Not since the days of the great Depression and the great ecological crisis of the Dust Bowl, when the good earth proceded to depart from the Great Plains upon the winds to points further east, has my country faced a refugee crisis on the scale the we do now. For those who don’t know much about this time period, a little background.
In the 1930s, during the Dust Bowl era, large numbers of farmers, fleeing ecological disaster, migrated from the Great Plains region to California along Route 66. More of the migrants were from Oklahoma than any other state, and some 15% of the Oklahoma population left for California. Californians called the migrants “Okies”, regardless of whether they were actually from Oklahoma. The term was disrespectful and used in a derogatory manner, with connotations of homelessness, poverty, and hickishness. The term was made famous nationwide by John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath.
We have sown the wind, and now we reap the whirlwind. And though Katrina is in Canada the winds of change are just starting to blow.
As the BBC reports hundred of thousands of Americans have been dispossed by the storm, these people have nothing to go home to, the sea has consumed their homes and everything they own whole. These people are refugees, even more they are latter day Okies.
The Okies were agents for change, and growing up in the deep red heart of <s>darkness</s> Indiana, I remember being shocked after reading The Grapes of Wrath for a high school English class, and seeing that the comfy bullshit that America has always been a conservative place was utter bullshit. Here in fictional (but true history), was the story of the breakdown of the illusion that naked, savage capitalism is a sustainable system. By their nature, American farmers have always been very slow to change, the yeoman farmer ideal, where a farmer works his own land, had always been part of parcel of the American Dream. But the grevious ecological harm wrought by the dust storms of the 1930’s, took people from settled bourgieous lives, and disppossed them.
Part of the story of the Grapes of Wrath is that you have people who had something forced into a life of migrant labor, and I can’t help but think that our latter day Okies from Louisiana await a similiar fate. Alas, the oter part of the story is that where the Mexicans who had worked the fields before who been docile, these dispossed Okies fough back, becoming communists, and forming unions to force the orchard owners to pay them enough to live a decent life. History has a way of repeating itself, and I think that our Cajun friends aren’t going to take this lying down. I think that there’s a bitter wind blowing and it ain’t going to stop until it’s pushed the President and the Congress out on their asses.
It’s already begun.
“Many people didn’t have the financial means to get out,” said Alan LeBreton, 41, an apartment superintendent who lived on Biloxi’s seaside road, now in ruins. “That’s a crime and people are angry about it.”
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Many of the town’s well-off heeded authorities’ warnings to flee north, joining thousands of others who traveled from the Gulf Coast into northern Mississippi and Alabama, Georgia and other nearby states.
Hotels along the interstates and other main roads were packed with these temporary refugees. Gas stations and convenience stores — at least those that were open — sold out of water, ice and other supplies within hours.
But others could not afford to join them, either because they didn’t own a car or couldn’t raise funds for even the cheapest motel.
“No way we could do that,” said Willie Rhetta, a bus driver, who remained in his home to await Katrina.
Resentment at being left behind in the path of one of the fiercest hurricanes on record may have contributed to some of the looting that occurred in Biloxi and other coastal communities.
A number of private residences, including some in upscale neighborhoods, were targeted, residents said.
Come 2006, the Republican party just might have a nasty little suprise in their Southern strongehold, and the term “red state” might just have an entirely new meaning. The outrage over the looting in New Orleans is about more than a simple break down in civil order, the elites in this country have spent the last 20 years ripping the social safety net to shreads, and now they reap what they have sowen. These refugees have lost what little they had, and I think the response of one of the looters (I guess that the culture of life doesn’t apply if we’re talking about private property) was asked whether he was trying to save his store is instructive.
One man who had around 10 pairs of jeans in his arms was asked if he was trying to save items from his store.
“No,” the man shouted, “that’s everybody’s store.” Another woman denied having a bag full of items. “It’s about survival right now,” she said. “We got to feed our children. I’ve got eight grandchildren to feed.”
If that isn’t primal communism I don’t know what is, unless the American gov’t acts soon, these refugees are going to be forced to wander the country like the wretched of the earth. The way in which honest to god refugees who weren’t in the Superdome (New Orleans) have been turned away from the Astrodome (Houston) shows just how unprepared the government is to deal with this. What is really disturbing is that the type of government intervention needed to control the situation and provide options for people made homeless by Katrina is anathema to the Bush administration.
In the following days and weeks unless action is taken, thousands of people with no money and no hope are going to be left to fend for themselves, wandering the country looking for shelter. Many of these people will be armed, unless the government takes a more constructive approach than the iron fist that the order tonight to end search and rescue operations to focus on the looting is, we are going to see armed bands roaming across the Southeastern United States. CNN is talking like they’re going to bring in the National Guard to hunt these people down.
We in the United States are in for a long, strange trip. I only hope in that something better lies at the end.
