New Orleans - CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

Written September 1, 2005.

Where to begin:

The total lack of preparation put into place KNOWING that this was a potentially devastating hurricane. The lack of a response when this is a "worst case scenario" that people have predicted and tried to secure federal funding to prevent. Who bears responsibility? Who must show accountability? Justice?

I believe that if these people were other than who they are (the "surplus" they are perceived to be perhaps by the majority of this country) every possible resource would be mobilized for their evacuation, for intensified search and rescue, for medical assistance. Bodies would be attended to, medical workers parachuted into the Superdome to assist those in dire need. There would be no end to the disaster assistance if this was say, Denver, and not New Orleans.

The callousness with which so much of the reporting is being done. The ways that the media sees criminality and not resourcefulness or survival strategies where black and poor people are concerned. Black people knocking on car windows asking for help become car-jackers, black people who know themselves to have been abandoned who take much needed food, water, diapers, medicine become looters and are denied the status of either victims or survivors.

Again the poor are blamed for being poor. There is no body count, people continue to die, and those who survive are increasingly being derided as animals because they dared to survive that which they were never meant to.