BBC: NO crisis shames US

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Sun, 04 Sep 2005 09:22:46 -0700

BBC: NO crisis shames US

 

 

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4210674.stm

 

Last Updated: Sunday, 4 September 2005, 15:19 GMT 16:19 UK

 

 

Viewpoint: New Orleans crisis shames US

 

By Matt Wells

BBC News, Los Angeles

 

 

*At the end of an unforgettable week, one broadcaster on Friday bitterly

encapsulated the sense of burning shame and anger that many American

citizens are feeling.*

 

 

The only difference between the chaos of New Orleans and a Third World

disaster operation, he said, was that a foreign dictator would have

responded better.

 

It has been a profoundly shocking experience for many across this vast

country who, for the large part, believe the home-spun myth about the

invulnerability of the American Dream.

 

The party in power in Washington is always happy to convey the

impression of 50 states moving forward together in social and economic

harmony towards a bigger and better America.

 

That is what presidential campaigning is all about.

 

But what the devastating consequences of Katrina have shown - along with

the response to it - is that for too long now, the fabric of this

complex and overstretched country, especially in states like Louisiana

and Mississippi, has been neglected and ignored.

*

Borrowed time*

 

The fitting metaphors relating to the New Orleans debacle are almost too

numerous to mention.

 

First there was an extraordinary complacency, mixed together with what

seemed like over-reaction, before the storm.

 

 

A genuinely heroic mayor orders a total evacuation of the city the day

before Katrina arrives, knowing that for decades now, New Orleans has

been living on borrowed time.

 

The National Guard and federal emergency personnel stay tucked up at home.

 

The havoc of Katrina had been predicted countless times on a local and

federal level - even to the point where it was acknowledged that tens of

thousands of the poorest residents would not be able to leave the city

in advance.

 

No official plan was ever put in place for them.

*

Abandoned to the elements*

 

The famous levees that were breached could have been strengthened and

raised at what now seems like a trifling cost of a few billion dollars.

 

The Bush administration, together with Congress, cut the budgets for

flood protection and army engineers, while local politicians failed to

generate any enthusiasm for local tax increases.

 

New Orleans partied-on just hoping for the best, abandoned by anyone in

national authority who could have put the money into really protecting

the city.

 

Meanwhile, the poorest were similarly abandoned, as the horrifying

images and stories from the Superdome and Convention Center prove.

 

The truth was simple and apparent to all. If journalists were there with

cameras beaming the suffering live across America, where were the

officers and troops?

 

The neglect that meant it took five days to get water, food, and medical

care to thousands of mainly orderly African-American citizens

desperately sheltering in huge downtown buildings of their native city,

has been going on historically, for as long as the inadequate levees

have been there.

*

Divided city*

 

I should make a confession at this point: I have been to New Orleans on

assignment three times in as many years, and I was smitten by the Big

Easy, with its unique charms and temperament.

 

But behind the elegant intoxicants of the French Quarter, it was clearly

a city grotesquely divided on several levels. It has twice the national

average poverty rate.

 

The government approach to such deprivation looked more like thoughtless

containment than anything else.

 

The nightly shootings and drugs-related homicides of recent years

pointed to a small but vicious culture of largely black-on-black crime

that everyone knew existed, but no-one seemed to have any real answers

for.

 

Again, no-one wanted to pick up the bill or deal with the realities of

race relations in the 21st Century.

 

Too often in the so-called " New South " , they still look positively 19th

Century.

 

" Shoot the looters " is good rhetoric, but no lasting solution.

*

Uneasy paradox*

 

It is astonishing to me that so many Americans seem shocked by the

existence of such concentrated poverty and social neglect in their own

country.

 

In the workout room of the condo where I am currently staying in the

affluent LA neighbourhood of Santa Monica, an executive and his personal

trainer ignored the anguished television reports blaring above their

heads on Friday evening.

 

Either they did not care, or it was somehow too painful to discuss.

 

When President Bush told " Good Morning America " on Thursday morning that

nobody could have " anticipated " the breach of the New Orleans levees, it

pointed to not only a remote leader in denial, but a whole political

class.

 

The uneasy paradox which so many live with in this country - of being

first-and-foremost rugged individuals, out to plunder what they can and

paying as little tax as they can get away with, while at the same time

believing that America is a robust, model society - has reached a crisis

point this week.

 

Will there be real investment, or just more buck-passing between federal

agencies and states?

 

The country has to choose whether it wants to rebuild the levees and

destroyed communities, with no expense spared for the future - or once

again brush off that responsibility, and blame the other guy.

 

 

--

 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10112.htm

 

The Two Americas

 

By Marjorie Cohn

 

09/03/05 " t r u t h o u t " -- --- Last September, a Category 5 hurricane

battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5

million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the

hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.

 

What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a

sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin

America, " the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with.

People know ahead of time where they are to go. "

 

" Cuba's leaders go on TV and take charge, " said Valdes. Contrast this with

George W. Bush's reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina hit the

Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a TV appearance

and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a scathing editorial on

Thursday, the New York Times said, " nothing about the president's demeanor

yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he

understood the depth of the current crisis. "

 

" Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable " in Cuba, Valdes said.

" Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family

doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know,

for example, who needs insulin. "

 

They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, " so

that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff, "

Valdes observed.

 

After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations International Secretariat for Disaster

Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation. ISDR director Salvano

Briceno said, " The Cuban way could easily be applied to other countries with

similar economic conditions and even in countries with greater resources that do

not manage to protect their population as well as Cuba does. "

 

Our federal and local governments had more than ample warning that hurricanes,

which are growing in intensity thanks to global warming, could destroy New

Orleans. Yet, instead of heeding those warnings, Bush set about to prevent

states from controlling global warming, weaken FEMA, and cut the Army Corps of

Engineers' budget for levee construction in New Orleans by $71.2 million, a 44

percent reduction.

 

Bush sent nearly half our National Guard troops and high-water Humvees to fight

in an unnecessary war in Iraq. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for

Jefferson Paris in New Orleans, noted a year ago, " It appears that the money has

been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in

Iraq. "

 

An Editor and Publisher article Wednesday said the Army Corps of Engineers

" never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as

well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was

the reason for the strain, " which caused a slowdown of work on flood control and

sinking levees.

 

" This storm was much greater than protection we were authorized to provide, "

said Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager in the New Orleans district of

the corps.

 

Unlike in Cuba, where homeland security means keeping the country secure from

deadly natural disasters as well as foreign invasions, Bush has failed to keep

our people safe. " On a fundamental level, " Paul Krugman wrote in yesterday's New

York Times, " our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential

functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing

security, rescuing those in need or spending on prevention measures. And they

never, ever ask for shared sacrifice. "

 

During the 2004 election campaign, vice presidential candidate John Edwards

spoke of " the two Americas. " It seems unfathomable how people can shoot at

rescue workers. Yet, after the beating of Rodney King aired on televisions

across the country, poor, desperate, hungry people in Watts took over their

neighborhoods, burning and looting. Their anger, which had seethed below the

surface for so long, erupted. That's what's happening now in New Orleans. And

we, mostly white, people of privilege, rarely catch a glimpse of this other

America.

 

" I think a lot of it has to do with race and class, " said Rev. Calvin O. Butts

III, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. " The people affected

were largely poor people. Poor, black people. "

 

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reached a breaking point Thursday night. " You mean

to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have

died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way

to authorize the resources we need? Come on, man! "

 

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had boasted earlier in the day that

FEMA and other federal agencies have done a " magnificent job " under the

circumstances.

 

But, said, Nagin, " They're feeding the people a line of bull, and they are

spinning and people are dying. Get off your asses and let's do something! "

 

When asked about the looting, the mayor said that except for a few

" knuckleheads, " it is the result of desperate people trying to find food and

water to survive.

 

Nagin blamed the outbreak of violence and crime on drug addicts who have been

cut off from their drug supplies, wandering the city, " looking to take the edge

off their jones. "

 

When Hurricane Ivan hit Cuba, no curfew was imposed; yet, no looting or violence

took place. Everyone was in the same boat.

 

Fidel Castro, who has compared his government's preparations for Hurricane Ivan

to the island's long-standing preparations for an invasion by the United States,

said, " We've been preparing for this for 45 years. "

 

On Thursday, Cuba's National Assembly sent a message of solidarity to the

victims of Hurricane Katrina. It says the Cuban people have followed closely the

news of the hurricane damage in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and the news

has caused pain and sadness. The message notes that the hardest hit are

African-Americans, Latino workers, and the poor, who still wait to be rescued

and taken to secure places, and who have suffered the most fatalities and

homelessness. The message concludes by saying that the entire world must feel

this tragedy as its own.

 

Marjorie Cohn, a contributing editor to t r u t h o u t, is a professor at

Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president of the National Lawyers

Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American

Association of Jurists.

 

 

 

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