New Orleans

[dreamer_easy]

With her permission: here's an email written by Lloyd Rose, full of anger, common sense, and compassion.

Thanks for sending me this. Hysterical panicked rumors are going to spread; I don't think this will ever not happen. Pulling out the old white defense cliches, if it had been a bunch of rednecks washed out and still in the city, I think the reaction would have been the same. What is vile is the way the panic was played to and the local news ignored. Gee, was there some looting? In the middle of a natural catastrophe of unprecedented scope? Oh golly. It was pretty clear, at least to me, that what looting was going on (and I won't even comment on anyone who called taking food looting) was no more than what you'd expect. Yeah, people broke into stores and unprotected houses. I don't like or approve of it and would be enraged if it happened to me, but it comes with the territory of disaster. (There was some minor looting after 9/11, but that was a totally different shock-all-at-once thing and didn't keep happening for days, so there wasn't much..) I don't know what exactly happened at the Convention Center--it seems to have been more dangerous than the Superbowl--but I'm not believing any of it til I see evidence, if only because of rumor's pernicious power. What seems to me extraordinary--and no one has fucking written about this--is that you had tens of thousands of people in the Superbowl under appalling, disgusting conditions and. . . there were no murders! (Or maybe one--I don't know where the one killing took place.) There were relatively few beatings. I don't know how much is true about the rapes. There was no riot. There was no panic. No one got trampled. Jesus Christ, doesn't anyone realize how remarkable this was for a trapped and suffering group of human beings to behave? At the least, it's an astonishing display of stoicism.

But no, let's go for the ugliness. The day that Rita overtopped a levee before there was an actual breach, reporters on CNN were bullying Army Core of Engineers guys to get them to say it was a breach, which is a whole different level of disaster. "I think we're talking about semantics here," one reporter sniffed. "Breach, overtoppping--sounds like the same thing." They wanted disaster. They want tens of thousands dead (though that particular exagerration began with [Mayor] Nagin), which after a few days was clearly not the case. My guess now is that maybe the death in the city will top 1000. Maybe. They want a black populace driven mad at last by their horrible treatment at the hands of this society (lefty version) or reverting to their true natures in reaction to a problem they caused themselves by not leaving (rightwing view). Let's have the extremes and the worst. Let's go for the victims and ignore the thousands of ordinary 9th ward folks who with great difficulty and courage got themselves and their families to safety, and often rescued others. Just because they're 95% of the people doesn't mean any attention should be paid to them.

Oh forget it, I could go on and on. It makes me sick to think about it.

Comments

[ashamel.livejournal.com]

Have you seen this: http://www.livejournal.com/users/bradhicks/181952.html

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Powerful stuff.