Why New Orleans Is Being Ignored

One issue that seemed irringly missing from George Bush’s state of the Union speech was the issue of New Orleans. The the images of a city turned into a subterranian prison are still fresh on the memories of millions of Americans. For the first time in the twenth or twenty first century, more than two thirds of a city was dislocated only to take up refuge everywhere from Houston Texas to Long Island New York. Whole communities now stand as rotten ghosts of themselves. Further frightening was the the US Governments response to the situation, from, shoot to kill orders given to the national guards to the racial displacement that is now taking place since large land developers moved in.  Here is a closer look at the situation.

While New Orleans was quickly filling with water and the residents were dying in their homes or at the few functioning hospitals, the Federal goverment was doing their version of the key stone cops, tripping over themselves, not knowing who was in charge to having no real idea to where to place all those who just their homes. And while this was happening, the coast guard was in Iraq performing a job they were not trained. The local police department turned in their badges and while all this was happening, there was no attention being to by the US media that both the local a federal Government had brought in the paramiltary, private contract group, Black Water who given the order of keeping the peace from the barrels of their guns. For those African American’s who didn’t get out of the city, they were esstially hunted down or forced into water logged prisons. It was a scene out off hell. Black water, by the way is just one subcontractor in Iraq that was brought on to hunt down rebels in Iraq.

Fast forward to today and we see a lack of progress being made in the communities of color, most notably, the 9th ward. Now over two years later the federal government is finally starting to look into way the clean up and rebuilding effort is taking so long. That rebuilding effort will undoubtly mean the permeanate dislocation of thousands of residents who forced out due to the floods. And for many, they are being refused re-entry even if there is a lack of damage or black mold on their homes. What seems to worry the authorites the most, is that the largest land grab since the trial of tears is not going as quickly as planned. And many of the developers that have been put in charge of the redevelopment effort were some of the largest contributers to the campaign efforts of the George Bush 2004 presidental run.  

After the fact, Michael Brown finally came forward and admitted that he warned the white house of the up and coming disaster, a claim that is dubious at best since Bush was warned by scientists over video phone and whose warnings were ignored by the Bush administration. You can see the clip here.http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/28/1342209&mode=thread&tid=25 . As mentioned above people are being priced out of their neighborhoods and the money that most many should be sent to New Orleans to rebuild the communites for those citizens that were out is now being sent to Iraq in a lost effort. So is there any wonder Bush didn’t mention the issue during his speech.

Until next time. 

http://groundhog.tv/apps/editor/staticplayer.jsp?clip=1170108168896.wmv