Lessons from Katrina, Rita and Beyond
San Francisco Bay View, Commentary, Mumia Abu Jamal, Posted: Nov 18, 2005
With the passage of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and their grim, terrible aftermath come lessons that we all should heed.
The winds and waters of nature have washed things up from the murky depths, things we may've not wanted to see but which we cannot now ignore. Things about race, things about wealth, things about power and things about "national security."
Years after 9-11 and after billions of bucks have been spread like mulch over spring's earth, we learn that "national security" is a political slogan - empty words like "war on poverty," or should I say "war on terrorism"? They are words spun by politicians, devised by their PR masters, to sooth American anxieties like babies put to bed at night.
For, what is a nation if not its people? The tens and thousands of people, poor people, Black and white, Latino and Vietnamese, who suffered through the floodings, the hunger, the dread and despair - are they not part of the nation?
If the response of government is any indication, they are all but expendable. To the rulers, their only value is as cannon fodder.
Who couldn't be but struck by George W. Bush's first post-Katrina comments, about oil supplies?
What can we learn from the comments of Barbara Bush, who, referring to the beleaguered evacuees at the Astrodome, said, "So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working well for them." When I read her comments, it seemed an echo of the French Empress, Marie Antoinette, who, hearing of the French people starving for bread, replied, "Let them eat cake!"
"The rich," it's been said, "aren't like you and me."
A private intelligence firm headquartered in Louisiana likened Katrina to a nuclear bomb-blast, without the death. That's because, after its coming, a city was gone.
From Rita we learn what evacuation entails. If people are stuck, virtually motionless, for 10 hours on the highway, running out of gas while the car essentially idles and the air conditioning runs, and are still within the city limits, can we really call that an evacuation?
If a nuclear blast did strike, say, Houston or Beaumont, Texas, the road out would've been little more than a death trap, similar to the highway of death that spelled the last tortured minutes of retreating Iraqi troops during the first Gulf War.
Americans are fierce individualists, who look at their neighbors with envy and ill-disguised suspicion. Their love affairs with their cars and the gas-guzzling culture that has grown around it makes them more, not less, vulnerable.
For the poor, there isn't even mass transit; there is no transit.
People are taxed and taxed and taxed again, and when the government fails to protect their lives, health and property, they ask for donations!
Has the last few disasters made you feel more, or less, safe?
If you heard that FEMA or the Department of Homeland Security had plans in place for your city, would you really believe it? Have these last few disasters deepened or shattered your faith in the government?
It's time for questions. It's time for answers.
Do you really trust those people who speak in your name, when they intone, "The American People?" Don't you long for something else - something better?
Well, what's really stopping you from working to build a better, more human, saner way? Nothing - but you.
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