Obama on Rebuilding New Orleans, Two Years Later
When this disaster struck New Orleans I was arguing on the newsgroups, and was stunned at how quickly Bush supporters turned against the people of New Orleans and sought to make them responsible for the disaster which had befallen them. "Why didn't they leave?" and questions of that ilk were all designed to subtly - and not so subtly - imply that they were somehow to blame for their fate.
Obama says it all here. What the US does, or does not do, in New Orleans will say what kind of nation the US is.
4 comments:
My father and his wife moved to New Orleans just before the storm and had to evacuate, being kept out of his house for several weeks. As a volunteer Firefighter/EMT, I drove an ambulance down there along with a group of firefighters, doctors, nurses, other healthcare professionals, police, and national guard from throughout my state. We were sent to Jefferson Parish, which surrounds New Orleans on two sides, and our mission was to provide healthcare in some of the hard hit areas of Jefferson Parish. I was there for two weeks and to say it was an experience would be an understatement. It reminded me like something out of some post-apocalyptic movie or something and the smell is not something I'm likely to forget.
In any case, I was able to get the perspective of being both a rescue worker, as well as my father's perspective of being a displaced victim. Luckily for him his house was on the west-bank and he didn't get flooded out, although the house did suffer damage from what we think was a tornado (I was met by an armed neighbor keeping watch on things when I got over to inspect the damage first hand).
While the federal response was certainly nothing to brag about, the major problems were a result of local incompetencies. The mayor, Ray Nagin, was completley ineffective. Knowing that there were many of his citizens who would likely not have access to a means of evacuation, he never-the-less did not dispatch the city buses to forcibly evacuate those people. He also failed to properly deploy city services to serve the needs of the public. Kathleen Blanco, the governor, was equally useless, not doing what was necessary to allow the feds to provide an effective response.
The situation in New Orleans can be juxtaposed with the adjacent Jefferson Parish. The Jefferson Parish government took more aggressive leadership. The law enforcement and emergency services were better managed so as to prevent some of the problems that befell New Orleans. They were much better prepared to provide security and essential services. In fact, Jefferson Parish directly asked my state to send energency help, bypassing the state government to do so. While Jefferson Parish was coming back to life, New Orleans remained closed down, despite the fact that areas such as Algiers and other parts of the city had water restored and were not badly flooded, meaning residents should have been able to return.
The situation in New Orleans can also be compared with Mississippi, which was actually hit much harder than Louisiana was. However, the government there exercised leadership and worked with the federal government and other agencies to ensure an effective response for its citizens. Louisiana did a piss-poor job in that department.
Much of what people hear regarding New Orleans is propaganda and either blatantly untrue or grossly exaggerated. Don't get me wrong, it was terrible, but little of what I've seen in the media has been completely accurate.
So that said, your comment that "Bush supporters turned against the people of New Orleans and sought to make them responsible for the disaster which had befallen them" is completely untrue. While I can't speak for everyone who went down there to provide help, there were a great many of us who you would refer to as "Bush supporters". And unlike most of the liberal whiners and revisionists who only know what they saw on TV, we were willing to put ourselves potentially in harm's way and do something to try to help, not complain about what other people weren't doing. Many of us "Bush supporters" weren't paid to be there, and put our jobs and businesses on the shelf to try to do what we could to make the situation better.
Personally, I see all these politicians head down there and I think they're just trying to be opportunistic to help themselves. Hell, you look at Obama's video and you wouldn't even know that there were poor white people down there who lost everything, or rich black people, or rich white people, or middle class people, or basically anyone and everyone.
I've been there every Christmas since the storm, and will be going back. I'm happy to see that despite the unimaginable destruction, things are getting better each time I go, and in fact life is back to relative normal in most of the area.
Firstly, good for you for doing what you did. I genuinely think you displayed a concern for the welfare of the people of that state which is admirable.
That said, your attack on my saying that, "Bush supporters turned against the people of New Orleans and sought to make them responsible for the disaster which had befallen them" as "completely untrue" ignores totally the context in which I made the observation. I made very clear that I was referring to the reactions of Bush supporters on the newsgroups.
Their comments will all still be on the servers as a matter of public record.
You're right, I did miss the part about the newsgroups. There are many who try to argue that the federal government in general, and George Bush in particular, were somehow responsible for what went on down there. That's just blatant partisan crap though and doesn't stand the logic test.
The "why didn't they leave" question isn't a bad question though. Certainly there were many who could have left who chose not to, and those that ignored the evacuation order when they had the means to leave, well, the consequences are all on them. That said, there were those who needed the help of the local government in order to evacuate and the local government's failure to do so was unconscionable. And then there handling of things once the magnitude of what happened became evident was equally unconscionable.
And despite the worse than abysmal performance of the mayor (who at one point refused to leave his hotel room), he somehow got re-elected. Well, he was running against a white candidate.
I actually accept that the state made mistakes, but the response of the Federal government was shocking. And for Bush to claim that FEMA were doing "a heck of a job" was simply disgraceful.
I do understand that in the US there is this tension between what is done at state level and when the national government are supposed to respond.
And I also admit that I look at this from a UK perspective. But no British Prime Minister would have even been allowed to think that a disaster on that scale could possibly be handled at the local level. It was a national emergency and deserved a national response.
And the damage that incident did to Bush was terminal, his figures have never recovered since.
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