Katrina's aftermath

Well, yeah, if you want to completely remove the context in which I said this, sure. Like I said before, the only man to equate it with stupidity at any time was hstencil, and hey, whatever. He's probably under some duress right now and if so, I probably was a conduit for him to get out some of his emotion tonight. I can't get that heated over it. Its basically like being thrown a "How often do you beat your kids/wife?" type question.

i think "does your mom know you're gay?" is the chestnut you're actually looking for here.

anyhow, you don't allow that anything you've said on this thread is in any way insensitive? really?

(I know Adam's posted... is there anyone else on the bitch from NO?)

yeah, the CNN chick did the "toxic gumbo" phrase

i think "does your mom know you're gay?" is the chestnut you're actually looking for here.<

I can go with the latter. In either case, I certainly didn't make that an intended effort, and I think that's prety obvious.

>anyhow, you don't allow that anything you've said on this thread is in any way insensitive? really?<

I thought about this for a moment. I suppose it perhaps is to some people. I accept that fact. After all, I can't expect to know what are the triggers for all people. By the same token, I'm as inquisitive and yearning for knowledge as anyone else. Matter of fact, my entrance into that argument was merely a reply to a previous poster. Perhaps I was insensitve. For that I apologize to anyone was offended, but I only do so to a point. Frankly, a lot of the shots I've taken are from people that have hardly taken a high or classy road through this thread. To them, there's not much of an apology at all.

The thread has quieted down now. We can get back to the business of keeping the information going.

I don't think anyone has seen him post or heard from him yet. Uptown, which is where I think he was fromm was pretty dry until last night. Some water came in then, but I don't think its ever gone beyond the point of being say, ankle deep. The biggest issue there has been looting, and hopefully he's been able to stay away from than.

"They bought their ticket, they knew what they were getting into. I say, LET 'em crash!"

It's kinda interesting to see how many forms the "they're poor by choice, so fuggim'" argument can take.

I never did any such thing, you fucking idiot. FUCK OFF.

note that many of the ads have a "*****KATRINA VICTIMS ONLY*****" tag, either in the header or in the body. I wonder how much identity fraud is going to happen.

My friend Tony and I spoke at work back on Sunday about looting; We were astonished that no one had really started to yet. Logically, all the electricity is going to be cut off, everything is going to flood, and the tapes are all going to be destroyed. If you're poor, and you're stuck in your home for what sounds to be perhaps the next month and a half, without any chance of even GOING OUTSIDE, yeah, big surprise that there is looting.

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), August 30th, 2005 2:36 PM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

>that's not going to happen. the coast guard is going to rescue and evacuate as many people as it can, and the ones who aren't rescued will die.<

Well, consider that as part of the looters vision. Shit, if you're gonna die, might as well get some stuff first. I know that if I was going to die, and I was trapped in a house surrounded by sewage, gas, and oil, running through some increasingly deep water for some free smokes and some nice clothes to die in wouldn't be such a horrible idea. Not like anyone is going to miss it.

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), August 30th, 2005 2:47 PM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

Everyone was OTM when they called New Orleans the Bangladesh of America for like, I dunno, the last 20 years up to about 2 hours ago. They should have stayed with that.

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), August 30th, 2005 3:17 PM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

But they chose to spend their money elsewhere as well. Who built the Superdome? There's some sense of self responsibility as well here, seeing as they live there.

>SELA was started 10 years ago. something was done.<

"started". So no one realized until 1995 that maybe, just maybe, a big city filled with people all under the sea level that existed solely because there were pumps and levees might be in trouble in case it has a hurricane?

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), August 31st, 2005 11:42 PM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

It was spread across every media outlet. TV, radio, print. The only way to miss it would be to have been blind and deaf; basically someone in a coma or a lower state of consciousness…

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), September 1st, 2005 9:56 PM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

>HELLO most folks were TOO FUCKING POOR TO LEAVE! <

Lots of people were too poor to leave or own vehicles, but if you own a house, you have a car and you can go. I've yet to hear a single family pulled from a home today say "well, we just couldn't leave because we don't have the money". Honestly now: do you believe that New Orleans is so poor that 10-20% of its citizens are completely incapable of transporting themselves or finding transportation from others out of the city? That they're so completely impoverished, that they only have access to their local neighborhood?

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), September 1st, 2005 10:02 PM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

There are people that don't own TVs OR radios OR have access to newspapers OR have neighbors and family members to tell them to get out? Where are these people living in America? Especially in a huge urban enviroment like New Orleans?

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), September 1st, 2005 10:10 PM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

>there are people who are extremely poor and don't have complete media access. and maybe they only know similar people.<

In a city? I call bullshit. The only people living completely off the grid in this country (at least the vast majority of them) are doing so in highly rural areas, and even they have communication equipment of some kind. The number of people without a transistor radio in the US is in the fractions of 1 percent, and somewhere around 95% of all households own a TV. If these people are taking a bus to work, they're going to hear the call for evacuation from the Emergency Preparedness System that, in the state of Louisiana, like ALL states, has to provide information regarding evacuation once such an order is issued, somewhere, at some time. I wouldn't be surprised to know that there were cops driving down the street telling people to leave their homes either, and giving people information to go to the Superdome or elsewhere, especially since BUSES were set up to bring people there.

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), September 1st, 2005 10:20 PM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

Of course, its more realistic to imagine that virtually everyone who stayed (about a quarter of the population) is too poor to afford a vehicle and too socially inept to have any contact with family or friends in the area who could transport them out. But please, go on and mock actual facts over wild speculation, because god knows its the more sensible thing to do.

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), September 1st, 2005 11:47 PM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

I'm sorry. I should just blame the Louisiana government for not being able to get everyone out in time and keeping everyone stupid, because that was clearly their intention. I'll buy that 60% of that remaining 300,000 were there because they were too poor to get out, but no more than that.

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), September 1st, 2005 12:14 AM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

If you want to believe that every single poor person in the city of New Orleans couldn't get out because they lacked the means to, plus about 10-15% over the poverty line, that's fine with me. Believe whatever you'd like.

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), September 1st, 2005 12:20 AM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

>so all who remained in New Orleans were stupid.<

That's a fantastic strawman to come up with and throw at me.

Of course not. Probably a good percentage were though. Probably near half. I'm not stupid. I saw the people lining up into the Superdome just like everyone else.

-- Alan Conceicao (deadandrestles...), September 1st, 2005 12:23 AM. (Alan Conceicao) (later)

even if the people who responded were legit katrina victims, i'm not trusting enough to let strangers into my home and i wonder if the folks who are are thinking it through.

oh, a moment of levity on an other horrid day. what was the going rate per gallon at your station, blount?

say, to go along wiht something Tombot mentioned yesterday, if/when we finally do hit recession next year, they now have another excuse why it happened("that dad-blamed hurricane's fault!")

it was this way in nyc too. some people were back to work by the 12th; nearly everyone who had an office to go to was back to work by the 13th. life as we were used to it was fucked up for a little while but we managed to get on with things. all told, most of our inconveniences were pretty minor.

ha! that's a great visual -- get a picture if you can.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9133876/displaymode/1107/s/1/framenumber/10/var1/btn_9

the coverage of this event, at least on basic channels (which is all I've got) has been infuriating to me, here in L.A. After 9/11 there was a solid week of coverage, with little else in the way of programming. here, the news remains a half-hour long, Oprah is giving makeovers, and other than a show like Nightline, there's nothing more than a lot of furrowed brows and shaking heads from the newscasters: "So awful, hmm. Now Rob Fukazaki with sports!"

I'm not sure anyone understands the scope of it. No one I know has brought the topic up in conversation. I've brought it up, but it seems like a bit of unpleasantness that no one has much to say about, as opposed to 9/11, where everyone I knew busted out their old security blankets and stayed in lockdown for three days, glued to the TV set.

NO VOTE FOR YOU: NEW ORLEANS. According to Barbara Arnwine, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee on Civil Rights, not a single vote has been counted in 40 precincts throughout New Orleans. On a conference call to reporters, Ms. Arnwine just said that all the electronic machines in those precincts have broken down.

and

In summary, what I saw today (the Election Day) in Louisiana, the state that is supposed to go for George Bush, is a very encouraging sign for Kerry-Edwards ticket. A high turnout amongst the minorities and college kids may favor Kerry-Edwards ticket. We will never know how many crossover votes will come to Kerry-Edwards’ side. However, if minority and core democratic voters along with freshly registered voters would cast their votes, then the ideologue president, George Bush would become a one-term president. That is my thought on the Election Day.

strange... it's all anyone i know can talk about. but my friends and relatives are news junkies.

9-27-04
Is John Kerry Taking the Black Vote for Granted? (Of Course, He Is)
By Mike Davis

Mr. Davis is the author of Dead Cities: And Other Tales as well as Ecology of Fear and co-author of Under the Perfect Sun: the San Diego Tourists Never See, among other books.

--

The evacuation of New Orleans in the face of Hurricane Ivan looked sinisterly like Strom Thurmond's version of the Rapture. Affluent white people fled the Big Easy in their SUVs, while the old and car-less -- mainly Black -- were left behind in their below-sea-level shotgun shacks and aging tenements to face the watery wrath.

New Orleans had spent decades preparing for inevitable submersion by the storm surge of a class-five hurricane. Civil defense officials conceded they had ten thousand body bags on hand to deal with the worst-case scenario. But no one seemed to have bothered to devise a plan to evacuate the city's poorest or most infirm residents. The day before the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast, New Orlean's daily, the Times-Picayune, ran an alarming story about the "large group…mostly concentrated in poorer neighborhoods" who wanted to evacuate but couldn't.

Only at the last moment, with winds churning Lake Pontchartrain, did Mayor Ray Nagin reluctantly open the Louisiana Superdome and a few schools to desperate residents. He was reportedly worried that lower-class refugees might damage or graffiti the Superdome.

In the event, Ivan the Terrible spared New Orleans, but official callousness toward poor Black folk endures.

Over the last generation, City Hall and its entourage of powerful developers have relentlessly attempted to push the poorest segment of the population -- blamed for the city's high crime rates -- across the Mississippi river. Historic Black public-housing projects have been razed to make room for upper-income townhouses and a Wal-Mart. In other housing projects, residents are routinely evicted for offenses as trivial as their children's curfew violations. The ultimate goal seems to be a tourist theme-park New Orleans -- one big Garden District -- with chronic poverty hidden away in bayous, trailer parks and prisons outside the city limits.

But New Orleans isn't the only the case-study in what Nixonians once called "the politics of benign neglect." In Los Angeles, county supervisors have just announced the closure of the trauma center at Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital near Watts. The hospital, located in the epicenter of LA's gang wars, is one of the nation's busiest centers for the treatment of gunshot wounds. The loss of its ER, according to paramedics, could "add as much as 30 minutes in transport time to other facilities."

The result, almost certainly, will be a spate of avoidable deaths. But then again the victims will be Black or Brown and poor.

On the fiftieth anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the United States seems to have returned to degree zero of moral concern for the majority of descendants of slavery and segregation. Whether the Black poor live or die seems to merit only haughty disinterest and indifference. Indeed, in terms of the life-and-death issues that matter most to African-Americans -- structural unemployment, race-based super-incarceration, police brutality, disappearing affirmative action programs, and failing schools -- the present presidential election might as well be taking place in the 1920s.

But not all the blame can be assigned to the current occupant of the former slave-owners' mansion at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue. The mayor of New Orleans, for example, is a Black Democrat, and Los Angeles County is a famously Democratic bastion. No, the political invisibility of people of color is a strictly bipartisan endeavor. On the Democratic side, it is the culmination of the long crusade waged by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) to exorcise the specter of the 1980s Rainbow Coalition.

The DLC, of course, has long yearned to bring white guys and fat cats back to a Nixonized Democratic Party. Arguing that race had fatally divided Democrats, the DLC has tried to bleach the Party by marginalizing civil rights agendas and Black leadership. African-Americans, it is cynically assumed, will remain loyal to the Democrats regardless of the treasons committed against them. They are, in effect, hostages.

Thus the sordid spectacle -- portrayed in Fahrenheit 9/11 -- of white Democratic senators refusing to raise a single hand in support of the Black Congressional Caucus's courageous challenge to the stolen election of November 2000.

The Kerry campaign, meanwhile, steers a straight DLC course toward oblivion. No Democratic presidential candidate since Eugene McCarthy's run in 1968 has shown such patrician disdain for the Democrats' most loyal and fundamental social base. While Condoleezza Rice hovers, a tight-lipped and constant presence at Dubya's side, the highest ranking, self-proclaimed "African American" in the Kerry camp is Teresa Heinz ((born and raised in white-colonial privilege).

This crude joke has been compounded by Kerry's semi-suicidal reluctance to mobilize Black voters. As Rainbow Coalition veterans like Ron Waters have bitterly pointed out, Kerry has been absolutely churlish about financing voter registration drives in African-American communities. Ralph Nader -- I fear -- was cruelly accurate when he warned recently that "the Democrats do not win when they do not have Jesse Jackson and African Americans in the core of the campaign."

In truth, Kerry, the erstwhile war hero, is running away as hard as he can from the sound of the cannons, whether in Iraq or in America's equally ravaged inner cities. The urgent domestic issue, of course, is unspeakable socio-economic inequality, newly deepened by fiscal plunder and catastrophic plant closures. But inequality still has a predominant color, or, rather, colors: black and brown.

Kerry's apathetic and uncharismatic attitude toward people of color will not be repaired by last-minute speeches or campaign staff appointments. Nor will it be compensated for by his super-ardent efforts to woo Reagan Democrats and white males with war stories from the ancient Mekong Delta.

A party that in every real and figurative sense refuses to shelter the poor in a hurricane is unlikely to mobilize the moral passion necessary to overthrow George Bush, the most hated man on earth.

This article first appeared on www.tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate sources, news and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, a long time editor in publishing, the author of The End of Victory Culture, and a fellow of the Nation Institute.

yeah, i'm hoping they didn't catch it as bad as Biloxi/Gulfport.

Alright, so its obvious you have an agenda because I felt like, say, waiting for a moment of clarity before rushing to blame and to politicize the issue. Fine.

>so all who remained in New Orleans were stupid.<

That? Wasn't me. And its the closest thing you seem to have to "prove" that I had any intention of running down these people. Matter of fact, looking back, I don't even know what the alternate viewpoint to mine was, other than perhaps "everyone in New Orleans is there because were incapable of leaving," and I'm not sure how that's any less speculatory than my opinion (that large groups of people who could have left stayed). But perhaps I shouldn't speculate/reply to other's speculation or think about the disaster(unless of course, I want to dicuss rising gas prices, compare it to a nuclear bomb going off, blame the president, or wonder what book/album cover best represents the tragedy).

One of my friends is down in New Orleans, as his National Guard unit was activated for the emergency. I'm trying to get in contact with him.

This morning i'm bringing my parents from the BR airport into the hills of Tangipahoa Parish to see if the house is still standing. (Their car is stuck at the airport in New Orleans.)There won't be power in that area possibly for 6 to 8 weeks, but if the house is still standing, no big deal.

Unfortunately, I cannot offer a place to stay, as our apartment is little more than a monk's cell. My parents are hesitant even to try to stay here, but we shall see.

Is there anything else i can do? Call anyone?

anyhow,

white shoe polish. if it helps to picture me as gomer pyle right now go right ahead.

actually, that's not the fictional character i think of

http://terminus.powerblogs.com/files/terminus-clerks.jpg
(i can't find a graphic of "I ASSURE YOU WE'RE OPEN")

I mentioned this on another thread, but it looks like thankfully most of my friends and acquaintances in the N.O. music scene are safe, having either evacuated or (more disturbingly) stayed in 4th floor or higher apartments and hotels. One musician from the H0t 8 Brass Band is missing and one is in the New Orleans Parish Prison.

My band is in the process of putting together a benefit show to raise some money and send some instruments out to New Orleans musicians who had to leave theirs behind, I'll post the details on ILX when it's confirmed.

“This isn’t like having two feet of water in your basement,” she said, holding back tears. “Everything is destroyed. I am just so lucky to have been born here and to have had the experience of New Orleans."

Jamal said he will move his family to Texas as a result of this disaster.

The buses filled with refugees enroute to the Astrodome in Houston from the Louisiana Superdome have been suspended for unknown reasons, CNN is reporting this morning.