Boy this makes me feel a lot safer knowing that the Democrats just bowed down to an avowed racist for the SCOTUS Cheif Justice. Seems like the Republicans have just called open season on killing niggers.
He couldn’t get off the bus to buy food. The drivers were exhausted. And he couldn’t go to the bathroom.
“Just had to wait,” he said. “I tried to drink as little as I could, but I’m a diabetic. I need a lot of fluids.”
Driver Toni Soularie, 49, said she nearly had a violent confrontation when she pulled into a rest area.
“This officer said he was going to shoot me if I didn’t get back on the bus,” she said. “At that point I was prepared to let him shoot me. I had this invalid on the bus who was already embarrassed because she urinated all over herself. And I was not going to let her embarrass herself again. We just got off.
“But the officer stayed right there with me – made sure we were going to get back on.”
Tela Mange, spokeswoman for the state Department of Public Safety said she was unaware of anybody drawing guns.
“I have not heard about that,” she said. “At one point several people got off. One refused to get back on, but we helped her get back on.”
Drivers said they carried some food and water with them, but it was quickly exhausted, and for two days, they had almost no other way of getting provisions to their fellow evacuees. What help they did receive was meager.
“In Lufkin they actually gave us hot water,” said Cori Williams, Soularie’s son, who also is a driver for BISD. “And this is our home state. We shouldn’t have to drive all over creation to find some place to sleep.”
“When we tried to exit there, cars would actually back up on the ramps and force us to get back on the freeway,” Cassandra Francis, a 46-year-old BISD driver, said.
Gregg County Judge Bill Stoudt said he didn’t know much about the convoy, but echoed DPS’s concerns about the need to press on.
“There were 10,000 people moving north at the same time,” he said. “If they stopped, everybody might want to get off, and that would create even more delays.”
By the time the vehicles got to Tyler, winds and rain were lashing them. The convoy arrived in Canton, the only place Mange said could take them in, about 6:30 a.m. Saturday. The buses themselves remain there and Soularie, Francis and Williams, as well as most of the other drivers who accompanied them on the trip, are stranded. They say they don’t know when they’re going back and haven’t heard much news from home, other than the fact that Beaumont is a mess. When they do return, it’ll probably be by a different route.
“I don’t ever want to go back to some of those towns,” Francis’ 70-year-old father, Billy Bossette, said.
“Not ever.”
Perhaps, Nagin knew what he was doing not send NOLA evacuees out into the boondocks…
Jesus. Not surprising but still horrible.
What’s the source, Parker?
Maybe I’m naive, but to have these poor people treated this way not once, twice, or three times, but across half the fucking state is surprising to me. I used to live in Gregg county, in Tyler when I was a little kid. No wonder my parents didn’t keep us there long.
http://www.southeasttexaslive.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15293465&BRD=2287&PAG=461&dept_id
=512588&rfi=6
Thanks Parker. Last time I checked, people wanting to “help” generally don’t greet evacuees with shotguns. Also, it’s goddamned good thing they didn’t split up.
I really think this is why Nagin did not send these people on buses and waited for the national guard… to protect them.
Another one from today [same source]:
http://www.southeasttexaslive.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15306467&BRD=2287&PAG=461&dept_id
=512588&rfi=6
The officers told us that Wal-Mart management did not want us there and asked us to leave immediately,” said Gordon, a Port Arthur Independent School District bus driver for the disabled.
“We were just so tired and we had people that were sick. One woman needed oxygen, we called 911 and were told there was nothing they could do. Finally she was taken to a hospital in Woodville. I don’t think she made it. I drive a bus for the handicapped, but I’m not equipped to nurse the sick,” he said.
Gordon, separated from most of his convoy of 39 PAISD busses, drove to Lufkin where Port Arthur city officials had told him he would find refuge for his weakened passengers.
“By the time we got to Lufkin, we had been on the road 29 hours. It was chaos. We had to assist wheelchair passengers out on a lift. Everyone needed something. Lufkin officials said they didn’t have anything for us. I volunteered because I didn’t want Port Arthur to end up like the people in New Orleans, where the bus drivers deserted,” said Gordon.
That is our legacy from the south. Miserably stupid, inane, heartless and mealymouth little bastards living as if they had God on their side. God will probably have a few words with them when life is done, but it would be nice if a more proactive God would get off her ass and show them better.
Fucking East Texas….I am going to do a bit of letter writing and phone calling on this and the lady who was so human to me at the Gov’s office gets back on Monday, I think I’ll give her a little ringy-ding — two days after I called all over creation trying to find out what kind of medical screening services and vaccinations were going to be provided Katrina Kids coming into the schools, the DHHS put out a statement — it basically siad “don’t worry about anything, we have it under control”, but at least it was action of some kind — oh and their 30 days is quickly coming to an end on that one too — I want to know if they have either FOUND the vaccination records from LA and if not, when the clinics open to start giving them the interim vaccinations recomended by the CDC.
Fucking East Texas peices of shit. I am so hopping mad about this I could spit.
Fucking East Texas-indeed.We used to spend a lot of time driving around up (from Galveston)there, hub for work,and I tagged along.
Most benighted bunch of low-lifes I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. And this comes from someone who grew up in western PA.-another redneck haven.
(shudder)
…and raise you southwest Georgia, where I was born a person of color just 30 miles from Jimmy Carter’s stomping grounds. When I was last there, a few years ago, I noticed that the “coloreds only” “whites only” drinking fountains were at one of the gas stations that is still operating from when I was a kid, but that there ARE still two drinking fountains.
Meteor Blades, if I could have the knowledge and wisdom of one person in the world, without having to go through what they had been through in order to get it, it would be you.
See your raise, and raise you one Beaver Falls, PA, where a few years ago I heard a guy brag about the Klan– “runnin them ni*s outta town. One of ’em was livin with a white woman”.
Dear god- and I have no god.
The master has spoken, :)))).
Sorry, meant that to be reply to MB. š
Where tolerance for racism has risen and our standards on decency has lowered.
The comments on Amanda’s post include some confirmations:
This is the sickest thing I’ve read in regards to the whole Katrina relocation nightmare. They wouldn’t let the buses stop so people could pee for Christ’s sake???!!! They urinated on themsevles. Urinated on themselves! Stop and picture yourself having to endure something like that. Something that like eats at your self-worth, or power, your soul. Picture yourself on a public bus, surrounded by people who are most likely strangers. You have to pee so bad that you can’t hold it anymore. You ask/beg the driver to please pull off, and when they do, the locals hold guns on you! Or wait! How about this… You’re sitting on a bus for hours and hours and haven’t had anything to eat and you have to pee. You see a town coming up and know that finally you’ll get to take that break. But as you drive down the main street you see people on their lawn with guns, and nooses – NOOSES – hanging. WHAT THE HELL! How utterly inhumane. How deprived. How destroying.
Are black people not allowed to travel throughout the US? It’s not like these were prisoners or contagious. What the hell is going on? This is not right. Why isn’t this creating a massive sense of outrage? And why is this Bennet guy who talked of aborting black babies even being allowed to defend himself? He should be gone ::snap:: like that. No ‘you misunderstood me’ crap. Just ‘pack your bags and leave now.’ There is a serious problem here. I truly don’t understand.
One thing I know for sure though: these are the kind of people who are enjoying themselves w/ raping Iraqi women and boys, and beating Iraqi men and forcing them to humiliate themselves by stripping them and making the masturbate etc. Totally inhumane. Totally without feelings. Sick! I’m sick of it. Sick.
It’s the Gretna response writ large. This is why Gretna and anyone who enabled that response (such as, according to local government in Gretna, Blanco’s office) should be made an example of.
I seriously want to puke right now.
I did enough puking for both of us yesterday unfortunately.
This certainly doesn’t surprise me in the least but only confirms my own belief at how racist our society continues to be yet making me want to puke as others have said and also drive you to almost do violence of your own against these subhumans.
If these kind of vile stories of racism don’t open peoples eyes to the continuing racism, oppression of whole groups of people in this country I don’t know what will happen to the soul of this country.
It seems to me that we are going to need a return to the 60’s activism and taking to the streets literally for demonstrations, protest songs …against the war, for civil rights which is eroding..all the things that happened in the 60’s. The Civil Voting Rights Act is coming up for new scrutiny and possible rollback of some of that which is in it with this Congress. It’s like deja vu for me. The only thing missing really is the draft.
I just finished reading Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America by John M. Barry.
In 1927, when the Mississippi River broke through the levees all over the South, the Mississippi planters, fearful of losing their tenant laborers, refused to evacuate black people from flooded Greenville, Mississippi. Instead, they kept them under armed guard on the levee at Greenville, housed in floorless tents and poorly fed, and forced them at gunpoint to work without pay. Herbert Hoover, in charge of relief efforts (and elected President as the “Great Humanitarian”) covered up the doings in Greenville.
This time around, outright enslavement of black disaster victims isn’t so easy to accomplish. So the racist assholes chase them away at gunpoint instead. And another asshole in the White House will try to cover it up.