5th Anniversary of Katrina Today
Five years ago this morning, August 29, 2010, Hurricane Katrina hit just east of New Orleans.
Five years later, we still don’t feel like we’re really part of the United States. We don’t seem to fit into the rest of the country. We feel taken for granted and then forgotten. Then we get remembered and hope returns for awhile.
This is one of the worst things I have gone through in my life. It has left me with some serious mental and emotional scars, and a great deal of anxiety, especially when a storm is brewing that may make it’s way to us.
Rachel Maddow sums it up so well in the following clip from the end of her show’s two day coverage of the 5th anniversary:
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I’m still angry that in 21st century America, a catastrophic disaster led to anarchy. Those who could help stood by doing nothing for way too long. Those who were powerless were left to die, or fight for their own survival, hoping not to get shot trying to get food and drink from closed stores. Those who tried to cross the bridge to the west bank, to dry land, were turned back by men with guns who were unwilling to share at the expense of human lives. Not only were the New Orleans poor treated as second-class citizens, they were expendable. It didn’t matter enough to those who could change the situation to do so before lives were needlessly lost.
The fact is, we are still surviving. We still have a long way to go before we are back to pre-Katrina levels of business, tourism, population, public housing, bus service, public schools, Charity hospital and other health care for the poor, etc. New Orleans was a poor city and it is still a poor city today. It still has the same problems it did before the storm.
I’m angry about the city counsel deciding (pushed by the Bush Administration) it was time to socially re-engineer the New Orleans population. The poor, mostly black population wasn’t welcome to return because Bush thought social programs cost too much and should be eliminated in the new, re-engineered city. It didn’t work. Crime is still high.
Interview with James Perry, GNO Fair Housing Action Center:
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Tracy Washington of the Louisiana Justice Institute had to sue to get public schools reopened:
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The New Orleans justice system completely broke down and prisoners were left to drown in the prison. Things here are a magnification of what the rest of the country is or will go through. This is a fight for American democracy. Interview with Billy Sothern, author of Down in New Orleans:
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Old school radio was the only means of communication. It was a life-line for weeks. Garland Robinette on WWL-AM radio:
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New Orleans is part of America.
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Flood Protection Update
Katrina is the worst natural disaster in American history to date.
But the New Orleans flood was not a natural disaster. It was man-made. The Army Corp of Engineers under-engineered, falsified data, and ignored the facts of the real dangers of the levee system. The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) shipping channel funneled storm surge directly into the city.
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Please see my related article: Why Wetlands Are So Important
Interview with Dr. Ivor van Heerden, author of The Storm, about MRGO and flood protection:
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When will New Orleans be fully recovered? I don’t know. I hope by the 10th anniversary we will be talking about all the new things that were built to solve our problems, help the poor have real opportunities and an affordable life, and protect us well from future storms.
It is very heartening to see that there are strong people working on public housing, public schools, fighting for buses and public transportation and reopening the Charity hospital system. It is also heartening that there are people who are working to get the poor a living wage and restore the services they need so badly.
I know we’re making progress. It remains to be seen whether the new flood protection systems will protect the city and rebuild the wetlands. We must restore our barrier islands and rebuild our wetlands, and it must be done fast.
If we don’t rebuild our wetlands, New Orleans may not be here by the end of this century. The coastline may be as far north as Baton Rouge by then. We can no longer wait for progress. We must fight for it and do it before it is too late for New Orleans and the rest of southeast Louisiana.
Acknowledgment:
I’d like to thank Rachel Maddow and The Rachel Maddow Show on both MSNBC and Air America Radio for continuing to cover the Katrina disaster for the past 5 years, and for keeping us in the national news. This 5th anniversary update is invaluable in nailing down the real story and the progress we have and haven’t made.
Rachel, as far as I’m concerned, you are a full, native resident of the Who Dat Nation. Come and see us any time. You and your crew are always welcome.
Filed under: Accountability and Justice, Environment, Lessons & Analysis, Science, Stories, Videos
[...] Hurricane Katrina Pictures 5th Anniversary of Katrina Today Five years ago this morning, August 29, 2010, Hurricane Katrina hit just east of New Orleans. Five years later, we still don’t feel like we’re really part of the United States. We don’t seem to fit into the rest of the country. …Continued [...]
Bullock Opens New Orleans Health Clinic…
Sandra Bullock has marked the fifth anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina disaster by helping to open a free medical and dental clinic at a local high school in New Orleans, Louisiana.The Oscar winner joined politicians, educators and school supporters …
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Sherri Joubert, Jason Ramirez . Jason Ramirez said: RT @joubess 5th Anniversary of Katrina Today http://bit.ly/b67Exf god bless the people of New Orleans!! [...]
Over here in the UK, they showed a documentary on the disaster this week and the devastation is huge.
I really don’t understand why the USA has taken so long to respond and make some positive change.
Andrew
Andrew @ Blogging Guide´s last [type] ..Tips For Outsourcing Properly And Successfully
amazing info you provide via your blog. Your posts are superb! New Orleans has had problems for years and Katrina revealed them. The poor were/are exploited. Politicians on the local, state and national level showed their disdain for the underclass by not protecting the place where they lived adequately and not coming to their aid in an emergency. For the same reasons we did not aid the Rwandans in their crisis, we did not aid the residents of New Orleans – helping them was not in “the national interest”.
Bruce´s last [type] ..Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-29
Andrew,
I hate to say it, but the reason it’s taking so long to recover is New Orleans and its mixed-races, heavy European culture, and poor people that have been poor for generations are only valued by other Americans as a nice place to visit. Visitors have no idea what it takes to run and maintain a city that thrives on tourism and a state that thrives on fishing and seafood, oil, chemicals and shipping.
What makes us thrive is tied directly to our wetlands and the bad decisions that were made since the 1930′s about destroying the wetlands. To continue to provide oil and gas, seafood and hurricane protection, we’ve got to restore our wetlands as fast as we can. Eventually, without those wetlands, the coastline will come up all the way to Baton Rouge in about a century. New Orleans may still be there, but it will be a city inside a concrete bowl sitting out in a large body of water. To get there, we’ll have to take bridges, elevated trains, or fly.
The poor population is mainly of African and Caribbean descent, in other words, former slaves. The Bush 43 Administration didn’t care about New Orleans and her poor because, frankly, they don’t contribute to Republicans and they have a lower tendency to vote. They have no political power. They also are quickly and easily forgotten, even though they clean our hotels, cook our meals, wait our tables, bus our tables and wash our dishes, wash our commercial laundry and work in many unseen domestic jobs better-off Americans no longer feel they need to do themselves.
President Bush dismantled FEMA, and put his friend, Brownie, in charge. Brownie had no idea what he was doing and his agency was in shambles so no one else knew what they were doing either. FEMA was a major disaster away from falling apart, and Katrina was what did it.
Poor people’s subsidized housing was torn down and isn’t being rebuilt fast enough. New Orleans no longer has a bus system. The bus system was used by everyone, not just the poor. But for many poor people the bus system allowed them cheap, reliable transportation to and from work, and everywhere else they needed to go. We didn’t have school buses. If you wanted to take a bus to school, you caught the city bus. Buses took office workers directly into the central business district and cut way down on traffic. You could take a bus or drive to a pick-up area or ferry landing, then catch a CBD bus or take a ferry across the river and catch a CBD bus to get just about anywhere in town pretty fast.
When I lived in New Orleans, I didn’t drive downtown unless I was forced to by time constraints. I took buses, ferries and trolley cars where ever I could. Depending on where you were going, you could also walk. Not only was driving a pain, parking was a bigger and very expensive pain.
We still have a ton of work to do, and I was happy to see President Obama visit New Orleans on Aug. 29 with his family, meet with people in poor neighborhoods, give extensive interviews, and eat at a local po-boy shop. They got no special treatment it seems. When his order was ready, they hollered “Barack, order up” and he had to go and get it himself. That was probably by his request because the Secret Service would wait on them hand and foot if allowed. It cracks me up that President Obama goes by “Barack” whenever he can avoid being called Mr. President. The only people who probably got to call George W. Bush “George” were his wife, parents and siblings. His parents actually called him Junior.
President Bush never showed up on anniversaries, spent money in the city, put resources on dealing with the plight of the poor or reassured anyone that anything would get done. I’m seeing President Obama here a lot for both New Orleans and the BP oil leak, and he is providing help when the previous administration did nothing but stand in the way of progress.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
Sherri
Bruce,
Thank you!
I couldn’t agree with you more. Katrina revealed the plight of the poor in New Orleans, and thus, the rest of the United States. We have a severe problem with poverty here for the richest country in the world. We could do something about it for less than 4 months of the cost of the Iraq war by providing better safety nets and subsidies, but the upper class, especially in the Senate, seem to outright hate the poor. They sure seem to hate the unemployed about as much. They refuse to do anything to help and block everything they can. Why such a large part of the population isn’t in “the national interest” is beyond ridiculous.
There are a lot more poor than rich, and if the poor ever organized, the rich would have their hands full with a big problem of who would do all the crap they won’t do themselves. In fact, what made America what it was post World War II were labor unions, and the minimum wage was a living wage. There wasn’t such a big income difference between the CEO of a company and the lowest-paid worker. The CEO made about 5-15 times that of the lowest paid worker. Now, CEO’s and other executives make 100-500 times what the lowest paid worker makes, and probably more.
The country is way out of balance, and unless we do something to re-balance it, the country will be in for a long recession and a bleak future. Letting the Bush tax cuts expire to the richest 2-3% of the population will help a lot, and I hope no one caves on that. If they renew those particular tax cuts, it will add $800 billion to the budget deficit immediately. Spending isn’t okay, until it’s to protect the rich and provide corporate welfare. Then we can deficit spend all we want. Ordinary people are expendable.
Sherri
So, Sherri, do you think Barack will make the difference?
Andrew
Andrew,
I hope Barack Obama will make a difference. He has visited our area numerous times in the 22 months he’s been president, a lot more than Bush ever did. He seems to care a lot more than Bush did and the money is moving in here now. But so much of the money already went to government contractors and we’ll never see it or any progress out of them.
The social programs the Obama administration has passed and funded have helped immensely, as they are helping everyone in America who is unemployed, uninsured or/and poor.
Flood protection and wetlands restoration are being seriously researched and built. But I won’t be happy until the city has enough low-income housing, good public schools (I am a N.O. public school graduate (1979) and my education was great), a higher minimum wage, and public transportation so the poor can get by and get ahead. Systematic institutionalized racism here is still a problem, and social programs are what help the institutionally poor, non-white residents the most. Expanding public services and making sure everyone who needs them has them is key to improving life for the poor.
Another thing that must come back is Charity Hospital. It provided free health care to the poor and uninsured. Since Katrina, the health of the poor has deteriorated substantially because they have fewer options to get health care. I hope the Obama health care plan will help get more people on Medicaid and cover more low wage workers under employer plans.
I know people hate the social safety net, but in the 45 years since Medicare has been available, the poverty rate for senior citizens has dropped from 30% to under 10%, and elderly poverty is decreasing. I hate to tell conservatives, but the truth is democratic socialism (Keynesian economics) raises people out of poverty and keeps the middle class strong. By extending the programs that work to all those who need them, fewer dollars would do a great deal to help the entire economy grow, and the rich will get richer than they will if the economy continues on its current path. I’ll be writing about economics on my other blog soon (I hope).
Thanks for writing.
Andrew @ Blogging Guide´s last [type] ..Working From Home- The Pitfalls And Positives
Hi Sherri:
Thanks for your post. It is sad how slowly things have progressed after Hurricane Katrina, but we do also need to be grateful for the progress that has been made.
I think your post does a great deal by showing just how much more needs to be done and genuinely reveals the plight of the poor. We can all do our part to help, and the government must do theirs as well.
Although I didn’t appreciate it at the time, my father’s service in the Navy gave me the chance to see a lot beautiful places in the southeast.
I hope to bring my daughter up in a more stable environment, but I definitely would like to travel and give her the chance to see some of these places as well.
First on the list of ‘must see’ places is Louisiana… and more specifically, New Orleans.
The culture and the bayou make the New Orleans area very special in my memories… and I pray that some form of it continues to survive… not just for my own family, but also for future generations to enjoy.
Thank you, Sherri!
keep smiling,
Benjamin
Benjamin,
Thanks. I was a Navy brat, too. It’s how I ended up calling Louisiana my home. Dad was stationed in New Orleans when I graduated high school, and I stayed here. My mom stayed until 2006, and moved to Dallas after Katrina. She is getting too old to evacuate on her own and we felt she needed to be away from hurricanes and close to family, my sister.
You’re welcome here any time. The seafood and fish are wonderful. They test it like crazy because of the oil leak, so anything you eat has been thoroughly screened. The tourist areas are in great shape. It’s the eastern part of the city that is still in so much trouble. Those are areas you probably won’t visit. If you want to see more stories of the New Orleans of its residents, I recommend reading Billy Sothern’s book. The link is in the sidebar.
Come on down, but I recommend coming between October and April so it’s not so hot. We’ve had freezes at Christmas and I’ve worn shorts at Christmas. I lived in Indiana in the snow, and when it gets really cold here, it’s worse than up there. It’s humid and the cold gets into your bones. But most of the time, it’s pretty temperate. Summer is just plain hot and humid no matter what the weather happens to be on a given day.
Benjamin´s last [type] ..Meditation for Beginners – Why Meditation part 2
Sherri
You always put so much time and effort into your posts – and I find them all heartwrenching.. why is the human race so unconsciousness about ourselves, our planet, and pretend we are so loving, so caring.. Yes individually we care, .. we even give our time and our money and in your case, your platform, but as a human race we are failing. People still kill, turn the other cheek, deny each other human dignity.
I’m appalled at us.
Thank you for writing.
Michelle,
Thanks. I don’t like being such a downer, but there is little to be up about. I hope one day there will be positive news from Louisiana.
I wish I knew why the human race is so inhumane in so many cases. We are doing a better job today than we ever have because the whole world is literally watching 24/7. We’ve come so far, yet we haven’t moved a millimeter. All each of us can do is make some kind of difference that will make someone else’s life better. Just being more aware of the problems helps people see that action needs to be taken and that they may be able to help.
The thing that scares me the most is that New Orleans is a microcosm of every city in America. What everyone saw in horrible reality here is what is going on under the radar in their own areas. This must be addressed, especially poverty. There is no excuse for the situation too many Americans find themselves in.
Did you by chance receive my request for quoting form this blog post for an academic publication? Feel free to email me if you have questions about this.
Thanks, Sophia
God bless the City of New Orleans. Their will to survive and revive is ever apparant.