Demolishing the myth of the submerged buses

Busing had been tested in the Hurricane Pam simulation of September 2003, and it was found that the problems and risks were much greater than the possible benefits. They planned another simulation to work out all the deficiencies revealed by Hurricane Pam, but it was canceled because the Bush administration killed the funding. One of the biggest problems was finding shelter for all those infirm, aged, children and penniless black people. No one wanted to accept them in the northern Louisian counties. They would have had to send them out on the road looking for shelter in slowly crawling traffic and oppressive heat and humidity. As it turned out, this was, indeed, very risky.

http://www.ammachi.org/humanitarian-activities/get-involved/Katrina/update-from-centers.html
"The Oklahoma Affiliate Center has been assisting survivors at Camp Gruber (a military camp where 2000 people were bussed from the superdome in New Orleans). The survivors arrived at 10 p.m. Saturday night wearing the same clothes they wore when the hurricane hit. They had been on the Greyhound bus which first went to Houston, where they were turned away, then to Dallas, and arrived at Camp Gruber thinking they were going to die on the bus, because no one would take them in. Some did die on the bus, many died and were killed in the superdome, and they were in shock from all the trauma."

As you may be aware, the sheriffs of the parish across the Mississppi river from the Convention Center turned back a group of about 200 evacuees who tried to cross the bridge. They evacuees say that the officers fired over the head to dissuade them. This is not a rumor. The sheriff of Gretna was interviewed on TV about it. So that does tend to explain the general attitude that the New Orleans disaster planners faced. Therefore they decided long before the storm to use the shelters of last resort, after having been assured by FEMA they could expect rapid relief. The shelters did protect the people from the storm. The relief arrived a bit late.

Stay tuned. To be continued...

Ya'll don't get it, yet. Let me explain it.

By Jack R. Lebowitz

I don't know what the ultimate political fallout from this is going to be, but it is increasingly clear to me that the emergency response in NOLA, right down to the FEMA people on site allegedly sending back aid vehicles from the Red Cross, halting other responders and all of their other incompetence, had more to do with PREMEDITATED MALEVOLENT DESIGN than simple incompetence. Yes, they WANTED people to die. They wanted FEMA to fail spectacularly to save lives and fail. Or perhaps wanted simply to demonstrate a supremely depraved indifference to whether folks lived or died.

Most people can't or won't accept anything this chilling. But perhaps that's because people aren't thinking clearly about the Bush administration and its priorities. But the message is pretty clear to me (and consistent with modern Republican's general ideology about governance): emergency response, if caused by a natural disaster rather than terrorism, is a state and local function. The feds need not contribute governance, resources or tax money. Small government is good. Ideological government is good. If Republicans run government, a modern spoils system should direct pork to corporations or affluent Republican areas or people who voted for Republicans or share their religion or conservative culture.

If poor people or black people die and suffer, what else is new? If you devolve the safety functions to local and state government, not only do you have no responsibility, but you can blame the black mayors and cops. You can even blame the victims, talking about looting and supposed gun play (although that hasn't been documented; what I've read from e-mails is that the black "thugs" at the refugee centers were not robbing and raping but actually helping to organize the crowds to get the women, sick and vulnerable out first).

The situation kind of reminds me most of William Manchester, The Glory and The Dream: A Narrative History of America 1932-1972, which begins with a depiction of the 1931 "Bonus March", where out of work WWI vets went to Washington to demand early payments for a military bonus they were due. They were fired upon and rousted from the parks in DC by General MacArthur, the WWI hero. The point of this story, and beginning a history book about this, was to underscore how different the pre-New Deal thinking was from the liberal "Great Society" in which the book was written. That is, the pre-New Deal Keynesian Republican government of the era simply did not see that it had any responsibility for managing the private economy of capitalism or helping the victims of "booms and busts", even when the poverty and need might involve large segments of the population.

Not only was there no official empathy or responsibility for the plight of non-wealthy Americans during the bonus march among these ruling elites of the day, but outright hostility and opposition. Not only was a "New Deal" antithetical to Herbert Hoover, but the Bonus Marchers were to be fired upon by soldiers and harshly treated, their encampments broken up. THAT was the policy: to show "who's boss", to perhaps say "their suffering may be legitimate, but demonstrating in Hoovervilles and public parks is "against the law", and it's more important that the Bonus Marchers be harassed than encouraged, even by humane treatment.

Back to NOLA. Yes, there are people who are more offended by looting than starving, that would have "zero tolerance" for looting, even if it was milk to feed a starving baby.

Yes, there are people like Barbara Bush, probably playing golf and cards at every white country club in the country, who think the black folks who lived are "lucky duckies" (to use the Wall Street Journal's spin on people too poor to pay income taxes) because now they will get some freebies they wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

Yes, there are people in Washington, and lots of them, who couldn't be bothered if no aid ever went to other than the usual beneficiaries of largesse, such as huge corporations, war profiteers, Halliburton and rich folks in red states, including storm victims in NOLA.

Yes, there are people that think it's pretty funny and apropos that first you downsize FEMA so that it can't provide real assistance or cost too much and THEN you put the lamest political hack wardheeler in the cushy, no show jobs that are left on the organizational table as "spoils" for winning the elections and those who helped.

What I'm saying is that it WAS ON PURPOSE AND TOTALLY ON MESSAGE for Bush to be on vacation, seeming not to care, and for Cheney to be AWOL somewhere and Condi Rice taking in Broadway comedies and buying obscenely expensive shoes. The message is: we really don't care and we really aren't going to do anything about "those people" because we don't care. They aren't our people. They don't vote for us. Our people don't like those black folks and jazz musicians and other non-lilly-white Republicans. Maybe they brought it on themselves with their gayness and cavorting.

I'm sure Grover Nyquist and Barbara Bush and other dynastic Republican plutocrats loved the Marie Antoinette-like message being sent out by our leaders. Let them black m-f*ckers eat cake. Har Har. Sucks to be poor.

Maybe some people can't fathom this, but they just aren't paying attention or could not believe that our leadership or their fellow Americans could engage in cruel, genocidal policies on purpose. But ask yourself this: all this caring costs money, just like aid to education or any social welfare program.

And don't you think that the influential people who are clamoring for more "tax cuts for the rich", like Grover Nyquist say, well understand that perhaps FEMA and disaster preparedness is no different than social security or education or welfare or any other benefits that may deprive them of holding on to more of "their" (or their family) money. And if push comes to shove, and the choice is between doing away with the estate tax permanently or funding "big government" which can help with disaster relief, they'll choose the former.

In fact, what's difference between FEMA and "saving social security", in terms of the issues they raise regarding taxes, equity, the social safety net and fabrics of our community. Nothing, except that with no FEMA, people get sick and die en masse, in large numbers, rather than quietly and out of sight.

Yes, we will have another Bush "investigation", but no one at FEMA will be fired. So long as the blame can be shifted or avoided and the "perceptions managed" enough to not create too much cognitive dissonance in the heads of good conservative christians, there will be no problems. Things will go on. Some will be puzzled by the seemingly caring rhetoric, but that is just a foil. Like, say, the Sudanese leaders who continue to say there is no genocide in Darfur when they are causing it, hypocrisy and disinformation is not a problem, so long as the real policy is being pursued on the ground.

As a great Republican (Nixon's attorney general) once said, "don't watch what we say, watch what we do".

I think the jury's still out on how many people will use the latest incidents as proof of the Republicans' sick ideology and will act accordingly at the ballot box.

I am not hopeful, however. It is much too easy to continue to believe that FEMA or levees can be improved or fixed, rather than that they were designed to fail in their mission of protecting the lives of people who have been deemed social outcasts worthy of protection or concern (like the one million prisoners in our prisons as drug political prisoners, and who are the forerunners and harbingers of our increasingly genocidal politics).

Jack Lebowitz is an attorney in Saratoga Springs, New York who is a participant in several internet communities involved with law, social justice and improvisational music. He is one of the founders and directors of The Mockingbord Foundation, a charity operated by volunteer fans of the rock band Phish which has contributed more than $550,000 for music education for kids, and the Netspace Foundation, a non-profit, public interest website and list server.

Posted by jules_siegel at 08:20 PM | Comments (0)