Shame,
shame, shame!
The reputation of the United States has suffered
a severe blow. The government turned its back on the citizens of
New Orleans and the Gulf area as they suffered through Hurricane
Katrina without help.
It is unseemly for Michael Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA), and Michael Chertoff, the secretary of
Homeland Security, to make pretentious public announcements in an
attempt to excuse and rationalize their incompetent handling of
the hurricane.
There was ample warning to alert FEMA that a possible crisis was
looming. On Friday, Aug. 26 at 5 p.m. the National Weather Service
announced that a Category 4 storm was headed toward New Orleans.
That was two-and-a- half days before the storm hit.
It was well known that the levees, which protected New Orleans from
being flooded by the waters of Lake Pontchartrain, were designed
to be secure only against storms no more severe than Category 3.
A breach in the levee would flood most of New Orleans, which is
below sea level.
FEMA and Homeland Security had recently conducted maneuvers to establish
procedures for securing New Orleans in the event of a severe storm,
but that seemed to be of no utility last week. For days after the
storm struck FEMA stood by in a catatonic stupor, incapable of providing
effective assistance. This was difficult to understand because President
Bush had issued the Federal Emergency and Evacuation Declaration
which enabled FEMA to act.
Before the storm struck Mayor C. Ray Nagin implored the residents
of New Orleans to evacuate the city. Many of those with cars left.
However, 28 percent of the city’s population lives below the
poverty level, and 84 percent of the poor are black. A total of
35 percent of black families in New Orleans are poor. Most of them
did not have cars to enable them to evacuate.
There was no evacuation plan for the aged, the infirm or the poor.
When the storm struck, it killed communications and electricity
in the city. The poor were abandoned in a section of the city that
was quickly filling with water. The people had no food or water
and the sick had no access to medicine. When darkness fell, bands
of criminal sociopaths made life more perilous.
To those who viewed the heartrending efforts of New Orleans’
poor seeking food, shelter and medical attention, it must have seemed
like a colossal example of neglect of the welfare of African Americans.
That is so because two-thirds of New Orleans’ population is
black and 35 percent are poor.
Elijah Cummings, a black congressman from Maryland exclaimed, “We
cannot allow it to be said that the difference between those who
lived and those who died” amounted to “nothing more
than poverty, age or skin color.” Indeed, the failure of the
administration to act promptly shows a disdain for the interests
of the poor so common in America.
The same day that Katrina landed the US Census Bureau issued a report
that incomes stagnated and the poverty rate climbed even though
the economy rose last year. All the benefits went to those in the
highest income brackets.
It is time for the poor, regardless of race, to take back America.
It is time to become politically active and insist that those in
power provide education, jobs, health care and decent housing. There
was no excuse for being abandoned to the rising waters. The poor
must stand up so that such a gross dereliction of duty can never
happen again.
|
Melvin B. Miller
Editor & Publisher
Bay State Banner |
