Author: duranta

[From the diaries by susanhu.]

 I write this diary on the People’s Hurrican Relief Fund march yesterday, at blksista’s and Janet Strange’s request. I write this because the image of a small altar on a white piece of cloth, on  a patch of grass on Congo Square, is too beautiful to keep to myself. Candles, fruit, and people leaving dollar bills, to ask the ancestors permission to return to the city, on a patch of grass where the black, slave ancestors were allowed to celebrate their culture once a week in New Orleans.

I saw a young, beautiful African American woman crying at this scene. I waited a while and introduced myself. Her name was Ebony, and she’s from Mississippi. She is working for Public TV on black programming, and is here with a friend filming. I told her we are fighting to reopen public housing here.

There were those small, intimate encounters all day for me. Like the sometimes homeless man, Dr. Bob, wearing a traditional, colorful African hat, who asked me to hold his notebook for him while he ate. He gave me some writings, journal style, on being homeless. I told him that I see our small movement to open public housing, as eventually merging with the homeless movement in this country, and certainly we are traveling parallel ideological lines.

There was Cara, a beautiful African American woman who sang “Indian Red”, a  Wild Magnolias Mardi Gras Indian  song at the opening rally, slowly and sadly like a dirge, and a call to arms, so to speak:

“Mah day Kuh-tee-fiya     “ee-aye-ee”
We are Indians, We are Indians
We’re the Indians of this nation
this whole wide creation
We won’t kneel down, not on the ground,
Oh how I love to hear them call my Indian Red.

And oh goddess, I hope I don’t offend Indian rights activists by quoting that song, because the Mardi Gras Indians, I believe, were created out of admiration for the American Indians, and a need to create a new tribal community of their own to replace the one lost.

There was the woman from Boston, Soleil, who participated in an event at the governor’s mansion in Baton Rouge the other day. She and a small group of activists presented a dereliction of duty notice to Governor Kathleen Blanco, and set up an alternative housing structure on the front lawn of the governor’s mansion, complete with toilet and living room furniture. They were detained for a couple of hours, and questioned by plains clothes state police. They handled the questioning by repeatedly stating, “We have the right to remain silent.”

I told Soleil of my idea to present a similar document to the Army Corps of Engineer, who is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people in this area. They constructed the levees in violation of their own design plans, and, when the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board proposed a dredging action in the 17th Street Canal in the late 80’s, the Army Corps okayed the project against their documented better judgement. They knew this dredging would undermine the clay foundation of the canal, and this is documented.

Soleil and I discussed presenting the Keystone Cops I mean Army Corps of Engineers with citizen murder charges.

I saw my new Creole friend Veda, a fiercely intelligent and outspoken woman who clued me into grant monies that are available through the SBA, for renters and homeowners to replace their belongings that were lost in the storm. The SBA, the financial arm of FEMA, is being very quiet about these funds, and their availability will expire January 7th.

What will also expire January 7th is FEMA funds for evacuees staying in hotels across the country, so I expect that some kind of aberrant phenomena will occur on that day, as it seems to be a magic number for FEMA to deny help to people. Perhaps that will be the day the spaceships come, as Neil Young predicted, to take us all away to a better life in another galaxy.

I heard Mama D speak after the march and she told her young black people that they were watching too much TV, but she said it in a way to urge them into wakefullness for the sake of survival. She blew off her 3 minute limit for her speech and said the 3 minute limit was killing activism. I love Mama D, and I fear her as well. I wonder if I would measure up…

I walked over a mile back to my car with very sore feet and legs from second lining it  during the march with the Soul Rebels Brass Band, and feeling my feet lift off the ground like they do when you abandon yourself to the joy. And it was a joy mixed with the sadness of not knowing if your community will ever be whole again.

Malik, who runs the Commonground project in Algiers, and was one of the Black Panther’s arrested in the Desire Housing Project incident in the 70’s, draped his arm over his elderly white friend and said, “Only in New Orleans do you dance at protests.” A young fellow from out of town agreed he had never seen anything like it. And this is why we must bring it back.

I’m going to tell you in a little bit how to volunteer with Commonground in New Orleans. Let me give a little bit of the layout of the land right now, emotionally speaking.

It’s not easy, because the primary emotion you will begin to feel is one of grief. Even if you aren’t from here. Even if you’d never set foot in the city. You’ll feel the grief emanating from the dried, caked mud in the ninth ward, from the faces of people not sure of the future.

You’ll also notice and feel a dogged determination, and anger, like the emotions displayed by Leah Hodges and Mama D in Congress day before yesterday. They did my heart proud with their refusal to relinquish their beliefs and point of view in the face of a kind of state sanctioned harrassment.

New Orleans is dry now, and she’s hurting, but she needs people. She needs people to come to be a witness and testify to others what this manmade disaster has wrought.

New Orleans is what happens after years and years of neglect of our wetlands, of our levees, of our infrastructure.
And if you say it can’t happen where you live, I suggest you pack your bags now and get out while you can.

New Orleans is what happens when the priority of a nation turns away from the needs of the people, when a people fall asleep and allow the theft of a treasury.

We’re waking up now. In New Orleans, the dead were awakened when the flood engulfed the old tombs of our ancestors. The ancestors are angry because their old places of roaming and worship are destroyed, whole blocks and neighborhoods. Where will the ghosts roam now? Where will the people live?

They are talking about buying the land and homes of the working poor in New Orleans. Truth is, every single resident displaced deserves some sort of compensation beyond the measly FEMA money most have had to fight tooth and nail for.

This disaster was manmade. It was in the making years ago when the so-called global economy was born, and jobs were sent overseas, undermining the economic base of our country.

It was in the making when the media was consolidated under a few multi-national companies, limiting debate and discussion in a very, undemocratic like fashion.

It was in the making when we as citizens chose not to participate locally in our community because we were beaten down by cynicism and distrust.

Oh, I was talking about volunteering. Katrina here brought us out of our homes, even the ones not displaced. My family rarely sees me anymore, but I know this is temporary.

We’re starting something here: its called community involvement on a profound, basic level: one on one work.

I would have never met Linda from the B.W. Cooper Housing Development if this storm hadn’t happened. We’ve become sisters in our shared outrage, grief and determination. People are dying out here from grief. The suicide rate is up, suicide threats occuring everyday, double and triple the rate before the storm.

Linda and I are finding, as we sift through the rubble of her B.W. Cooper home, that if we work together and help each other, we’ll find a way. We’ll make it. We’ll never be the same, but we will be stronger for it.

It takes a citizenry to make a nation. Let’s take our nation back, one house at a time.

Here’s how you contact Commonground to volunteer:

These Commonground people have shown up for every single rally we’ve organized to reopen public housing in New Orleans, and to protest the illegal evictions occuring all over the city. We’re learning here of the ties that bind us all, and something beautiful is rising from these ashes.

Stop the evictions of Katrina survivors from hotels and apartment complexes. Period. Just stop it.

I’m working with Bill Qiugley and others to try to force the Housing Authority of New Orleans to re-open public housing in New Orleans. Time is of the essence, because the FEMA policy, and some heartlease landlords, are intent on squeezing out survivors onto the streets in what is looiming to be a homeless holiday for thousands.

You can help.
In my view, affordable housing is going to be the issue, and will become a national movement, perhaps sparked by the aftermath of Katrina, and sparked by this global economy that is emptying our country of jobs that support a quality standard of living.

Bill Quigley is a professor and attorney with the Loyola University Law Clinic in New Olreans. Here is his message:

Please visit our website, www.c3nola.org, and www.no-heat.org, for updates on activities. Bear with us as we struggle to piece together our own, personal lives, and work on this issue; our c3nola web site is a little raw right now.

We want to work in solidarity with other groups who are working on the affordable housing issue, and dealing with issues of gentrification, destruction of low-income neighborhoods and displacement of low-income residents from the centers of cities. Please contact us.
Yocandra42@hotmail.com

Unfortunately, I was waiting for this report. I watched in recent days as “officials” in New Orleans disputed the reports of rapes in the Superdome during the disaster. I watched as media types and bloggers accepted these reports as weighted in truth, even though no one was questioning the people who had been in the dome, the eye witnesses, the women themselves.

A report from “Live From” on CNN today, just a few minutes ago, has blown all this to hell.  
“Live From” has reported that there were at least 13 rapes in the superdome. I hope I have the numbers right. I caught the report flying through the house, so to speak. A nurse in Texas was interviewed. She treats victims of sexual assault. She said more and more women who experiened sexual assault in the Superdome are coming forward, one just this week.

Here is the lesson here: as citizen bloggers, citizen journalist, whatever you want to call what it is we do with our computer keyboards, we have to question “official” reports, especially when eye witnesses are not being consulted.

It was obvious to me that there was an attempt to downplay the anarchy, and the results of the breakdown in civilization, so that local and state officials didn’t look as bad as they should look.

Just this week, there was a letter to the Times Picayune in New Orleans from family members of an elderly gentleman who was beaten when he arrived at the Superdome hoping for evacuation. All of his personal possessions that he had brought with him were stolen.

Sorry that I don’t have a link to the transcript of the CNN report. I’ll keep looking for it though, and post it when I get it. I’m sure the report will be re-aired today. That is what CNN does, recycle reports all day long, so look for it if you want to see it.

From the Boston Globe, we have the usual round-up of stories of people who couldn’t afford to get out of the path of the approaching storm. As usual, the poor are left behind to fend for themselves.
Do I sound weary of this story? I am weary. After the Superdome, after the Convention Center, I am weary. I am tired of reporting that in America, you can get out of harms way if you have the money, and if your car runs well.

I am weary of knowing that places like Cuba, as poor as Cuba is, takes care of their own, in the event of a hurricane.

Sometimes, actually often, it is the poor taking care of the poor in this country.

And let it also be said, that in the President’s home state, they sometimes don’t take care of their own.

If we as a nation do not address the issue of the working poor, of hungry people in our own country, of the homeless, of the sick, impoverished and destitute, then we fail our own promise to ourselves:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

If you think it can’t happen to you, if you believe that you will never be one of the hungry and thirsty fleeing the ravages of a storm, of any storm, of an economic storm, think again.

If the least of us are vulnerable, then we all are.

If a link to this video has already been posted, I’ll delete this.

When I viewed this music video from local musician Chris Chandler, tears of course, and a reminder of what made New Orleans one of the most frustratingly beautiful and absurdly sad places in the entire world to live.

I miss my beautiful city.

View, and enjoy and weep, for the sorrow of an eternity are contained in this one city.
Here is the link:

http://chrisvids.org/videos/9th_ward_new_orleans.html

As the Raw Story said on September 13, and there is nothing now to indicate otherwise, that the Red Cross has yet to provide relief into a heavily militarized New Orleans, according to the NBC blog, the city is still desperate for supplies.  
I’m tempted to say, “Don’t go back”. At least not now, and not when the city “reopens” on Sept. 26.

It’s going to be a logistical nightmare to aquire food and water and ice.

That’s exactly what it is right now. The producers of NBC were careful to phrase their wording, and it is anything but investigative journalism, but here is what they said:

Mayor Nagin is looking into creating a Wal Mart in the once House of Death, the Convention Center. Hope they work out what will be the parking nightmare of a lifetime.

In the meantime, it still needs to be asked, “Where is the Red Cross?”

I’ve seen the smug Nagin on Larry King Live recently, talking glowingly now about what he believes will be a New Orleans revitalized.

I hope he is right. In the meantime, we could use another get off your goddamed asses and do something speech to get food and water into residents who are already helping with the cleanup, and getting jobs to cleanup. Particularly since most of these people are the poor of the city. And particularly since the National Guard won’t be bringing in supplies anymore either. Read below.

Raw Story, in this article published two days ago, discloses the cooperation between state, local and federal leaders to keep out the Red Cross in the days immediately following the flooding in New Orleans.

Why? Because relief pouring into the city in the form of food and water might encourage people to return to the stricken city, it was decided by the emergency managment team.

Even now, as the city is occupied by a constant military presence, the Red Cross has still not distributed supplies in the city.

This despite the fact that thousands remain in the city.  
Withholding food and supplies from those in physical distress might be called genocide by any other name.

The faces of our brothers and sisters dying of dehydration at the Superdome and Convention Center, is the face of unconscious genocide. Politically unimportant and unempowered, their interests were expendable for convenience sake, for the fear of people, God forbid, wanting to return to their homes.  

I’ve already said on this site that I heard Terry Ebbers, New Orleans Homeland Security director, say before the storm, on the local news, that they had no intention of feeding and giving water to Superdome evacuees. This, despite the fact that the National Weather Service had issued a warning for catastrophic flooding for New Orleans on Friday.

After the flooding began, and the Superdome and Convention Center surrounded,there were no plans expedited or improvised to allow in the Red Cross to care for the people.

It is difficult to imagine these so far, nameless state, local and federal leaders on the emergency managment team, in the face of the growing disaster in the Superdome, Convention Center and rooftops and attics of New Orleans, closing the gate, so to speak to Red Cross help. It is difficult to imagine because it was already known that there were thousands of New Orleans citizens left behind in this storm, who, after the storm passed, would need some sort of assistance, even in the face of not knowing what the storm would do to the city.  

It is difficult to imagine that the Red Cross would be prevented from going into the city the first 24 hours after the storm, before the anarchy and looting began, but they were.

It is difficult to imagine that this supposed independent, non-profit agency would not raise a hue and cry about not being able to fullfill its mission to help those in distress. Yet not a peep of disagreement has been heard in the face of this lack of response to the people in need.

This might have to do with the cozy, partisan ties the Red Cross shares with this administration. Further, the Red Cross has shown a history of something less than honesty in dealing with donated funds. You read the rest.

What is more fetid than the waters flooding New Orleans? Stick your toe into the thread over at Dkos under booman’s diary, and you have your answer.

Meanwhile, back in Louisiana:
The huddled masses are gathered in shelters, sleeping in their cars on the outskirts of Baton Rouge, sleeping in the Motel Sixes all over the state, some of them wondering just what this “internet” is, according to one dkos diary, that they are supposed to go to to apply for FEMA assistance.

They won’t hear about, be concerned about, or care about this inner-party quarrel raging on a blog near you.

The flood waters aren’t even drained from New Orleans yet and already attention has turned to the Party apparatus that never gave a rat’s ass for most of the black faces anyway, you know, the ones we watched dying a slow death of dehydration and human neglect on CNN two weeks ago.

Desperate they are and have been, even as a democratic president named Bill Clinton severed the safety net and eliminated welfare as we know it, sending many to fall between the cracks.

And the masses have gathered wherever they can, having been flooded out of their city, out of their homes by an inept federal government that for decades ignored our cries for help in restoring our wetlands, America’s wetlands.

Where were the parties when we asked for help with this? When democrats controlled both houses of Congress, the issue wasn’t solved. When republicans controlled both houses, the issue wasn’t solved.

Meanwhile, back in your inner city neighborhood, party politics is something that comes to the neighborhood every four years when the democrats remember their “base”.

In-between elections its business as usual: corporate interest. Screw the poor. Screw the middle class.

Let them eat the hearing on John Roberts, who will represent a supreme court so far removed from the plight of the working poor in this country that issues concerning them aren’t even asked during the “hearing” for the next chief justice, and we watch as though there really is a question as to how the corporate owned congress will vote on Roberts.

If you asked an evacuee from the 9th ward as to whether NARAL or LBGT groups should have a say in party politics, you might get that if looks could kill look that I got convasing last spring in the Iberville Housing Complex, encouraging people to vote. “You know what happened in the last election”, was the response I got.

They know they are forgotten, they know no one really cares about their plight, they know that when the headlines move on to other more compelling stories, like they already are, they know they will be left on their own as they have been, well, possibly throughout the history of our american government.

Party politics? Don’t ask me for a handout. My pockets are turned out and my attention turned elsewhere, which probably means you may not even see or hear me. I’m invisible, in an invisible world, like the forgotten ones.

Raw Story reports that Kenyon International, hired to retrieve bodies in New Orleans, has been implicated in a body dumping scandal in Florida.

Governor Blanco has signed the contract with Kenyon after talks broke down between Kenyon and FEMA, according to Raw Story.

My view is Blanco is completely ignorant of these allegations. FEMA and Chertoff aren’t. Anyone doubt now whether the body count will be skewed?

Update [2005-9-15 9:55:8 by duranta]:this from Bravo4/11: “Malcolm Gillis, who serves on the board of SCI, also serves on the board of Halliburton.”