cats and dogs and other companion animals

I feel the animal thing. Okay, it’s wrong, sort of; I mean, I know it’s misguided and people are more important. But that’s the thing, or a thing, anyway: that people love these animals. I dunno, when I think about the people I mostly feel angry because of course it’s wrong and we have to protest and try to make it right, but about the animals I am able to feel the sorrow and pain.

wrr: well katrina read

The storm and its aftermath have generated a wealth of information and commentary, much of which can be found on commondreams.org and Counterpunch.org.

It seems clear that global warming intensified the storm, and that the destruction of wetlands by giving them over to developers left New Orleans without some of its natural protections. And funding to maintain levees was diverted to tax cuts for the wealthy and military spending for the occupation of Iraq.

In mainstream media, the racism and classism of some of the initial reporting later gave way to increasing recognition of the racism and classism that left thousands of survivors to loot stores for luxury items like water and food, and to fire shots in the air in an effort to get the attention of helicopters that seemed to pass them by. Stories of community solidarity and of the working-class heroes of the relief effort have been left to alternative media, which has also reported on prison-like conditions at far-flung shelters and refugee camps.

Those who have remained in the city similarly find themselves faced with the sort of “order” familiar from places like Fallujah: The US Army Times has referred to the citizens of New Orleans as the “insurgency,”and the mercenary company Blackwater is operating in the city.

That recent events display the failure of a whole approach to government—the dangers of unmitigated crony capitalism and the catastrophic consequences of favoring the wealth of the few over the welfare of the many—has of course not changed that government’s priorities. Halliburton has been contracted to clean up navy bases in Mississippi, and environmental controls on gasoline have been suspended, as has the Davis-Bacon act requiring federal contractors to pay at least the prevailing wage.

But articles on The Black Commentator and on Indymedia New Orleans have been calling for the right of return to New Orleans, and have provided accounts of resistance by the Algiers neighborhood and the Iberville housing project.

Naomi Klein, writing in The Nation magazine, has dissected some of what they are resisting, as well as reporting and supporting those efforts. She notes,
“Jimmy Reiss, chairman of the New Orleans Business Council, told Newsweek that he has been brainstorming about how "to use this catastrophe as a once-in-an-eon opportunity to change the dynamic." The Business Council's wish list is well-known: low wages, low taxes, more luxury condos and hotels. Before the flood, this highly profitable vision was already displacing thousands of poor African-Americans.” “Jordan Flaherty, a New Orleans-based labor organizer told [Klein,] "Now the developers have their big chance to disperse the obstacle to gentrification--poor people."

But Klein quotes from a statement by Community Labor United, a coalition of low-income groups in New Orleans:

"The people of New Orleans will not go quietly into the night, scattering across this country to become homeless in countless other cities while federal relief funds are funneled into rebuilding casinos, hotels, chemical plants.... We will not stand idly by while this disaster is used as an opportunity to replace our homes with newly built mansions and condos in a gentrified New Orleans."

The statement ‘went on to demand that a committee made up of evacuees "oversee FEMA, the Red Cross and other organizations collecting resources on behalf of our people.... We are calling for evacuees from our community to actively participate in the rebuilding of New Orleans." ‘

It's a radical concept [continues Klein]: The $10.5 billion released by Congress and the $500 million raised by private charities doesn't actually belong to the relief agencies or the government; it belongs to the victims. The agencies entrusted with the money should be accountable to them.

[….]Rather than handing over the reconstruction to the same corrupt elite that failed the city so spectacularly, the effort could be led by groups like Douglass Community Coalition. Before the hurricane this remarkable assembly of parents, teachers, students and artists was trying to reconstruct the city from the ravages of poverty by transforming Frederick Douglass Senior High School into a model of community learning. [….]Now that the funds are flowing, shouldn't they have the tools to rebuild every ailing public school in the city?

For a people's reconstruction process to become a reality (and to keep more contracts from going to Halliburton), the evacuees must be at the center of all decision-making. According to Curtis Muhammad of Community Labor United, the disaster's starkest lesson is that African-Americans cannot count on any level of government to protect them. […] That means the community groups that do represent African-Americans in Louisiana and Mississippi -- many of which lost staff, office space and equipment in the flood -- need our support now. Only a massive injection of cash and volunteers will enable them to do the crucial work of organizing evacuees -- currently scattered through forty-one states--into a powerful political constituency. The most pressing question is where evacuees will live over the next few months. A dangerous consensus is building that they should collect a little charity, apply for a job at the Houston Wal-Mart and move on. Muhammad and CLU, however, are calling for the right to return: they know that if evacuees are going to have houses and schools to come back to, many will need to return to their home states and fight for them.

[….]

Klein notes that those wanting to donate to a people's reconstruction can make checks out to the Vanguard Public Foundation, 383 Rhode Island St., Suite 301, San Francisco, CA 94103. Checks should be earmarked "People's Hurricane Fund."

She concludes,

There is only one thing that can compensate the victims of this most human of natural disasters, and that is what has been denied them throughout: power.

indymedia declaration

from New Orleans Indymedia
http://neworleans.indymedia.org/

Declaration of New Orleans
by Charles Montesquieu Saturday, Sep. 03, 2005 at 3:24 AM
charliemontesquieu@yahoo.com

A Declaration of The People of the United States of America Concerning the Present Crisis in the City of New Orleans.

In the name of the People of the United States of America, we declare:

That for the last four and a half years the President and his administration have served the interests of a few wealthy citizens and not the interests of the American People.

That he has acted with contempt for the People and for the Constitution and the laws of the United States.

That an edict of the Supreme Court made him President in 2000 and fraud made him President again in 2004.

That the President has pursued an unprecedented expansion of Executive powers that are a grave threat to the rights and liberties of the American People.

That he has made war on sovereign nations that are no threat to the American People.

That his "War on Terror" has cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives without bringing those responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 to justice.

That the failure of his leadership in the present crisis in the City of New Orleans has resulted in the deaths of thousands more.

That he is derelict in every duty of his office.

Therefore, we resolve:

That President George W. Bush and his administration are illegitimate.

That he should resign from office and new elections should be held immediately.

That if he does not resign, the Congress of the United States should act to remove him from office.

That if the Congress should fail to act, the People will exercise their right to abolish this state and will establish a new government that will better secure their rights and liberties.

COPY AND DISTRIBUTE

history

That would be a yes.
(I'm a big fan of Get Your War On.)

falluja, louisiana

The USA has a great idea of how to "restore order": "Police and national guardsmen were accused of killing innocent people." Which of course is generally considered worse than police killing "guilty" people, though it seems to me a little like saying, oh, say, chattel slavery is worse than the convict-lease system. Not untrue, exactly, but kind of missing the point. I'm not the only one to have made the falluja comparison, but I had in mind less the incompetent failure to bring 'order' and more the violent conception of what order means.

gautier

my mother grew up in gautier (GO-chay), miss., which I’ve never seen mentioned in the international press, until now (see under biloxi), when it’s apparently been pretty much wiped off the map.

these were places I grew up visiting—gautier, pascagoula (where mom went to high school), gulfport, biloxi, and new orleans, where she lived after high school, where my parents honeymooned, where I visited as a child, where I visited for the mla, where I visited with my friend A, where things will never be the same.

The same, of course, wasn’t so great. Aside from the problems of global warming, wetland destruction, funding cuts, militaristic priorities, failures of planning, indifference of government, and the general badness of american capitalism, this is all also a reminder of the poverty of the area.

But it’s still hard for me to believe it was all on purpose.

dry

Then again, maybe A's house made it through undamaged.

looter

The real looters wear pinstripes.

katrina and the waves

New Orleans a Casualty of Iraq War In 2004, the Corps essentially stopped major work on the now-breached levee system that had protected New Orleans from flooding. It was the first such stoppage in 37 years, the Times-Picayune reported. "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay," Jefferson Parish emergency management chief Walter Maestri told the newspaper.

Fewer wetlands, more wet land. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. From 1956 to 1978, an estimated 50 square miles a year were lost. The rate of loss has now slowed to an estimated 24 square miles a year, in part because of much tighter restrictions on oil field dredging activities, but also because Louisiana is running out of wetlands to lose.

And global warming makes the storms worse.

Looks like A’s house is one of the many flooded.

I prefered when they were just a band.