They Just Washed Away 
Katrina a Man-made Disaster: Before, During, and After

Hurricane Katrina Takes Aim on the Gulf Coast

It still breaks my heart to cast my mind's eye on the Horror that swept through New Orleans in August of 2005.

Sometimes I still come to tears as I attempt to sing "Washed Away." The song wrote me ten years ago as I was apartment sitting for a friend in Queens, NY.   Choked with pain and anger, appalled at what was I was seeing on TV and the web, it was, and still is, difficult to accept that what transpired in New Orleans could happen in the wealthiest nation on earth.

(Click for lyrics)

Made in the U.S.A.

Although Hurricane Katrina, the ferocious vortex that was born over the Atlantic Ocean during the sultry days of late August that year was a "natural" phenomenon, what happened a decade ago was not. It was, from beginning to end, a man-made disaster, a glaring example of the continued institutional racism of the neo-liberal era.

In line for evacuation buses at the Superdome

The catastrophic series of events that decimated New Orleans, killing 1836 people (nearly a 1000 of them in the City itself), and displacing a million and a half others in the region, had been predicted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Officials at FEMA knew that the 100 year old system of levees and flood control protecting the half a million residents of the City, nearly 70% of whom were Black, couldn't withstand the force of a hurricane of that magnitude.  They had reported repeatedly that there was no adequate system in place to evacuate the people at risk.

Then, the buck was passed -- or the bucks, rather.  In a glaring example of Crony Capitalism at it's worst, FEMA privatized New Orlean's Disaster Planning in 2004!

This is all a matter of public record.  It's there in black and white. 

Those in charge knew.  Many of the career government service professionals were on record, trying to address the problem.

In fact, just three months before Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Agency responsible for flood control, had issued another warning to the Bush Administration which had not yet acted to implement a flood control plan involving extensive construction they had proposed years earlier.
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Yet, with blatant disregard for the those most at risk: the black, the poor, and the elderly citizens of New Orleans, the Bush Administration turned a blind eye to the impeding disaster.  Parlaying the funds remaining after the tax-cuts they had implemented for the rich to serve their own agenda, they had funded the Iraq Invasion and Occupation (at least $204.5 Billion at that point) and just rolled the dice.  After all, they had nothing to loose.

Others lost it all.

The working class Black folks, the poor and the elderly (60% of the deaths were old folks) of the Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish, where most of the 986 fatalities occurred, were simply ignored and left in harm's way.  Tragically, some of that harm that emerged was at the hands of the police, deputized white civilians, and contract security personnel.  The protection of property seeming more important than the protection of lives, some bridges out of town were manned with armed personnel.  Folks fleeing the floodwaters were turned back.

For those who lived, their homes and way of life were washed away in a torrent of toxic water.  Rhetoric to the contrary, the decisions and non-decisions made by the Masters and Minions of the Corporate Elite that increasingly controls both the Republican and Democratic Parties, made it quite clear: Black Lives Don't Matter. Neither do the lives of the poor and elderly, whatever their race is.  Ultimately, they didn't effect the decisions made.

Ten Years After: The Man-Made Disaster Continues

"If you are poor, it's like the hurricane just happened."

-- Malik Rahim, founder of the Common Ground Collective

Devastation Still Scars the 9th Ward Today

Although the estimated $76 billion dollars that have flowed into New Orleans in the past decade have spawned a major new hospital, and the tourist industry again flourishes (the French Quarter was part of the 20% of the city that wasn't flooded), what has happened to the city in the past ten years mirrors what has happened in the rest of the United States.  As is the case in many metropolitan areas, large scale urban gentrification emerged.

The Lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel, New Orleans

The hard truth of life in Big Easy is that the rich got richer and the poor disproportionately black, got poorer.

Those that lost the most gained the least as the developers, oftentimes international and national corporations, moved in.

Rather than be packaged as part of a comprehensive program that would include employment and training programs (current unemployment among Black males is currently 50%) and community wealth development, public dollars have continued to feed the coffers of a few, while the many continue to suffer.

Rents for available housing have spiked, and the HUD plans for replacement and expansion of low-income housing continue to creep forward -- with fewer units than originally promised and far behind schedule.  (With housing, family, and neighborhood ties washed away, an estimated 160, 000 members of the Katrina Diaspora have ever returned.)

French Quarter Maids Average Annual Salary: $19, 020

As the population of New Orleans languishes at just 80% of it's 2005 level a decade later, the Black population has decreased 7%, the white population has increased 5%.  Most of that increase, like that of other metropolitan areas, is due to the influx of college educated suburbanites moving to the city to enjoy the "culture" of the gentrified city -- along with the reported 9 million tourists who spent $6.8 Billion dollars last year.

Yet, as is the case elsewhere, that money hasn't improved the lives of the vast majority of regular working folks.  Ten years after Katrina, the poverty rate still hovers at about the same 22%, 40% of whom are working full-time at low paying service industry jobs in the flourishing tourist industry.

It still breaks my heart. I'm still choked up with pain and anger.  I need to Meditate for awhile -- and have a good cry.