"Mission accomplished" for FEMA
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by Harry Highwater, Unknown News
Sept. 9, 2005
Sometimes, when life's day-to-day problems get you down, it's good to ponder how things could be worse. We're dirt poor, sure, but at least we're not dirt poor and black in New Orleans.
The radio isn't warning us to get out of town, a huge hurricane's coming, and us with no car, no money, and no way to leave. Our apartment isn't much, but it's not under twenty feet of fetid water. When I'm hungry I walk to the fridge, thirsty I turn on the tap, and when I'm tired I crawl under our blankets and hope there won't be nightmares of New Orleans.
Tonight I've been awake under that soft, warm blanket for what seems hours, unable to sleep, perhaps afraid to sleep. My head's full of questions, like, how savage could you become, by the second day with no food, by the third day with only whatever bottled water could be claimed from padlocked stores? What would it do to your world view, to have filthy water lapping at your upstairs window, to recognize your neighbor's corpse floating toward you, to have no light in the darkness, and no hope in the daylight? How many hours, how many days could you look to the skies, and still believe that soon, civilized authorities would be dropping sandwiches and water for the survivors? How long could you hold out, waiting for rescue that never comes, before you'd bare your teeth and fight for any scrap of anything that looked like food, fight for your life?
There seems to be one image from the past week's awful horrors, one image the media wants us all to remember. It's black people looting the stores, and white people foraging for food for their loved ones. Seems nobody's ever heard the line about "Judge not, lest ye be judged."
Many people and pundits have passed judgment from their comfy couches a thousand miles away. Eating a good dinner and watching the evening newscast, they shake their heads yes -- walking out of an abandoned, window-shattered store with a loaf of stale bread or 85° cheese is permissible, but no -- taking a pair of shoes or a big-screen TV or a 12-pack of beer makes you a thief, an animal.
It's never occurred to these long-distance observers that shoes are vital when walking across broken glass and mucky marsh, or that a big-screen TV might be parlayed into a box of crackers or a warm can of soda, something, anything to keep you alive while waiting for the lollygaging rescue squad?
And as for that 12-pack of beer, let me tell ya. If the end is approaching, if I'm delirious and near death from hunger, or from whatever's in the water, or I've been shot, stabbed, or fallen, and all the doctors have left town, then I would rather leave this world drunk than sober. So that might be me with the 12-pack.
For me, though, the most vivid image from the drowning of New Orleans isn't the "looters," it isn't the rotting corpses being nibbled by rats, or the messages written on signs and sidewalks, pleading for food and water. The most vivid image wasn't even something I saw, except in my mind's eye. It's from one of the first first-hand accounts written by survivors.
A growing group of civilized survivors made their way through the ruined city, leaning on each other for support. They didn't have much trouble with the alleged marauding hoards everpresent in mainstream media accounts, but they did have problems with police, and the National Guard had no help to offer. They could't get straight answers to questions like when a rescue might be coming, what they should do, or where they should huddle and wait.
They walked toward a bridge, the bridge that leads from submerged and soggy New Orleans to the hurricane-ravaged but relatively dry suburb of Gretna, across the river.
Problem is, Gretna isn't just relatively dry, it's also relatively white.
As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.
We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.
Yeah, that's the image I'll remember. It didn't make the newspapers, and there were few pictures of the bridge on TV. But if you saw the widely-shared footage of Geraldo Rivero crying, holding a baby in the Superdome, pleading, "Let them go, let these people go," this was the bridge he was talking about. This was the bridge not far from the Superdome, the stadium where 20,000 people -- almost all of them black -- weren't allowed to leave, weren't allowed to make that short walk across the bridge to Gretna.
To me, this is a much more horrible, haunting image than any looting at a convenience store.
This is the face of law and order, spitting at people. It's the police, telling people to turn around and die. This is the face of government in Gretna, the seat of government for Jefferson Parish. And by unavoidable inference, it's the face of the American federal government's response to the New Orleans disaster, too. It's the face of a government that snarls and glares and reaches for its guns, and says to people, "You're not welcome here." It says, "We'd rather have you dead, than have you in Gretna. Or have you in America."
And I have to ask, how come a reporter had no trouble getting into and out of the Superdome, with a TV crew, a boom guy, a portable camera, and a satellite uplink, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) couldn't get there with food and water and a few guards to ensure order? How come those three college kids were able to drive right up to the Superdome, share the supplies they had in the trunk of their Hyundai, and then drive away safely ... but FEMA couldn't accomplish that on any scale?
Did you wonder why FEMA disallowed bottled water, and cut the local emergency communications?
Why, even before the hurricane hit, FEMA told first-responders not to respond?
Did you wonder why FEMA wouldn't let hundreds of eager airboat skippers search for survivors?
Why Homeland Security kept the Red Cross out of New Orleans, while people were starving, drowning, dying of thirst?
Have you tried to understand why, as people were drowning and unfed, firefighters were ordered to undergo an all-day seminar in Atlanta, before being sent to New Orleans ... to hand out fliers?
How come day after day after day, FEMA couldn't or wouldn't airdrop food and drinking water into New Orleans, but the U.S. military was there for "combat operations"? I'm not an expert on search and rescue or military operations, but it just seems to me, people who haven't had food and water for five or six days could be quelled with food and water, instead of "combat operations."
But like I said, and like the entire upper management at FEMA, I'm not an expert at rescue or emergency work. Maybe I just don't understand FEMA's mission.
Seems to me, the work of an "emergency management agency" ought to be saving lives, feeding the hungry, taking care of people after a disaster and helping them reconstruct their lives. But apparently, that's not FEMA's mission.
Apparently, FEMA's primary function is restoring order, and that means enforcing the rules no matter what. These doctors don't have all their paperwork in order, so we can't let them help the wounded. These deputies and emergency personnel can't establish that they're board-certified or whatever, so they'll have to be turned back. And we don't have any marching orders for these specially-trained and equipped rescue workers, so we'll just let them wait, for days.
And if restoring order and enforcing the rules is FEMA's mission, then FEMA has done a very good job in New Orleans. Living people can sometimes be disorderly, but dead people rarely break the rules. So -- mission accomplished, as our President would say. Perhaps FEMA Director Michael Brown should be given the presidential Medal of Freedom.
Ah, but I know, this is crazy talk. It's nuts to even ask the question, and my wife tells me I'm wrong (which is why this week's byline is just me, Harry Highwater, while Helen's across the room telling me I'm wrong, wrong, wrong).
And I can't hardly argue with her, because she's right, it's crazy, just crazy. Crazy, I suppose, like the notion that American authorities might "rescue" Americans by locking them inside a darkened stadium. Crazy, like the idea that American lawmen would prevent people from walking to safety because of the color of their skin.
Helen tells me it's just a profound indifference at FEMA. They just don't care about anything but restoring order, she explains, so things like life and death are trivial to them. We're both furious at what happened, but she's clearly saner than me.
And how I wish I could agree with her. "A profound indifference at FEMA" would be an answer that might eventually let me fall asleep, instead of night after night of insomnia. Indifference might explain everything FEMA's done, not done, and prevented from being done.
And in the end, I suppose FEMA's motivation doesn't much matter. Whatever their intent, more people died with every persnickety rule enforced, more people died with every would-be rescuer turned away. And whatever FEMA's mission statement, the dead are just as dead.
No, I don't want to wear the dreaded tin-foil hat, so I do try, and try, try very hard to convince myself that FEMA wasn't actively trying to kill the people of New Orleans. I've had long chats with myself, sometimes raising my voice, explaining to myself just how nutty that would be.
But then, answering myself, I ask myself a question I can't answer: If FEMA was trying to quietly kill people in New Orleans ... is there anything they would have done differently?
© by the author.
What do you think?
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Did you wonder why FEMA disallowed bottled water, and cut the local emergency communications?
Why, even before the hurricane hit, FEMA told first-responders not to respond?
Did you wonder why FEMA wouldn't let hundreds of eager airboat skippers search for survivors?
Why Homeland Security kept the Red Cross out of New Orleans, while people were starving, drowning, dying of thirst?
Have you tried to understand why, as people were drowning and unfed, firefighters were ordered to undergo an all-day seminar in Atlanta, before being sent to New Orleans ... to hand out fliers?
How come day after day after day, FEMA couldn't or wouldn't airdrop food and drinking water into New Orleans, but the U.S. military was there for "combat operations"?
I'm not an expert on search and rescue or military operations, but it just seems to me, people who haven't had food and water for five or six days could be quelled with food and water, instead of "combat operations."
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No, I don't want to wear the dreaded tin-foil hat, so I do try, and try, try very hard to convince myself that FEMA wasn't actively trying to kill the people of New Orleans.
I've had long chats with myself, sometimes raising my voice, explaining to myself just how nutty that would be.
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If FEMA was trying to quietly kill people in New Orleans ...
... is there anything they would have done differently?
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Say it with a bumper sticker
$3 each, or two for $5
This is the face of law and order, spitting at people.
It's the police, telling people to turn around and die.
This is the face of government in Gretna, the seat of government for Jefferson Parish.
And by unavoidable inference, it's the face of the American federal government's response to the New Orleans disaster, too.
It's the face of a government that snarls and glares and reaches for its guns, and says to people, "You're not welcome here."
It says, "We'd rather have you dead, than have you in Gretna. Or have you in America."
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There's much more than this at Unknown News.
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