First things first, the people of New Orleans deserve a little something to celebrate. Given their rich history of Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras and The Big Easy, this otherwise festive city has now been licking its wounds from Hurricane Katrina for the past year. On Monday night, the New Orleans Saints trounced their regional rivals the Atlanta Falcons in a glorious return to the now-infamous Superdome and gave the recuperating residents of their hometown something to cheer about.
Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent to restore the Superdome after tens of thousands of people took refuge and eagerly awaited the assistance of dawdling government agencies there during and after the storm. Let us never forget the faces of victims starving to death and perishing due to lack of medical care and a proper evacuation in this monument to hyper-capitalized, corporate sponsored athletics.
After the relatively quick turn-around for the Superdome, we can turn to more practical pursuits regarding the relocation of citizens displaced by the destruction of their homes and the nature of the rebuilding process and what this means to those who squalored in already sub-standard housing (public and otherwise) in intensely segregated (by race and income) neighborhoods.
I have been lucky enough to catch a few clips of Spike Lee's HBO documentary "When The Levees Broke" and I was served with a stark reminder of how despicable the handling of the disaster really was. If you haven't seen the documentary, please take the time to do so and you will see how Lee captures the essence of a monumental event in our nation's history. He depicts how many of the network news agencies began referring to those holed up in the Superdome and escaping out of Orleans Parish as "refugees," as if somehow these people who are American citizens on any other day had had their citizenship washed away along with their homes. At best they were internally displaced persons who had not been forced out of their country (like a real refugee) but had been displaced within it. But why the media saw fit to key in on "looters" who stole simply to survive and keep their families alive and "refugees" who work hard, pay their taxes, but simply weren't wealthy enough to evacuate is beyond me. Compounding the anguish of the situation with the use of such offensive and wildly inaccurate terms is totally inexcusable. Make no mistake, we'd all be looters and refugees under the same circumstances.
Coming to the defense of the media though, there were times when the raw emotion of the situation did shine through and many of the characteristically unfeeling anchors and correspondents began to let their humanity shine through in the ways that they questioned government officials and the decisions being made to ameliorate the situation.
Shepard Smith of Fox News literally screamed back at the studio anchor that the National Guard was physically barring people from crossing the only roadway left connecting Orleans Parish with Jefferson Parish. The differences between Orleans Parish and Jefferson Parish at the time of this "death quarantine" were food, water, electricity, medical supplies and dry land.
Geraldo Rivera reported from the convention center in the city about how thousands upon thousands of people had been effectively locked into such places and not provided with any subsequent assistance for days. At one point, he picked up a small 15-month-old baby, and both he and the baby started to weep as he described the filthy conditions in which people were forced to remain by the government.
And in a particularly memorable exchange, Anderson Cooper of CNN rose to action after listening to Sen. Mary Landrieu extend thanks to various government officials for their words of support, budget allocations and sympathy and said (paraphrasing): "Senator, I've been down here watching bodies lying on streets getting eaten by rats for the past four days, so forgive me if I say that people get a little upset around here when they see such things happening while government officials pat each other on the back and congratulate each other for doing a great job."
Cooper completely uncovered the power dynamics and the hypocrisy at play in this particular disaster. President
Bush clearly took his cues from Landrieu by famously declaring to his Arabian horse judge/college frat buddy/FEMA director, "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job." This incredibly oblivious depiction of the performance of his emergency managers is indicative of a larger and much more frightening trend taking place within the Bush administration and conservative doctrine regarding the operation of government.
Let us take into account the fact that the potential ramifications of such a storm on the area were not news to anyone. Government officials at all levels were well aware of the possibilities, regardless of whether or not the area itself was prepared for them. The most striking example of this comes from a New Orleans Times-Picayune article from June 2002 titled "The Big One," which vividly paints a foreboding picture of what would actually transpire three years later.
"A stronger storm on a slightly different course . could have realized emergency officials' worst-case scenario: hundreds of billions of gallons of lake water pouring over the levees into an area averaging five feet below sea level with no natural means of drainage.
"Hundreds of thousands would be left homeless, and it would take months to dry out the area and begin to make it livable. But there wouldn't be much for residents to come home to. The local economy would be in ruins.
"The scene has been played out for years in computer models and emergency-operations simulations. Officials at the local, state and national level are convinced the risk is genuine and are devising plans for alleviating the aftermath of a disaster that could leave the city uninhabitable for six months or more. The Army Corps of Engineers has begun a study to see whether the levees should be raised to counter the threat. But officials say that right now, nothing can stop 'the big one.'
"The projected death and destruction eclipse almost any other natural disaster that people paid to think about catastrophes can dream up."
Unfortunately, no one in the government listened to the warnings. And if they did, their actions surely did not match any intentions they may have had about preventing such a catastrophe.
At the time of Katrina, I was studying in Nairobi, Kenya, and would at times find myself awestruck by the similarities between the images I encountered in some of the world's most destitute slums (such as Kibera in Nairobi) and those being beamed from New Orleans during the crisis. You can extrapolate what you will from that, but know that both race and class are deeply intertwined as underlying reasons behind why these images were so similar. Moving past this surface observation, I began to ask myself some deeper questions about the root causes of the government's lackadaisical response to the urgent needs of its most vulnerable people.
I asked myself what happens when people who fundamentally disavow the natural responsibility of the government to protect the common welfare of its people try to govern? It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. People who purport to believe in "limited government" easily and naturally limit what the government is able to do and how the government is able to empower people and mobilize resources. When the government fails due to these limitations placed upon it, they sit back and say, "See, we told you it doesn't work." These people are so busy catering to their warped philosophies about "starving the beast" and "drowning the Leviathan" that they consistently and disastrously fail to render government resources for those who desperately need them only to blame it all on some alleged inherent ineptitude in the provision of government services. A government is only as good as those who administer it. We cannot ever expect this government to be efficient nor effective when the administrators fundamentally disagree with the concept of administration for the broader public benefit!
So we celebrate this humble milestone for the city of New Orleans with cautious optimism and we remind ourselves to be wary of the irresponsible ideology that got us to this point in the first place. Times are still tough down there and this time the local heroes pulled through for the community. But unless we eviscerate the dangerous, every-man-for-himself philosophy that many of our current leaders espouse, we will witness plenty more occasions, like Katrina, where the saints will not come marching in.
Paul Perry is a senior in the School of International Service
and a liberal columnist for The Eagle.
