First
By the Floods, Then By Martial Law
Trapped in New Orleans
By LARRY BRADSHAW
and LORRIE BETH SLONSKY
Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck
New Orleans, the Walgreens store at the corner of Royal and Iberville
Streets in the city's historic French Quarter remained locked.
The dairy display case was clearly visible through the widows.
It was now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing,
and the milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in
the 90-degree heat.
The owners and managers had
locked up the food, water, pampers and prescriptions, and fled
the city. Outside Walgreens' windows, residents and tourists
grew increasingly thirsty and hungry. The much-promised federal,
state and local aid never materialized, and the windows at Walgreens
gave way to the looters.
There was an alternative. The
cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts,
fruit juices and bottled water in an organized and systematic
manner. But they did not. Instead, they spent hours playing cat
and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.
We were finally airlifted out
of New Orleans two days ago and arrived home on Saturday. We
have yet to see any of the TV coverage or look at a newspaper.
We are willing to guess that there were no video images or front-page
pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the Walgreens
in the French Quarter.
We also suspect the media will
have been inundated with "hero" images of the National
Guard, the troops and police struggling to help the "victims"
of the hurricane. What you will not see, but what we witnessed,
were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort:
the working class of New Orleans.
The maintenance workers who
used a forklift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers
who rigged, nurtured and kept the generators running. The electricians
who improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to
share the little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck
on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical
ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing air
into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen
who rescued folks stuck in elevators. Refinery workers who broke
into boat yards, "stealing" boats to rescue their neighbors
clinging to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped
hotwire any car that could be found to ferry people out of the
city. And the food service workers who scoured the commercial
kitchens, improvising communal meals for hundreds of those stranded.
Most of these workers had lost
their homes and had not heard from members of their families.
Yet they stayed and provided the only infrastructure for the
20 percent of New Orleans that was not under water.
* *
*
ON DAY Two, there were approximately
500 of us left in the hotels in the French Quarter. We were a
mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees like ourselves
and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and shelter
from Katrina.
Some of us had cell phone contact
with family and friends outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly
told that all sorts of resources, including the National Guard
and scores of buses, were pouring into the city. The buses and
the other resources must have been invisible, because none of
us had seen them.
We decided we had to save ourselves.
So we pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses
come and take us out of the city. Those who didn't have the requisite
$45 each were subsidized by those who did have extra money.
We waited for 48 hours for
the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing
the limited water, food and clothes we had. We created a priority
boarding area for the sick, elderly and newborn babies. We waited
late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the
buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute
they arrived at the city limits, they were commandeered by the
military.
By Day Four, our hotels had
run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously bad. As
the desperation and despair increased, street crime as well as
water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked
their doors, telling us that "officials" had told us
to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As
we entered the center of the city, we finally encountered the
National Guard.
The guard members told us we
wouldn't be allowed into the Superdome, as the city's primary
shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole.
They further told us that the city's only other shelter--the
convention center--was also descending into chaos and squalor,
and that the police weren't allowing anyone else in.
Quite naturally, we asked,
"If we can't go to the only two shelters in the city, what
was our alternative?" The guards told us that this was our
problem--and no, they didn't have extra water to give to us.
This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous
and hostile "law enforcement."
* *
*
WE WALKED to the police command
center at Harrah's on Canal Street and were told the same thing--that
we were on our own, and no, they didn't have water to give us.
We now numbered several hundred.
We held a mass meeting to decide
a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police command
post. We would be plainly visible to the media and constitute
a highly visible embarrassment to city officials. The police
told us that we couldn't stay. Regardless, we began to settle
in and set up camp.
In short order, the police
commander came across the street to address our group. He told
us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway
and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge to the south side of
the Mississippi, where the police had buses lined up to take
us out of the city.
The crowd cheered and began
to move. We called everyone back and explained to the commander
that there had been lots of misinformation, so was he sure that
there were buses waiting for us. The commander turned to the
crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear to you that the
buses are there."
We organized ourselves, and
the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and
hope. As we marched past the convention center, many locals saw
our determined and optimistic group, and asked where we were
headed. We told them about the great news.
Families immediately grabbed
their few belongings, and quickly, our numbers doubled and then
doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, as did people
using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and other people in
wheelchairs. We marched the two to three miles to the freeway
and up the steep incline to the bridge. It now began to pour
down rain, but it didn't dampen our enthusiasm.
As we approached the bridge,
armed 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 the commander's assurances. The
sheriffs informed us that 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 six-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 are
not getting out of New Orleans.
* *
*
OUR SMALL group retreated back
down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the rain under an overpass.
We debated our options and, in the end, decided to build an encampment
in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway--on the center divide,
between the O'Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned that
we would be visible to everyone, we would have some security
being on an elevated freeway, and we could wait and watch for
the arrival of the yet-to-be-seen buses.
All day long, we saw other
families, individuals and groups make the same trip up the incline
in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away--some
chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others verbally
berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented
and prohibited from self-evacuating the city on foot.
Meanwhile, the only two city
shelters sank further into squalor and disrepair. The only way
across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks,
buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car that could be hotwired.
All were packed with people trying to escape the misery that
New Orleans had become.
Our little encampment began
to blossom. Someone stole a water delivery truck and brought
it up to us. Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so down the
freeway, an Army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations
on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping
carts.
Now--secure with these two
necessities, food and water--cooperation, community and creativity
flowered. We organized a clean-up and hung garbage bags from
the rebar poles. We made beds from wood pallets and cardboard.
We designated a storm drain as the bathroom, and the kids built
an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas
and other scraps. We even organized a food-recycling system where
individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for
babies and candies for kids!).
This was something we saw repeatedly
in the aftermath of Katrina. When individuals had to fight to
find food or water, it meant looking out for yourself. You had
to do whatever it took to find water for your kids or food for
your parents. But when these basic needs were met, people began
to look out for each other, working together and constructing
a community.
If the relief organizations
had saturated the city with food and water in the first two or
three days, the desperation, frustration and ugliness would not
have set in.
Flush with the necessities,
we offered food and water to passing families and individuals.
Many decided to stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or
90 people.
From a woman with a battery-powered
radio, we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in
full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations
saw us on their way into the city. Officials were being asked
what they were going to do about all those families living up
on the freeway. The officials responded that they were going
to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking
care of us" had an ominous tone to it.
Unfortunately, our sinking
feeling (along with the sinking city) was accurate. Just as dusk
set in, a sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle,
aimed his gun at our faces and screamed, "Get off the fucking
freeway." A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its
blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the
sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.
Once again, at gunpoint, we
were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies
appeared threatened when we congregated into groups of 20 or
more. In every congregation of "victims," they saw
"mob" or "riot." We felt safety in numbers.
Our "we must stay together" attitude was impossible
because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.
In the pandemonium of having
our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced
to a small group of eight people, in the dark, we sought refuge
in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street.
We were hiding from possible criminal elements, but equally and
definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with
their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.
The next day, our group of
eight walked most of the day, made contact with the New Orleans
Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban
search-and-rescue team.
We were dropped off near the
airport and managed to catch a ride with the National Guard.
The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited response of
the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section of
their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and
were unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned.
* *
*
WE ARRIVED at the airport on
the day a massive airlift had begun. The airport had become another
Superdome. We eight were caught in a press of humanity as flights
were delayed for several hours while George Bush landed briefly
at the airport for a photo op. After being evacuated on a Coast
Guard cargo plane, we arrived in San Antonio, Texas.
There, the humiliation and
dehumanization of the official relief effort continued. We were
placed on buses and driven to a large field where we were forced
to sit for hours and hours. Some of the buses didn't have air
conditioners. In the dark, hundreds of us were forced to share
two filthy overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make
it out with any possessions (often a few belongings in tattered
plastic bags) were subjected to two different dog-sniffing searches.
Most of us had not eaten all
day because our C-rations had been confiscated at the airport--because
the rations set off the metal detectors. Yet no food had been
provided to the men, women, children, elderly and disabled, as
we sat for hours waiting to be "medically screened"
to make sure we weren't carrying any communicable diseases.
This official treatment was
in sharp contrast to the warm, heartfelt reception given to us
by ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker give her shoes
to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street offered
us money and toiletries with words of welcome.
Throughout, the official relief
effort was callous, inept and racist. There was more suffering
than need be. Lives were lost that did not need to be lost.
LARRY BRADSHAW and LORRIE BETH SLONSKY are
emergency medical services (EMS) workers from San Francisco and
contributors to Socialist
Worker. They were attending an EMS conference in New
Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck. They spent most of the
next week trapped by the flooding--and the martial law cordon
around the city.
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