing for Katrina refugees. It's 2 1/2 years later and tens of thousands of people are stuck in trailers. Tens of thousands more are scattered to the winds and are struggling as well.

Whenever natural disasters strike in this country, the poor pay the price. As Mike Davis pointed out in his provocative piece, "The Case for Letting Malibu Burn," half the nation rushes to help the wealthy movie stars of Malibu when fire strikes but no one could care less when fires break out in the horrific tenement housing of downtown Los Angeles. It's the same in New Orleans. Corporations, especially casinos, received a massive influx of money after Katrina and Rita and the poor are breathing in formaldehyde.

As a country, we have an out of sight, out of mind mentality. We didn't care about the poor of New Orleans before the hurricane. Then the storm struck and they were in our sight and we were supposedly horrified at their plight. Then we forgot them by the end of 2005. It's 2008 and we keep forgetting.

Sarah J has more.