***1AC fish in a barrel***
Contention 1: Importance of Transportation Infrastructure in the Context of
Federal Emergency relief during Hurricane Katrina in 2005
The Inadequate Funding for the levees protecting poor neighborhoods led to
many deaths that could have been prevented. Making this a “man-made
disaster”
Bargeron and Tidd 11 ("Hurricane Katrina." American Decades: 2000-2009. Ed. Eric
Bargeron and James F. Tidd, Jr. Detroit: Gale, 2011. 218-220. Gale U.S. History In Context.
Bargeron is a history professor at the University of South Carolina. James F. Tidd, Jr. is the
Pipeline Manager for Bruccoli Clark Layman, Inc.)
The storm shook the faith of many Americans who waited in terror to be rescued or who
helplessly watched thousands of people in New Orleans run out of safe water and food. A
reported 1,600 people died. Many critics insisted that the government had failed to protect its
citizens and began to ask why. For more than a century, the Army Corps of Engineers had
shaped and reshaped the Mississippi River for commerce and constructed levees to protect
from flooding. While conspiracy theories circulated that the Corps purposefully breached one
levee in order to save New Orleansʼs wealthier enclaves, most agreed that inadequate funding
and poor planning had crippled the cityʼs flood protection. After 9/11, funds had
overwhelmingly been redirected to national security. The worst flooding had disproportionately
affected poor neighborhoods, just as the poor, elderly, and sick had suffered while others
escaped. For New Orleans, like many American cities, the poorest citizens were also African
American. Outraged critics claimed that racial discrimination had skewed media coverage and
hampered rescue efforts. They argued that Americaʼs image had been weakened by the
inequality exposed by the tragedy and called for efforts to reexamine racism. In all, 1.5 million
people left New Orleans, sparking a massive demographic shift, largely absorbed by cities such
as nearby Houston and Baton Rouge. New Orleans faced years of rebuilding its infrastructure
and experimenting with environmental, cultural,¶ and social policies. Other cities and states
that sustained terrible damage bristled at the attention that New Orleans received. The impact
of Hurricane Katrina continued to be felt in politics, sparking debates on race relations and
discrimination, poverty, education, the effectiveness of federal and state emergency operations,
and the difference between man-made and natural disasters.
The Government’s plan for hurricane evacuation was done with the assumption
that 40 percent of the population without personal transportation would be
left in New Orleans to weather the storm. Our government judged them a
disposable population.
Litman 05 (Todd Litman, Founding Executive Director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute,
“Lessons form Katrina: What A Major Disaster Can Teach Transportation Planners,” 20
September. [Online] http://www.torontowestcaer.com/speakers_files/louislaferriere/14%20%20VTPI%20Transport%20Lessons%20of%20Katrina.pdf)
It would be wrong to claim that this disaster was an unavoidable “act of god.” Katrina began as a
hurricane but only became a disaster because of significant, preventable planning and
management failures. ¶ By most accounts, automobile evacuation functioned adequately. The
plan, which involved using all lanes on major highways to accommodate outbound vehicle
traffic, was well engineered and publicized (Wolshon, 2002). Motorists were able to flee the city
in time, although congestion resulted in very slow traffic speeds and problems when vehicles
ran out of fuel or had other mechanical problems. ¶ However, there was no effective plan to
evacuate residents who rely on public transportation. In an article titled “Planning for the
Evacuation of New Orleans” published in the Institute of Transportation Engineers Journal
(Wolshon, 2002, p. 45) the author explains, ¶ Of the 1.4 million inhabitants in the high-threat
areas, it is assumed only approximately 60 percent of the population or about 850,000 people
will want, or be able, to leave the city. The reasons are numerous. Although the primary reasons
are a lack of transportation (it is estimated that about 200,000 to 300,000 people do not have
access to reliable personal transportation), an unwillingness to leave homes and property
(estimated to be at least 100,000 people) and a lack of outbound roadway capacity. ¶ This
indicates that public officials were aware of and willing to accept significant risk to hundreds of
thousands of residents unable to evacuate because they lacked transportation. The little effort
that was made to assist non-drivers was careless and incompetent. According to accounts,
public officials provided little guidance to people without personal vehicles, and when asked,
they simply directed them to the Superdome (Renne,2005), although it had insufficient water,
food, medical care and security. This lead to a medical and humanitarian crisis. ¶ New Orleans
officials were aware of the risks facing transit-dependent residents. These had been described in
recent articles in Scientific American (Fischett, 2001) and National Geographic (Bourne, 2004)
magazines, and from previous experience (see box on the next page). A July 2004 simulation of a
Category 3 “Hurricane Pam” on the southern Louisiana coast by the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA), projected61,290 dead and 384,257 injured or sick in a
catastrophic flood of New Orleans. City and regional emergency plans describe likely problems
in detail (Louisiana, 2000; New Orleans, 2005). ¶ The City of New Orleans Comprehensive
Emergency Management Plan (New Orleans, 2005) states: The city of New Orleans will utilize all
available resources to quickly and safely evacuate threatened areas. ...Special arrangements will
be made to evacuate persons unable to transport themselves or who require specific life-saving
assistance. Additional personnel will be recruited to assist in evacuation procedure as needed.
...Approximately 100,000 citizens of New Orleans do not have means of personal
transportation.¶ The Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Evacuation and Sheltering Plan specifies
that school and municipal buses should be used to evacuate people who lack access to private
transportation (Louisiana, 2000, p. 13): ¶ The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be
personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles
provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack
transportation and require assistance in evacuating. ¶
The nation is divided between people who have or lack personal
transportation. Katrina highlighted our mobility problem. All levels of the
government failed New Orleanians who lack personal transportation. It is the
federal governments job is to protect us from things that are too big for the
state, the city or the person to handle.
Johnson and Torres 2009 (Race, place, and environmental justice after Hurricane Katrina.
Pgs 63-87 In Robert Bullard and Kristin Clarke, Eds. Johnson, Glenn S; Assoc. Prof, Soc. and Crim
Justice, Clark Atlanta U & Research associate, Environmental Justice Resource Center; Torres,
Angel O., GIS Training Specialist with the Environmental Justice Resource Center, Clark Atlanta
U.)
The nation is largely divided between people with cars and those who are carless. ¶ This fact
alone makes the need for public transit essential in preventing families from being stuck in lowopportunity neighborhoods away from jobs, or stranded on rooftops after natural and manmade disasters strike. Katrina highlighted the mobility problem many of our nation's non-drivers
and transit-dependent residents face every day. Emergency transportation planners failed the
most vulnerable of our society. ¶ Rising fuel prices are stranding millions of Americans on the
economic sidelines, forcing them to alter their budgets, rethink their driving patterns, and
change their mode of travel. Soaring gas prices are pushing more Americans to take public
transit and ditch their cars. This transit ridership increase is noteworthy because it occurred
when the economy was declining and fares were increasing. Families in rural communities
where transit is nonexistent are forced to dig deeper into their wallets with gasoline rivaling
what many spend on food and housing. ¶ All transportation modes should be used in
emergencies to evacuate those without cars¶ Clearly, all levels of government, local, state, and
federal, failed New Orleanians, who were left on their own after Katrina and the levee breech
flooded 80 percent of their city. Katrina demonstrated that disaster planners are ill-prepared to
respond to people with mobility restrictions. It also clarified the need to include all modes of
transportation in evacuation plans, including transit, school buses, community center vehicles,
Amtrak, etc. This tragedy was most acute for special-needs and vulnerable populations,
including people without cars, non-drivers, disabled, homeless, sick persons, elderly, and
children. ¶ Transportation is a crucial aspect of disaster preparedness. The everyday challenges
of people who do not own cars and who are dependent on public transit become urgent in an
emergency situation. It is one thing for individuals to miss their bus on the way to work. They
can always catch the next one. However, it is entirely a different matter for buses not to show
up in a disaster to evacuate transit-dependent riders-as in the case of New Orleans after the
flood. Not showing up for work could mean loss of a job. Buses not showing up during a disaster
could mean loss of life. ¶ During Katrina, local hurricane emergency evacuation plans failed to
optimize all available transportation assets to provide transit to those that have no means to
evacuate themselves. Serious mismanagement of emergency transportation by a federal
contractor also created delays in evacuating thousands of flood victims from inhumane
conditions in the New Orleans Superdome. Special-needs evacuation plans were
underdeveloped and ineffective. The end result was chaos and unnecessary loss of life. 79
Contention 2: A critical examination of Katrina reveals the biopolitical nature of
the Modern Neoliberal State.
Katrina revealed social mechanisms and poisonous biopolitics in which entire
populations were “rendered invisible with the goal of having them forgotten”
these groups are left behind to “fend for themselves or die”
Giroux 06 (Henry A. Giroux. Global Television Network Chair and Professor in
the English and Cultural Studies Department at McMaster University in Canada.
Chapter 1: Katrina and the Biopolitics of Disposability, Stormy Weather) KS
Katrina revealed a biopolitics in which the social contract has become obsolete and democratic
governance dysfunctional. It also made visible many of the social mechanisms that render some
populations disposable, spatially fixed, and caught in a liminal space of uncertainty that not only
limits choices but prioritizes for such groups the power of death over life itself. In the case of
Katrina, a poisonous biopolitics was revealed in which entire populations were "rendered
invisible with the goal of having them forgotten.''77 In Katrina's aftermath, the entire world was
exposed to a barrage of images in which the poor black and brown populations appeared as
"waste turned out in ever rising volumes in our times."78¶ Instead of living in a world of
consumer fantasies and super-mall choices, these groups are caught in an existence filled with
nightmares of being left behind, criminalized, and¶ consequently charged with the guilt of their
exclusion, and left to fend for themselves (or die) in the abandoned space of the urban ghetto,
all created by a neoliberal and racial state governed by a culture of economic efficiency,
insecurity, ethical disengagement, surveillance, and manufactured cynicism.
Natural disasters illustrate “clear divisions in a large group of the population”
that assume to be under government care, when in fact their displacement is
caused by the government. This means that their “marginality” is tantamount
to “statelessness,” which produces zones of sacrifice.
Miller and Rivera 07 (Jason David Rivera is an associate at Rowan University, Demond
Shondell Miller PhD, is an associate professor in sociology at Rowan University, “CONTINUALLY
NEGLECTED Situating Natural Disasters in the African American Experience,” Journal of Black
Studies, Vol. 37 NO. 4, March 2007) CA
Zones of sacrifice. Although unique to the place and time, these natural disasters are significant
in that they illustrate the clear divisions that exist when you have a large group of the
population that¶ paradoxically assumes to be under the care of their own government, despite
the fact that their displacement [lack of food, shelter, community education, and other
resources] is often caused by the same state authorities [they turn to seek assistance] . . . thus
relegating them to being disconnected from the enjoyment of the rights normally associated
with the dignity of being a citizen, their marginality become tantamount to statelessness. (Deng,
2006, pp. 218-219)¶ This adds up to what Bullard (1990a, 1990b, 2000) describes as the
sacrificial zones, in that “the plantation system exploited not only humans but the land, the
south has always been thought of as a sacrifice zone, a sort of dump for the rest of the nation’s
toxic waste” (as cited in Pastor et al., 2006, p. 3). In essence, history continues to repeat itself:]¶
The Vanport Flood parallels the more recent Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. In both
cases, public officials led the population to believe that the damage would be slight, and in both
cases the government response to the disaster was harshly criticized. Racism toward the
destruction of heavily-black areas was attributed to the poor response in both cases. (Wikipedia,
2006b)¶ All the cases represent zones of sacrifice, leaving the African American community in
great disarray and fending for themselves, while suffering the brunt of catastrophe. As a result
of public policy decisions, many people became internally displaced, some without the option of
returning home.¶ Policy: Reactionary, ill-crafted public policy. As illustrated through discussion
of the social situations faced by African Americans in the midst of natural disasters, the same
situations that were faced in the beginning of the 20th century are continuing to manifest
themselves in the beginning of the 21st. The behaviors of the state and federal government
during the Mississippi and Vanport floods are perfect examples of government policy in the
second historical stage of U.S. disaster policy.6 The governmental units responsible for disaster
mitigation and relief took an exclusively reactionary approach to dealing with the disasters,
increasing the likelihood of destruction during the flooding. During the Mississippi Flood,
governmental bodies had only the Flood Control Act of 1917 (PL 64-367) in place to deal with
the flood, which placed primary disaster response in the hands of local governments and the
American Red Cross (Rivera & Miller, 2006) as opposed to federal authorities. It was not until
after the Mississippi Flood that the federal government took a more “active” role in local
government mitigation:¶ Due to the wide-scale damage caused in the 1927 flood, President
Coolidge signed a new Flood Control Act in 1928 (PL 70-391), which ended the use of “levees
only” policy; moreover, the Flood Control Act of 1928 placed [responsibility] . . . in the hands of
the federal government, which “even in the narrowest sense . . . set a precedent of direct,
comprehensive, and vastly expanded federal involvement in local affairs.” (Barry, 1997, p. 407)¶
Additionally, the Act of 1928 was in place during the Vanport flood. Although there was
increased federal involvement, local officials were still mainly responsible for policy
implementation, including where and to whom relief would be given.¶ Legislative reaction to
the Vanport flood was slow, alluding that the federal government did not feel the situation
significantly important; however, policy was passed in 1950 to alter existing relief programs. The
Disaster Relief Act of 1950 (PL 81-875) allowed state governments to petition the federal
government for assistance, but assistance was not necessarily automatic or guaranteed (Rivera
& Miller, 2006). Additionally, the federal government passed the Civil Defense Act of 1950,
which, together with the Disaster Relief Act of 1950, allowed the federal government to contribute to the replacement and repair of local damaged infrastructure but not to private citizens
(Comerio, 1998; Rivera & Miller, 2006). The passage of these acts did little to aid African
Americans in the aftermath of the Mississippi and Vanport floods because they left relief and
federal funding placement in the hands of local governmental units that held racial sentiments.
These changes continued to place African American communities at a disadvantage to White
counterparts, thus perpetuating social vulnerability among the respective Black communities.¶
The legislation that was used to deal with Hurricane Katrina also left all mitigation efforts to the
local governmental units for implementation and development (Rivera & Miller, 2006).7
Furthermore, through Rivera and Miller’s (2006) analysis of past mitigation and relief policy, the
federal government’s tendency to let local governments be responsible left the people of New
Orleans and the Gulf Coast at the political benevolence of governmental authorities, which
viewed socially vulnerable communities of the region not significant enough to warrant
mitigation and relief plans. Federal reaction to Hurricane Katrina has pushed disaster relief
policy into a third historical stage8 that places mitigation in the hands of the Department of
Homeland Security. This change hopes to centralize relief and mitigation authority, making relief
coordination more efficient (Bush, 2005). With the centralization of authority, the issue of social
vulnerability among the African American com- munity will be in direct correlation to federal
policy; if African Americans or any other ethnic group are left vulnerable to disaster, not only are
local governmental authorities responsible for their disadvantages, but the federal government
also becomes responsible for allowing this vulnerability to take place.
Katrina exposed the new race and class based biopolitics of disposability,
increasing the state’s exercise of biopolitical power to active extermination of
disposable populations
Giroux, 06 (Henry A. Giroux. Prof. English & Cultural Studies, McMaster U.,
Canada; Chapter 1: Katrina and the Biopolitics of Disposability, Stormy
Weather]KS p21-2
Just as crime in the existing order becomes a cultural attribute of the race- and class-specific
other, disposability and death appear to be the unhappy lot of most powerless and marginalized
social groups. Broadly speaking, racism justifies the death-function in the economy of
biopower," Foucault reminds us, "by appealing to the principle that the death of others makes
one biologically stronger insofar as one is a member of a race or a population, insofar as one is
an element in a unitacy living plurality."53 I want to further this position by arguing that
neoliberalism, privatization, and militarism have become the dominant biopolitics of the midtwentieth-century social state and that the coupling of a market fundamentalism and
contemporacy forms of subjugation of life to the power of capital accumulation, violence, and
disposability, especially under the Bush administration, has produced a new and dangerous
version of biopolitics.54 While the murder of Emmett Till suggests that a biopolitics structured
around the intersection of race and class inequalities, on the one hand, and state violence, on
the other, is not new, the new version of biopolitics adds a distinctively different and more
dangerous register to the older version of biopolitics. What is distinctive about the new form of
biopolitics at work under the Bush administration is that it not only includes state-sanctioned
violence but also relegates entire populations to spaces of invisibility and disposability. As
William DiFazio points out, “the state has been so weakened over decades of privatization that
it … increasingly fails to provide health care, housing, retirement benefits, and education to a
massive percentage of its population.”55 While the social contract has been suspended in
varying degrees since the 1970s, under the Bush administration it has been virtually abandoned.
Under such circumstances, the state no longer feels obligated to take measures that prevent
hardship, suffering, and death. The state no longer protects its own disadvantaged citizens-they
are already seen as dead within the global economic/political framework. Specific populations
now occupy a political space that effectively invalidates the categories of "citizen" and
"democratic representation" that are integral to the nation-state system. In the past, people
who were marginalized by class and race at least were supported by the government because of
the social contract or because they still had some value as part of a reserve army of the
unemployed. That is no longer true. This new form of biopolitics is conditioned by a permanent
state of class and racial exception in which "vast populations are subject to conditions of life
conferring upon them the status of living dead,"56 largely invisible in the global media or, when
disruptively present, defined as redundant, pathological, and dangerous. Within this wasteland
of death and disposability, whole populations are relegated to what the sociologist Zygmunt
Bauman calls "social homelessness."57 While the rich and middle classes in the United States
maintain lifestyles produced through vast inequalities of symbolic and material capital, the "free
market" provides neither social protection, security, nor hope to those who are poor, sick,
elderly, and marginalized by race and class. Given the increasingly perilous state of those who
are poor and dispossessed in America, it is crucial to reexamine the ways in which biopower
functions within global neoliberalism as well as the simultaneous rise of security states
organized around cultural (and racial) homogeneity. This task is made all the more urgent by the
destruction, politics, and death that followed Hurricane Katrina.58]p.22
The media depicted citizens of New Orleans to be savages after Hurricane
Katrina, leading to a militaristic ideology of how to deal with natural disaster
victims.
Bargeron 2009 "Hurricane Katrina." American Decades: 2000-2009. Ed. Eric Bargeron and
James F. Tidd, Jr. Detroit: Gale, 2011. 218-220. Gale U.S. History In Context. Bargeron is a history
professor at the University of South Carolina. James F. Tidd, Jr. is the Pipeline Manager for
Bruccoli Clark Layman, Inc.
Research shows that the mass media play a significant role in promulgating erroneous beliefs
about disaster behavior. Following Hurricane Katrina, the response of disaster victims was
framed by the media in ways that greatly exaggerated the incidence and severity of looting
and lawlessness. Media reports initially employed a "civil unrest" frame and later
characterized victim behavior as equivalent to urban warfare. The media emphasis on
lawlessness and the need for strict social control both reflects and reinforces political
discourse calling for a greater role for the military in disaster management. Such policy
positions are indicators of the strength of militarism as an ideology in the United States.
Hurricane Katrina exposed government’s biased actions against the poor, and
racial minorities, but the misunderstood question of place remains “largely
unexamined”
Bassett 09 (Debra Lyn Basset, Basset is a Professor of Law at the University of Alabama,
“Chapter 2, The overlooked significance of place in law and policy: Lessons from Hurricane
Katrina,” in Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina, Robert D. Bullard
and Beverly Wright [Editors]) ta
just over a year ago, we saw the televised images of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath the
frightened, mostly African-American, survivors huddling on rooftops awaiting rescue without
food or water for five desperate days, then herded into the Superdome with an astonishing
lack of planning that left the survivors surrounded by dead bodies, sewage, stench, and
inadequate police protection. These horrifying images, televised again and again, helped to
bring issues of race and poverty to the forefront of the collective public consciousness.
Hurricane Katrina's aftermath highlighted these same issues, and, perhaps unwittingly, the issue
of place. But although Hurricane Katrina provoked subsequent discussions of race and class in
America, our mostly unacknowledged, conflicted, ambiguous, and misunderstood question of
place remained largely unexamined. p.50¶
Privatization of state powers leads to a growing gap between the rich and poor,
leaving the less fortunate to fend for themselves.
Giroux, 06 (Henry Giroux, English Professor and cultural studies department at McMaster
university in Canada, 2006, Stormy Weather, Katrina and the Politics of Disposability)
The compulsion to accumulate capital now overrides social provisions for the poor, elderly,
and youth. Individual responsibility has replaced investing in the common good or taking
seriously the imperatives of the social contract that informed the earlier policies of the New
Deal and President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs of the 1960s. Advocates of
neoliberalism wage a war against the gains of the welfare state, renounce its commitment to
collective provision of public goods, and ruthlessly urge the urban poor, homeless, elderly,
and disabled to rely on their own initiative.. As the government is hollowed out, privatization
schemes infect all aspects of society. As the state gives up its role as the guardian of the public
interest and public goods, reactionary politics takes the place of demo- cratic governance.
''The hijacking of public policy by private interests," [Paul Krugman observes, parallels "the
downward spiral in governance."19 And one consequence is a growing gap between the rich
and the poor and the downward spiral of millions of Americans into poverty and despair. The
haunting images of dead bodies floating in the flooded streets of New Orleans following
Hurricane Katrina, along with thousands of Americans stranded in streets, abandoned in the
Louisiana Superdome, and waiting to be rescued for days on the roofs of flooded houses serve
as just one register of the despairing racism, inequality, and poverty in America
Pg. 86
Natural Disasters are inevitable, the effects of natural disasters are
“exacerbated” in areas differs socioeconomically, unfortunately this is
condition is widespread.
Craemer, 10 (Evaluating Racial Disparities in Hurricane Katrina Relief Using Direct Trailer
Counts in New Orleans and FEMA records. Craemer, Thomas Public Administration Review;
May/Jun 2010; 70, 3; Sociological Abstracts pg. 367. Craemer is a professor and head of the
Department of Public Policy at the University of Connecticut)
The question of equitability in disaster relief and reconstruction ¶ is important beyond the
specific circumstances of New Orleans. Natural disasters are recurring events, and residential
clustering is the only condition under which disproportionate effects occur. This problem is
exacerbated if residential clusters differ socioeconomically, a condition that is far from unique
to New Orleans. Thus, the question of how to distinguish between preexisting inequality and
differential government relief is of general interest to public policy researchers. The implication
for practitioners is that color-blind policies may still have disparate racial impacts. The fact that
blind forces of nature can have disproportionate impacts suggests that color-blind relief
efforts, too, may lead to biased outcomes, even in situations in which discrimination is not
intentional. This requires that public policy practitioners plan and monitor disaster relief efforts
more carefully, and make data about the distribution of relief more readily available, than was
the case in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Color blind society is a myth: Blacks across the country felt abandoned by their
government. We help illuminate the racial divide between black and white
Americans. Until racial divisions are bridged “American Democracy will be
incomplete, lacking equal representation for all.”
White 07 [Ismail K. PhD political science, Tasha S. Philpot, Kristin Wylie, and Ernest McGowen
‘Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 37 No. 4, Katrina: Race, Class, and Poverty’ March 2007 Sage
Publications, Inc.]
This analysis has sought to explain, as explicitly as possible, the role that in-group relevance
plays in shaping African Americans’ emotional responses to Hurricane Katrina. Here, we saw
that Black and White Americans had very different emotional experiences in response to the
event. Consistent with our expectation of a group centric response to the event, Blacks were
much more likely than Whites to be angered or depressed by the events surrounding the
storm. We also saw that the perceived racialization of the events that surrounded the storm
strongly predicted the anger of Black Americans and that the perceived complacency of the
federal government explained feelings of depression among Black Americans. Despite
geographic and socioeconomic differences, Black Americans throughout the country—as
evidenced by their unique emotional response to the disaster—identified with Hurricane
Katrina’s primarily African American victims. This conclusion points to the role of racial
discrimination as a stimulus for the activation of Blacks’ racial group interest in shaping Black
emotional response—the perceived racialization of the events surrounding the natural and
human disasters of Hurricane Katrina helps to explain Black Americans’ group centric
response. We believe that this study constitutes an important step in understanding group
dynamics in American politics. In 1968. the Kerner Report warned that the United States was
“moving toward two societies, one black, and one white—separate and unequal” (National
Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. 1967). The extent to which this passage has proven
prophetic can be seen when the country experiences crises as it did in the late summer of
2005. By showing that Blacks as a group felt abandoned by their government during one of
the most devastating natural disasters this country has experienced, we help illuminate why
there persists a racial divide in lived experiences of Black and White Americans. The distinct
realities of Black and White Americans are perpetuated by the myth of a colorblind society
and threaten the very foundation of America’s allegedly representative democracy. Until
racial divisions in condition and opinion can be bridged, the state of American democracy will
be incomplete, lacking equal representation for all. ¶
***Transportation***
Local State & Federal Emergency Management failed to
evacuate or use local infrastructure resources to evacuate
carless people
Emails of former FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) director
expose the lack of awareness federal, state, and local authorities possessed of
the situation in New Orleans
Tierney, Bevc, Kuligowski 06 (Kathleen Tierney, Prof Soc., Inst. of Behavioral
Science, at the U. of Colorado, Dir. of Natural Hazards Center, Christine Bevc,
Res Assoc with the North Carolina Preparedness and Emergency Response
Research Center (NCPERRC), Erica Kuligowski, PhD student in Soc U of Colorado, “
Metaphors Matter: Disaster Myths, Media Frames, and Their Consequences in
Hurricane Katrina” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science Vol. 604)
The inability of federal, state, and local authorities to respond rapidly and effectively to Hurricane
Katrina quickly became a major scandal both in the United States and around the world. In the
days immediately following the disaster, the press, the U.S. populace, and Washington
officialdom all sought to understand what had gone so terribly wrong with the intergovernmental
response to Hurri- cane Katrina. Within a few days, a broad consensus developed that Michael
Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), was the individual
most responsible for the Katrina debacle. Brown resigned under heavy criticism on September 12,
2005. In the weeks and months following Katrina, the media have continued to report both on
Brown's lack of qualifications for his posi- tion and on his lack of basic situation awareness during
the Katrina disaster. Most recently, stories have focused one-mails that Brown exchanged with
colleagues at the height of the crisis, purportedly showing that he was drastically out of touch with
what was actually happening in New Orleans and other areas affected by the hurricane. In the
meantime, broader management system failures during Hurricane Katrina became the subject of
a congressional investigation.
The federal government and FEMA spent a week pointing fingers before
sending aid and helicopters
Bargeron and Tidd ’11 ("Hurricane Katrina." American Decades: 2000-2009. Ed.
Eric Bargeron and James F. Tidd, Jr. Detroit: Gale, 2011. 218-220. Gale U.S.
History In Context. Bargeron is a history professor at the University of South
Carolina. James F. Tidd, Jr. is the Pipeline Manager for Bruccoli Clark Layman,
Inc.)¶
Rescue efforts were stymied by miscommunication, procedural red tape, and lack of preparation
and resources. Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans, in a radio interview, blasted the federal
government for its slow response, though the cityʼs evacuation plans and state-level response
had also been woefully inadequate. Nagin commanded the police force to abandon rescue
missions and devote their time to stopping looters. Five hundred poorly trained National
Guardsmen had maintained tenuous order with irresponsible threats at the shelters. Anger and
resentment grew as people began to feel forgotten and abused. In Washington, D.C.,¶ Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was hesitant to take the lead on disaster relief, something that was
typically left to the National Guard and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The
Bush administration debated the legalities of who was in charge for days, while circumstances in
New Orleans and the broader Gulf Coast region deteriorated. By the end of the week, a fleet of
helicopters began to rescue survivors and drop off supplies, guardsmen brought food and water,
and FEMA attempted to orchestrate transportation, but a centralized effort would not become
apparent for several more days. Incredulous pundits questioned how a country that had taken
pride in a new sense of preparedness following 9/11 had failed to mobilize after the storm.
Further complicating the relief effort, more than 500,000 people had left the city. More people
were displaced in a matter of days than had fled the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, and many had little
hope of returning in the near future.¶ Relief Efforts¶ A week after the storm hit, troops and
supplies, at last, poured into the city. The Superdome and the convention center, symbols of the
cityʼs desperation, were emptied, and survivors were bused out of New Orleans. A central
command station and medical triage were set up at the airport. With relief underway, politicians
argued over whom to blame. Some critics accused Bush of callously allowing New Orleans to
drown, pointing out that he had flown over the city on an unrelated trip and had failed to visit
the city for five days. Both Democrats and Republicans expressed shock that Bushʼs senior staff
had been unavailable, absent, or on holiday, and that Bush had remained aloof. Further, FEMA
head Michael Brown offered little plausible explanation in defending the agencyʼs slow and
muddled response, while struggling nations—including Cuba, Sri Lanka, and Iran—had mobilized
teams of doctors with food and medical supplies. Criticism of FEMA deepened when Homeland
Security chief Michael Chertoff appeared on television claiming that he was unaware of people
stranded at the Superdome, and reports revealed that Brown was ill-suited and unqualified for
his position. The administration claimed that Hurricane Katrina was an unprecedented disaster
that required a multifaceted and calculated response. Bush admonished attempts to politicize
the tragedy, though he admitted that the governmentʼs relief efforts had been “unacceptable.”
His administration, however, maintained that state and local operations had failed and the
federal government was merely helping to straighten out the mess.]¶
The government’s lack of both an evacuation plan and
transportation for the poor displaced and killed thousands of
individuals
Giroux ’06 (Henry A. Giroux. Global Television Network Chair and Professor in the English and
Cultural Studies Department at McMaster University in Canada. Chapter 1: Katrina and the
Biopolitics of Disposability, Stormy Weather)KS
The government neither put in place adequate evacuation plans, even though Katrina came
with two days warning, nor provided transportation for people who lacked money, cars, or
help to get them out of the city. Trucks filled with ice were routed to different states outside
of the Gulf Coast. As Terry Lynn Karl points out, "there were not enough facilities to house and
care for refugees, there were not forces in place to deliver desperately needed supplies or to
secure order, and nowhere near the number of boats and helicopters and other craft necessary
to reach the stranded. .. . For four days, there was simply no clear center of command and
control. As a result, count- less people suffered and died."107 When evacuation efforts were
finally in place, thousands of displaced hurricane victims were sent off to other states without
being told where they were being relocated. p 43
Local Government Transit infrastructure charged for evacuation: no free
transportation out of the city
Litman 05 (Todd Litman, Founding Executive Director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, “Lessons form
Katrina: What A Major Disaster Can Teach Transportation Planners,” 20 September. [Online]
http://www.torontowestcaer.com/speakers_files/louislaferriere/14%20%20VTPI%20Transport%20Lessons%20of%20Katrina.pdf)
[The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) had a hurricane evacuation policy: Drivers
should evacuate buses and other agency vehicles with their families and transit-dependent
residents, thereby protecting people and vehicles. There are unconfirmed stories that Amtrak
offered use of a train for evacuation that was not accepted by local officials. But neither public
buses nor trains were deployed to evacuate people out of the city (Murdock, 2005). Residents
who wanted to leave the area by public transport were expected to pay for commercial services,
a major barrier to many low-income residents.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin later explained that, in his interpretation, using buses to
transport residents to the Superdome reflected the emergency plans’ intent, and there were
insufficient buses to evacuate everybody who needed assistance. The city had approximately
500 transit and school buses, a quarter of the estimated 2,000 buses needed to evacuate all
residents needing transport. However, if given priority in traffic buses could have made multiple
trips out of the city during the 48-hour evacuation period, and even evacuating 10,000 to30,000
people would have reduced emergency shelter overcrowding. Many public buses were
subsequently ruined by the flooding (Preston, 2005).]
Federal and Military coordination of carless bus evacuees left thousands
stranded and trapped in the Superdome.
El-Ghobashy, ‘05(Tamer El-Ghobashy, New York Daily News reporter from
outside the Superdome in New Orleans. Interviewed by Amy Goodman,
September 2, 2005. Daily News Reporter in New Orleans: Scope of Destruction
Much Worse Than 9/11,
http://www.democracynow.org/2005/9/2/daily_news_reporter_in_new_orleans
, transcript)KS
TAMER EL-GHOBASHY: I’m waiting outside in waist-deep water outside the Superdome in
downtown New Orleans where it’s starting to rain. The streets are much emptier today than
they were last night. People have been walking through the water on the highways, and at times
sleeping on the highways, two, three day journeys just to walk four miles to the Superdome, just
to give you an idea of how difficult it is to get around here. Right now they’re trying to
coordinate the evacuation of the Superdome onto buses that, if I understand correctly, are
taking people to Houston. It’s not going well. The military police and the national guardsmen are
overwhelmed by the number of people. The local New Orleans police are assisting, and it’s still
not helping. There are throngs of people, easily in the tens of thousands, maybe forty to fifty
thousand people, in my estimation, standing on this plaza trying to get to a very narrow area
where they’re being escorted to the buses. I haven’t seen one bus leave yet. People are passing
out and, you know, you have elderly and children and in some cases kids born two weeks ago.
One man was assaulted by a group of people with metal bars for asking for a cigarette. He’s
semiconscious, very agitated when he is conscious. It’s very difficult; they can’t do anything for
him. Other citizens are just trying to help him out.
Structural Inequities before Katrina Produced Disproportionate
Harm to Communities of Color
People of color were the hardest hit during Hurricane Katrina due to economic
disadvantages
Smith, August 30, 2005 (Damu Smith, founder, Black Voices for Peace & Exec Dir.,
National Black Environmental Justice Network, lived in Louisiana for a decade.
Interviewed by Amy Goodman, 2005, Dozens Dead as Hurricane Katrina Slams into
Gulf Coast: A Look at Extreme Weather, Oil Development, and Who Gets Hit the
Hardest, http://www.democracynow.org, transcript)KS
DAMU SMITH: Well, Amy, we have to remember the demographics, the economic
demographics of the states hardest hit: Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama. These
three states are among the poorest states in the United States, ranking at the bottom in
terms of poverty and people who are economically disadvantaged. And among those who
are most economically disadvantaged are people of color, specifically African
Americans. And in the case of New Orleans and Louisiana and those Southern cities
along the coast of Mississippi, you’re talking about people who, prior to this disaster,
were already economically marginalized on the fringes of society.
And so if you look at the images that we see on television, those who were lined up at the
Superdome, going to the place of last resort, I’ve been watching the news all into the
evening. It’s mostly black people and poor people who are concentrated in the areas
hardest hit. So those who will pay the most in the long term are those who, prior to this
disaster, were already hardest hit by the economic injustices that they are already
experiencing. New Orleans is a city of many, many, many poor people. And many of
those people, along with everybody else, have lost their homes. Amy, I don’t know how
many of our listeners have been watching the news, but this is an absolutely devastating
catastrophic disaster that has taken place in New Orleans, in Louisiana and Mississippi
and Alabama. And it’s going to take weeks, months, if not years for the people in these
communities to recover from what has occurred.
Rural Citizens of color particularly experience an invisibility as victims during
natural disastersBassett 09 (Debra Lyn Basset, Basset is a Professor of Law at the University of Alabama,
“Chapter 2, The overlooked significance of place in law and policy: Lessons from Hurricane
Katrina,” in Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina, Robert D. Bullard
and Beverly Wright [Editors]) ta
[Race, place, and poverty-even when taken individually, our society has little desire to acknowledge, much less fully
address, any of these three issues. Each of the populations embodying these issues-minorities, the rural, and the poor is itself the subject of neglect and disrespect. The addition of each successive disrespected population correspondingly
reduces society's interest even further, rendering the population encompassed by all three of these issues-minorities
living in rural poverty not just powerless, but genuinely forgotten to the point of invisibility. ¶ This phenomenon was
painfully evident in the aftermath of Katrina. The media's attention was focused on urban areas, and particularly on
New Orleans. And perhaps that focus was eminently reasonable in light of the sheer number of people affected by the
flooding. My point is the "invisibility" point: that minorities living in rural poverty are unseen, and that this invisibility
is not only a function of race and class. "Rural" adds another factor-another devalued factor. We saw poor black faces
on our television screens after Katrina. But we did not tend to see poor black rural faces. Many people seemed
surprised that those stranded by Katrina were largely poor and black, because we do not see those who are poor and
black as a general matter. But the addition of the rural factor heightens invisibility even further-even though, as
explained in one recent study, rural residents represented the majority of the population affected by Hurricane Katrina
in the state of Mississippi (Saenz and ¶ Peacock 2006). ¶ About 38 percent of Katrina's rural disaster area population
was African American. Forty percent of those African Americans lived in poverty. ¶ rate of white urban residents.
African Americans were also less likely to be homeowners, more likely to own mobile homes, less likely to have a
telephone, and nearly four times more likely to lack a car (Saenz and Peacock 2006). ¶ Indeed, instead of the five-day
wait experienced by survivors in New Orleans and criticized throughout the nation as being unreasonable and
outrageous-the wait experienced by rural survivors stretched into weeks. The same lack of attention to rural areas
recurred during Hurricane Rita, where the anticipatory focus was a worry about the urban areas of Houston and New
Orleans. Hurricane Rita's impact was greatest in rural, rather than urban, communities-and perhaps for that reason, its
impact was, and largely continues to be, overlooked. ¶ Despite the preference in our laws and policies to avoid placespecific references, place in fact puts some citizens at higher risks during natural disasters and makes them less able to
recover from such disasters. In what ways are rural areas hampered by their place in the context of natural disasters? In
addition to higher rates of poverty, in addition to their general invisibility, in addition to the often reduced availability
of technology, communication, and transportation, remote rural areas are also hampered by other disadvantages
stemming from their place. For example, many remote rural areas have unpaved dirt roads rather than superhighways,
which can hinder evacuation efforts. Another disadvantage is that due to the dispersion and lower population densities
of remote rural areas, attempts to centralize efforts-whether at the warning stage, the evacuation stage, or the remedy
stage-do not tend to work effectively in rural areas due to the dispersion of fewer people over greater distances and the
related transportation issues. The physical and social isolation, and lack of transportation, in many rural communities
serves as a major barrier to the delivery of aid to these localities. ] 54-55
The vulnerable populations of New Orleans had no means of escaping, and did
not have it easy after the storm
Khan 09 (Mafruza, “The Color of Opportunity and the Future of New Orleans: Planning,
Rebuilding, and Social Inclusion After Hurricane Katrina,” Race, Place, and Environmental Justice
After Hurricane Katrina, Robert Bullard and Beverly Wright [Editors], Chapter 10) CA
Hurricane Katrina hit a region with significant pre-existing economic disparities and a large
vulnerable population that historically has had little or no power in institutional decision making
due to racial and/or class bias. When the levees broke and New Orleans flooded, poor people of
color, the elderly, and the infirm were trapped and had no means of escaping. Not surprisingly,
these populations were the most vulnerable and bore a disproportionate impact of the
devastation wrought by Katrina.¶ At the same time, while the overall population in New Orleans
has decreased by 34 percent since the hurricane, the percentage of vulnerable individuals living
in the Gulf Coast has increased by a dramatic 154 percent (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
2006). p. 209
Recovery Process proves racialized and classed rebuilding programs came at the
expense of poor people’s basic transportation infrastructure needs.
Smith, August 30, 2005 (Damu Smith, founder, Black Voices for Peace & Exec Dir.,
National Black Environmental Justice Network, lived in Louisiana for a decade.
Interviewed by Amy Goodman, Dozens Dead as Hurricane Katrina Slams into Gulf
Coast: A Look at Extreme Weather, Oil Development, and Who Gets Hit the Hardest,
http://www.democracynow.org, transcript)KS
In pondering the question of how to measure the recovery of a city further, we realize that one's
response depends upon one's perspective. It is clear that race and place greatly determine
personal ability to recover from Katrina and color a personal view of recovery. Communities
least affected by the storm tend to have larger percentages of white residents. These
communities are also more likely to describe the recovery as satisfactory. While these areas
received less damage, they have also benefited the most from federal dollars for recovery. Flood
insurance claims were ignored" leading to a large concentration of hazardous mitigation dollars
flowing into these areas. Because of this, these areas are well on the way to a full recovery.
The Lower Ninth Ward and New Orleans East are further behind. Streetlights are not in service
in all areas, and lights on Interstate 1 0 in some areas of these communities function only
sporadically. Most schools remain closed three years after the storm, and supermarkets have
not returned in adequate numbers to service these predominantly African-American areas.]
Vanport example: Historically Race Disparities in Natural
Disasters and their aftermath
Portland Flood showed Racial inequality limits African Americans to high-risk
housing options, creating dire consequences in the flood situations.
Rivera, 07(Jason David Rivera, earned B.A. in History with a Minor in Political Science and a
Concentration in International Studies at Rowan University. Works for the Liberal Arts and
Sciences Institute at Rowan University as a Research Assistant. Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 37
No. 4. Continually Neglected: Situating Natural Disasters in the African American Experience
)
KS
Although under the guidelines of the Federal Housing Authority there was to be no segregation
when it came to housing, the local housing authority in Portland actively placed African
American workers in Vanport and another housing project named Guilds Lake. According to
MacColl (1980),
It [Vanport] was constructed so rapidly, however, that most of the housing units were
constructed poorly and, because of wartime rationing, built with inferior materials. The
apartments were small and cramped. According to one former resident, Vanport was never
more than a huge collection of “crackerbox houses strung together fast and cheap.” (as cited in
Pearson, 1996, pp. 96-97)
Additionally, Vanport was situated in low-lying, reclaimed swamps that caused the land to be
constantly muddy and attract insects and rodents; however crude and inhospitable, many
families did not complain about the housing conditions because of the extreme difficulty in
finding any housing (Pearson, 1996). Even when housing opened up within Portland’s city limits,
the local housing authority would encourage Whites to move in first (Pearson, 1996). By 1945,
newspapers were mentioning the living conditions for African Americans residing in Portland:
In Portland the Negro people are passively witnessing the development of a first rate ghetto
with all the potential for squalor, poverty, juvenile delinquency and crime. . . . It is obvious that
the herding of Negroes into the district extending from Russell Street to the Steel Bridge and
from Union Avenue to the river front portends economic and social problems of far reaching
significance for this city. (The Observer, 1945, as cited in Pearson, 1996, p. 215)
Although these practices and observations are clearly discriminating, it was not something
uncommon during the time period or a surprising response from an already racist White enclave
in reaction to an influx in the African American population.
In 1948, prior to the flood, the local housing authority estimated that in the event of an
emergency, it could find housing for no more than 1,500 people, and the Red Cross estimated it
could find emergency housing for another 7,500 people; however, these numbers would leave
more than half the population of Vanport with no place to live in the event of an emergency
(Maben, 1987; Pearson, 1996). During May 1948, the river level rose, worrying residents into
concerns about evacuations. Regardless of residents’ concerns and the rising river water, the
local housing authority posted bulletins on every door in Vanport stating that the project was
safe and in no imminent danger; the very next day, May 31, 1948, at 4:17 p.m., the river water
broke the dike, and within an hour the entire project of Vanport was submerged under 15 feet
of water (Pearson, 1996).]
At the time of the flood, many of the residents of Vanport were not at home; however, the
number of people that drowned has always been disputed (Pearson, 1996). The city’s coroner’s
office reported that only 15 people were killed in the flood (Maben, 1987; Pearson, 1996), but
local residents tell stories of grave diggers working overtime to bury victims (Pearson, 1996;
Portland’s Albina Community, 1993). In an effort to acknowledge the loss of life, city officials
proposed that only a limited number of bodies could be found because of them being carried
down river into the Pacific Ocean, but many former Vanport residents felt that city officials were
simply “withholding information” to avoid responsibility; some even believed that city officials
wanted the Vanport project destroyed anyway (Journal, 1948a, 1948b, as cited in Pearson,
1996; Oregonian, 1994, as cited in Pearson, 1996; Time, 1948, as cited in Pearson, 1996).
Additionally, Red Cross volunteers contributed to racial inequalities by telling African American
refugees to “go back where [they] came from” as opposed to giving them aid (Nunn, 1994, as
cited in Pearson, 1996, p. 215).
The refugees created by the flood had an extremely limited number of places to go. As had
occurred prior to the construction of Vanport, local native African American residents who had
homes outside the housing project attempted to aid some refugees, but they were not enough
(Pearson, 1996). It is interesting that Vanport historians claim that African American refugees
were welcomed into White homes, but most African American survivors do not have such
memories. According to survivors, it was the African American community, with its already
limited resources prior to the flood, that attempted to aid African American refugees (Pearson,
1996; Portland’s Albina Community, 1993). In an attempt to deal with the refugees, city officials
moved them to an abandoned shipyard barracks on Swan Island. Of the refugees placed on the
island, African Americans outnumbered Whites by a ratio of nine to one, and many people were
forced to shelter near the water’s edge (The Observer, 1948, as cited in Pearson, 1996). Thomas
Johnson, a survivor of the Mississippi Flood of 1927, feared that his children would fall into the
river while playing around the edge of the island and proposed safety measures that were never
implemented (Journal, 1948c, as cited in Pearson, 1996). In the aftermath of the flood, those
African Americans that did remain in the area were again forced to live in segregated
neighborhoods where families paid disproportionate shares of their incomes for shelter,
contributing to “White flight” in surrounding neighborhoods (Bi-Monthly Report of the Urban
League, 1952; Pearson, 1996; Urban League Report, circa 1948). Lessons were not learned from
the Vanport experience. The politics of race and the resolve to never rebuild Vanport City
dispersed families to other locations.]
***Infrastructure***
Links – Vulnerability
Disaster relief efforts were planned and monitored carelessly resulting in
discrimination during the aftermath of Katrina.
Craemer, 10 (Evaluating Racial Disparities in Hurricane Katrina Relief Using Direct Trailer
Counts in New Orleans and FEMA records. Craemer, Thomas Public Administration Review;
May/Jun 2010; 70, 3; Sociological Abstracts pg. 367. Craemer is a professor and head of the
Department of Public Policy at the University of Connecticut)
The question of equitability in disaster relief and reconstruction ¶ is important beyond the
specific circumstances of New Orleans. Natural disasters are recurring events, and residential
clustering is the only condition under which disproportionate effects occur. This problem is
exacerbated if residential clusters differ socioeconomically, a condition that is far from unique to
New Orleans. Thus, the question of how to distinguish between preexisting inequality and
differential government relief is of general interest to public policy researchers. The implication
for practitioners is that color-blind policies may still have disparate racial impacts. The fact that
blind forces of nature can have disproportionate impacts suggests that color-blind relief efforts,
too, may lead to biased outcomes, even in situations in which discrimination is not intentional.
This requires that public policy practitioners plan and monitor disaster relief efforts more
carefully, and make data about the distribution of relief more readily available, than was the
case in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Portland Flood showed Racial inequality limits African Americans to high-risk
housing options, creating dire consequences in the flood situations.
Rivera, 07(Jason David Rivera, earned B.A. in History with a Minor in Political Science and a
Concentration in International Studies at Rowan University. Works for the Liberal Arts and
Sciences Institute at Rowan University as a Research Assistant. Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 37
No. 4. Continually Neglected: Situating Natural Disasters in the African American Experience
)
KS
Although under the guidelines of the Federal Housing Authority there was to be no segregation
when it came to housing, the local housing authority in Portland actively placed African
American workers in Vanport and another housing project named Guilds Lake. According to
MacColl (1980),
It [Vanport] was constructed so rapidly, however, that most of the housing units were
constructed poorly and, because of wartime rationing, built with inferior materials. The
apartments were small and cramped. According to one former resident, Vanport was never
more than a huge collection of “crackerbox houses strung together fast and cheap.” (as cited in
Pearson, 1996, pp. 96-97)
Additionally, Vanport was situated in low-lying, reclaimed swamps that caused the land to be
constantly muddy and attract insects and rodents; however crude and inhospitable, many
families did not complain about the housing conditions because of the extreme difficulty in
finding any housing (Pearson, 1996). Even when housing opened up within Portland’s city limits,
the local housing authority would encourage Whites to move in first (Pearson, 1996). By 1945,
newspapers were mentioning the living conditions for African Americans residing in Portland:
In Portland the Negro people are passively witnessing the development of a first rate ghetto
with all the potential for squalor, poverty, juvenile delinquency and crime. . . . It is obvious that
the herding of Negroes into the district extending from Russell Street to the Steel Bridge and
from Union Avenue to the river front portends economic and social problems of far reaching
significance for this city. (The Observer, 1945, as cited in Pearson, 1996, p. 215)
Although these practices and observations are clearly discriminating, it was not something
uncommon during the time period or a surprising response from an already racist White enclave
in reaction to an influx in the African American population.
In 1948, prior to the flood, the local housing authority estimated that in the event of an
emergency, it could find housing for no more than 1,500 people, and the Red Cross estimated it
could find emergency housing for another 7,500 people; however, these numbers would leave
more than half the population of Vanport with no place to live in the event of an emergency
(Maben, 1987; Pearson, 1996). During May 1948, the river level rose, worrying residents into
concerns about evacuations. Regardless of residents’ concerns and the rising river water, the
local housing authority posted bulletins on every door in Vanport stating that the project was
safe and in no imminent danger; the very next day, May 31, 1948, at 4:17 p.m., the river water
broke the dike, and within an hour the entire project of Vanport was submerged under 15 feet
of water (Pearson, 1996).]
At the time of the flood, many of the residents of Vanport were not at home; however, the
number of people that drowned has always been disputed (Pearson, 1996). The city’s coroner’s
office reported that only 15 people were killed in the flood (Maben, 1987; Pearson, 1996), but
local residents tell stories of grave diggers working overtime to bury victims (Pearson, 1996;
Portland’s Albina Community, 1993). In an effort to acknowledge the loss of life, city officials
proposed that only a limited number of bodies could be found because of them being carried
down river into the Pacific Ocean, but many former Vanport residents felt that city officials were
simply “withholding information” to avoid responsibility; some even believed that city officials
wanted the Vanport project destroyed anyway (Journal, 1948a, 1948b, as cited in Pearson,
1996; Oregonian, 1994, as cited in Pearson, 1996; Time, 1948, as cited in Pearson, 1996).
Additionally, Red Cross volunteers contributed to racial inequalities by telling African American
refugees to “go back where [they] came from” as opposed to giving them aid (Nunn, 1994, as
cited in Pearson, 1996, p. 215).
The refugees created by the flood had an extremely limited number of places to go. As had
occurred prior to the construction of Vanport, local native African American residents who had
homes outside the housing project attempted to aid some refugees, but they were not enough
(Pearson, 1996). It is interesting that Vanport historians claim that African American refugees
were welcomed into White homes, but most African American survivors do not have such
memories. According to survivors, it was the African American community, with its already
limited resources prior to the flood, that attempted to aid African American refugees (Pearson,
1996; Portland’s Albina Community, 1993). In an attempt to deal with the refugees, city officials
moved them to an abandoned shipyard barracks on Swan Island. Of the refugees placed on the
island, African Americans outnumbered Whites by a ratio of nine to one, and many people were
forced to shelter near the water’s edge (The Observer, 1948, as cited in Pearson, 1996). Thomas
Johnson, a survivor of the Mississippi Flood of 1927, feared that his children would fall into the
river while playing around the edge of the island and proposed safety measures that were never
implemented (Journal, 1948c, as cited in Pearson, 1996). In the aftermath of the flood, those
African Americans that did remain in the area were again forced to live in segregated
neighborhoods where families paid disproportionate shares of their incomes for shelter,
contributing to “White flight” in surrounding neighborhoods (Bi-Monthly Report of the Urban
League, 1952; Pearson, 1996; Urban League Report, circa 1948). Lessons were not learned from
the Vanport experience. The politics of race and the resolve to never rebuild Vanport City
dispersed families to other locations.]
Rural Citizens of color particularly experience an invisibility as victims during
natural disastersBassett 09 (Debra Lyn Basset, Basset is a Professor of Law at the University of Alabama,
“Chapter 2, The overlooked significance of place in law and policy: Lessons from Hurricane
Katrina,” in Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina, Robert D. Bullard
and Beverly Wright [Editors]) ta
[Race, place, and poverty-even when taken individually, our society has little desire to acknowledge, much less fully
address, any of these three issues. Each of the populations embodying these issues-minorities, the rural, and the poor is itself the subject of neglect and disrespect. The addition of each successive disrespected population correspondingly
reduces society's interest even further, rendering the population encompassed by all three of these issues-minorities
living in rural poverty not just powerless, but genuinely forgotten to the point of invisibility. ¶ This phenomenon was
painfully evident in the aftermath of Katrina. The media's attention was focused on urban areas, and particularly on
New Orleans. And perhaps that focus was eminently reasonable in light of the sheer number of people affected by the
flooding. My point is the "invisibility" point: that minorities living in rural poverty are unseen, and that this invisibility
is not only a function of race and class. "Rural" adds another factor-another devalued factor. We saw poor black faces
on our television screens after Katrina. But we did not tend to see poor black rural faces. Many people seemed
surprised that those stranded by Katrina were largely poor and black, because we do not see those who are poor and
black as a general matter. But the addition of the rural factor heightens invisibility even further-even though, as
explained in one recent study, rural residents represented the majority of the population affected by Hurricane Katrina
in the state of Mississippi (Saenz and ¶ Peacock 2006). ¶ About 38 percent of Katrina's rural disaster area population
was African American. Forty percent of those African Americans lived in poverty. ¶ rate of white urban residents.
African Americans were also less likely to be homeowners, more likely to own mobile homes, less likely to have a
telephone, and nearly four times more likely to lack a car (Saenz and Peacock 2006). ¶ Indeed, instead of the five-day
wait experienced by survivors in New Orleans and criticized throughout the nation as being unreasonable and
outrageous-the wait experienced by rural survivors stretched into weeks. The same lack of attention to rural areas
recurred during Hurricane Rita, where the anticipatory focus was a worry about the urban areas of Houston and New
Orleans. Hurricane Rita's impact was greatest in rural, rather than urban, communities-and perhaps for that reason, its
impact was, and largely continues to be, overlooked. ¶ Despite the preference in our laws and policies to avoid placespecific references, place in fact puts some citizens at higher risks during natural disasters and makes them less able to
recover from such disasters. In what ways are rural areas hampered by their place in the context of natural disasters? In
addition to higher rates of poverty, in addition to their general invisibility, in addition to the often reduced availability
of technology, communication, and transportation, remote rural areas are also hampered by other disadvantages
stemming from their place. For example, many remote rural areas have unpaved dirt roads rather than superhighways,
which can hinder evacuation efforts. Another disadvantage is that due to the dispersion and lower population densities
of remote rural areas, attempts to centralize efforts-whether at the warning stage, the evacuation stage, or the remedy
stage-do not tend to work effectively in rural areas due to the dispersion of fewer people over greater distances and the
related transportation issues. The physical and social isolation, and lack of transportation, in many rural communities
serves as a major barrier to the delivery of aid to these localities. ] 54-55
The government turned its attention away from the importance of hurricane
and flooding protection, leading to fatal consequences.
Giroux, 06 (Henry A. Giroux. Global Television Network Chair and Professor in the English and
Cultural Studies Department at McMaster University in Canada. Researches cultural studies,
youth studies, critical pedagogy, popular culture, media studies, social theory, and the politics of
higher and public education. Wrote Border Crossings, Schooling and Struggle for Public Life,
Take Back Higher Education: Race, Youth, and the Crisis of Democracy in the Post Civil Rights
Era, The Terror of Neoliberalism, and The Abandoned Generation: Democracy Beyond the
Culture of Fear. Chapter 1: Katrina and the Biopolitics of Disposability, Stormy Weather.
Paradigm Publishers. Pg, 38)KS
{The weeks and months leading up to Hurricane Katrina were more of the same. The White
house focused on a multi-trillion-dollar plan to privatize Social Security, and a plan to repeal the
federal estate tax. Meanwhile, as the Financial Times reported, the President proposed a
budget that "called for a $71.2 million reduction in federal funding for hurricane and flood
prevention proj- ects in the New Orleans district, the largest such cut ever proposed." In
addition, "the administra- tion wanted to shelve a study aimed at determin- ing ways to protect
New Orleans from a Category 5 hurricane." This, in the face of a March 2005 report by the
American Society of Civil Engineers that warned 3,500 dams were at risk of failing unless the
government spent $10 billion to fix them.98
President Bush did not address questions about the lack of proper funding for the levees.
Instead, he played dumb and, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, came up with
one ofthe most incred- ible soundbites of his career: "I don't think anyone anticipated the
breach of the levees."99 In fact, Bush was briefed the day before Katrina hit and
emphatically warned by a number of disaster officials that the levees could breach-a position
Bush, of course, later denied.100}
Local evacuation plans failed because few steps were taken to assist vulnerable
populations
Bullard 09. Robert D. Bullard et al (Glenn S. Johnson and Angel O. Torres). 2009. Race, place,
and environmental justice after Hurricane Katrina. Pgs 63-87. Bullard is a Ware distinguished
professor of sociologyand director of the environmental justice resource center at Clark Atlanta
University. Johnson is a research associate in the Environmental Justice Resource Center and
associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Clark Atlanta
Newspaper. He is co-editor of Just Transportation: Dismantling Race and Class Barriers to
Mobility and Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Rquity. Torres us a
GIS Training Specialist with the Environmental Justice reource Center at Clark Atlanta University.
He co-edited Mobility and Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Rquity
[The National Council on Disability (2006) reports that local evacuation plans during Katrina
failed to adequately provide for the transportation needs of people with disabilities for two
reasons. First, many local planners. reported they were unaware that people with disabilities
have special evacuation needs. second, when local planners were aware of the need to plan for
people with disabilities, the plans failed because people with disabilities had not been involved
in their developments
A 2007 study commissioned by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) office of civil Rights
found that most of the transit agencies as well as the metropolitan planning organization and
state departments of transportation surveyed had taken limited steps to address the needs of
vulnerable populations in an emergency; these same agencies have not thoroughly identified
the transportation-disadvantaged populations within their areas, and they do not routinely or
systematically address their needs (Milligan and Company 2007,42]). 77
The vulnerable populations of New Orleans had no means of escaping, and did
not have it easy after the storm
Khan 09 (Mafruza, “The Color of Opportunity and the Future of New Orleans: Planning,
Rebuilding, and Social Inclusion After Hurricane Katrina,” Race, Place, and Environmental Justice
After Hurricane Katrina, Robert Bullard and Beverly Wright [Editors], Chapter 10) CA
[Hurricane Katrina hit a region with significant pre-existing economic disparities and a large
vulnerable population that historically has had little or no power in institutional decision making
due to racial and/or class bias. When the levees broke and New Orleans flooded, poor people of
color, the elderly, and the infirm were trapped and had no means of escaping. Not surprisingly,
these populations were the most vulnerable and bore a disproportionate impact of the
devastation wrought by Katrina.¶ At the same time, while the overall population in New Orleans
has decreased by 34 percent since the hurricane, the percentage of vulnerable individuals living
in the Gulf Coast has increased by a dramatic 154 percent (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
2006).] p. 209 ¶
Local evacuation plans failed because few steps were taken to assist vulnerable
disabled populations
Johnson and Torres 2009 (Race, place, and environmental justice after Hurricane
Katrina. Robert D. Bullard Ed. Pgs 63-87. Glenn S. Johnson, Research assoc,
Environmental Justice Resource Center & Prof Sociology and Criminal Justice at
Clark Atlanta U and in the Department of Newspaper. Angel O. Torres is a GIS
Training Specialist with the Environmental Justice resource Center at Clark
Atlanta U)
The National Council on Disability (2006) reports that local evacuation plans during Katrina failed
to adequately provide for the transportation needs of people with disabilities for two reasons.
First, many local planners. reported they were unaware that people with disabilities have special
evacuation needs. second, when local planners were aware of the need to plan for people with
disabilities, the plans failed because people with disabilities had not been involved in their
developments
A 2007 study commissioned by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) office of civil Rights
found that most of the transit agencies as well as the metropolitan planning organization and
state departments of transportation surveyed had taken limited steps to address the needs of
vulnerable populations in an emergency; these same agencies have not thoroughly identified
the transportation-disadvantaged populations within their areas, and they do not routinely or
systematically address their needs (Milligan and Company 2007,42]). 77
Racialized and classed rebuilding programs came at the expense of poor
people’s basic transportation infrastructure needs.
Bullard 09.
Robert D. Bullard et al (Glenn S. Johnson and Angel O. Torres). 2009. Race, place, and environmental justice after Hurricane
Katrina.. Bullard is a Ware distinguished professor of sociology and director of the environmental justice resource center at Clark Atlanta University.
Johnson is a research associate in the Environmental Justice Resource Center and associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal
Justice at Clark Atlanta Newspaper. He is co-editor of Just Transportation: Dismantling Race and Class Barriers to Mobility and Highway Robbery:
Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity. Torres us a GIS Training Specialist with the Environmental Justice resource Center at Clark Atlanta
University. He co-edited Mobility and Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity
In pondering the question of how to measure the recovery of a city further, we realize that one's
response depends upon one's perspective. It is clear that race and place greatly determine
personal ability to recover from Katrina and color a personal view of recovery. Communities
least affected by the storm tend to have larger percentages of white residents. These
communities are also more likely to describe the recovery as satisfactory. While these areas
received less damage, they have also benefited the most from federal dollars for recovery. Flood
insurance claims were ignored"
leading to a large concentration of hazardous mitigation dollars flowing into these areas.
Because of this, these areas are well on the way to a full recovery.
The Lower Ninth Ward and New Orleans East are further behind. Streetlights are not in service
in all areas, and lights on Interstate 1 0 in some areas of these communities function only
sporadically. Most schools remain closed three years after the storm, and supermarkets have
not returned in adequate numbers to service these predominantly African-American areas.
Federal and local New Orleans reconstruction programs are structurally raced
and classed: Post Katrina, residential segregation sharply increased.
Bullard 09.
Robert D. Bullard et al (Glenn S. Johnson and Angel O. Torres). 2009. Race, place, and environmental justice after Hurricane
Katrina.. Bullard is a Ware distinguished professor of sociology and director of the environmental justice resource center at Clark Atlanta University.
Johnson is a research associate in the Environmental Justice Resource Center and associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal
Justice at Clark Atlanta Newspaper. He is co-editor of Just Transportation: Dismantling Race and Class Barriers to Mobility and Highway Robbery:
Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity. Torres us a GIS Training Specialist with the Environmental Justice resource Center at Clark Atlanta
University. He co-edited Mobility and Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity
[August 29, 2008, marked the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Recovery and
reconstruction over the tumultuous three years have been mixed and uneven. There has been a
slow but steady return of individuals and families to the city. Repopulation of New Orleans is
tied more to who has resources, including financial settlements of housing and insurance claims,
transportation, and employment. Thousands of native New Orleanians who were displaced by
Hurricane Katrina, most of whom are black and poor, still have a desire to return home but lack
the resources. The shortage of low-income and affordable rental housing will keep most of
these evacuees from returning (Bullard 2007).
Many of the families fall into the category of internally displaced persons-not refugees (Kromm
and Sturgis 2008). For some, the evacuation via bus, plane, and train set in motion their
permanent displacement. To ensure that this "black diaspora" is complete, numerous obstacles
have been erected in their way, such as the demolition of public housing, failure to rebuild
working-class housing that was destroyed by the storm and flood, loss of small minority
businesses, lack of clean-up of contamination and toxic hot spots left by receding floodwaters,
and spotty efforts to target federal rebuilding funds to hard-hit mostly black areas of the city.]
New Orleans' African-American neighborhoods were redlined before Katrina.
Bullard 09.
Robert D. Bullard et al (Glenn S. Johnson and Angel O. Torres). 2009. Race, place, and environmental justice after Hurricane
Katrina.. Bullard is a Ware distinguished professor of sociology and director of the environmental justice resource center at Clark Atlanta University.
Johnson is a research associate in the Environmental Justice Resource Center and associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal
Justice at Clark Atlanta Newspaper. He is co-editor of Just Transportation: Dismantling Race and Class Barriers to Mobility and Highway Robbery:
Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity. Torres us a GIS Training Specialist with the Environmental Justice resource Center at Clark Atlanta
University. He co-edited Mobility and Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity
Redlining by banks, insurance, and commercial businesses has accelerated since the stormkilling black areas. Although it is illegal, it is still practiced. Large swaths of neighborhood have
been racially redlined-with little commercial or business activity even though many of the
former residents have returned.
Katrina increased competition for housing-placing a special burden on black renters and black
home buyers seeking replacement housing--exposing them to housing discrimination. Black New
Orleanians have always faced housing discrimination. This is a fact of life in the South, but the
housing shortages in post-Katrina New Orleans have allowed housing discrimination to run
rampant-causing African-American Katrina survivors to spend more time, more effort, and more
money than whites in their search for replacement housing.
Hurricanes and floods marginalize already marginalized populations. In the post¬Katrina stage,
storm survivors who are lucky enough to make it back home are exposed to home repair scams,
banking and insurance redlining, and predatory lending articles
Local and regional service providers racialized their recovery plans – Sewage
and water systems prove.
Bullard 09.
Robert D. Bullard et al (Glenn S. Johnson and Angel O. Torres). 2009. Race, place, and environmental justice after Hurricane
Katrina.. Bullard is a Ware distinguished professor of sociology and director of the environmental justice resource center at Clark Atlanta University.
Johnson is a research associate in the Environmental Justice Resource Center and associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal
Justice at Clark Atlanta Newspaper. He is co-editor of Just Transportation: Dismantling Race and Class Barriers to Mobility and Highway Robbery:
Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity. Torres us a GIS Training Specialist with the Environmental Justice resource Center at Clark Atlanta
University. He co-edited Mobility and Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity
[Racial geography plays out in service recovery. Those areas least flooded received service more
quickly than flooded areas. It should be no surprise that black areas were more flooded than
white areas. While the Lower Ninth was one of heaviest damaged areas from floodwaters, it was
the last neighborhood whose tap water was given a clean bill of health. Telephone service is still
a challenge, requiring residents to expend more time and resources to get reconnected. On the
average, connection of nondigital phone service takes 30 days. Compare this to an
approximately three day wait before Katrina.
The problems of the city's Sewerage and Water Board, with its crumbling infrastructure, are
serious. The underground system of pipes is very old and riddled with holes. Before Katrina, it
was not unusual to see broken water lines with water gushing out into the streets. Three years
after the storm, the city loses millions of gallons of water daily. It will take billions of dollars to
repair the system. While New Orleans residents presently have clean running water and flushing
toilets, plumbing is a very lucrative business in the city these days-making unsuspecting
homeowners easy prey to scams and rip-off artists disguised as plumbers, electricians, and
contractors.
The word in the city is, "There are only two types of houses in New Orleans; houses wit h
plumbing problems and houses that will have plumbing problems. The city’s drainage system in
many areas, is still clogged with debris from Katrina, causing street flooding during heavy rainfall
in areas that were not problematic before the storm. But, we have still made tremendous
progress.]
Prison Abuse
Pre-trail detainees, arrested for petty charges, were abandoned and abused by
local police during Hurricane Katrina.
Sage 07 [ June 26 2007 ‘Abandoned and Abused: Prisoners in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina’
Sage Publications ]
The term ‘Orleans Parish Prison’ refers not to a single jail building but rather to a set of some
twelve buildings: Central Lock-Up, the Community Correctional Center (CCC), Conchetta, Fisk
Work Release, the House of Detention (HOD), the Old Parish Prison, South White Street and
Templeman buildings I through V. The jail buildings are all located in downtown New Orleans, in
an area commonly called Mid-City. Before Katrina, OPP housed nearly 6,500 individuals on an
average day. Although New Orleans is only the thirty-fifth most populous city in the United
States, this made OPP the ninth largest local jail.4 OPP housed even more people than the
notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, which at 18,000 acres is the largest prison in
the United States. With a pre-Katrina incarceration rate of 1,480
prisoners per 100,000 residents, New Orleans had the highest incarceration rate of any large city
in the United States – double that of the United States as a whole, the country with the highest
national incarceration rate in the world.5 Most of the prisoners at OPP at the time of Hurricane
Katrina were pre-trial detainees, meaning they had not been convicted of any crime.
Approximately 670 were women and two facilities, the Conchetta Youth Center (CYC) and the
Youth Study Center (YSC), held juveniles. Children who were being tried as adults were housed
alongside adult prisoners. Moreover, 60 per cent of OPP’s population on any given day was
made up of men and women arrested on attachments, traffic violations or municipal charges6 –
typically for parking violations, public drunkenness or failure to pay a fine. Under Louisiana’s
code of criminal procedure, any defendant who is convicted of a crime is liable for all costs
incurred in the trial.7 According to one local attorney, this ‘creates a cycle of incarceration
where poor people are routinely sent back to jail for no other offense, except that they couldn’t
pay their fines and fees’.8 Some of the prisoners who were in OPP during the storm were there
simply because of unpaid fines and fees. Were still being held months after the storm, lost in a
dysfunctional criminal justice system that was virtually destroyed by Katrina. For example, Greg
Davis was in OPP during the storm and was released in March 2006 only after law students from
the Criminal Defense Clinic at Tulane Law School took on his case. When the law students met
Greg Davis, he had no idea why he was still being held in prison. The reason: $448 in overdue
court fines.9 The overcrowding at OPP at the time of the storm was exacerbated by its housing
of nearly two thousand state prisoners on behalf of Louisiana’s Department of Corrections
(DOC), which reportedly pays Sheriff Gusman $24.39 per day per state prisoner housed at
OPP,10 $2.00 more than the city of New Orleans pays Sheriff Gusman for housing its own
prisoners.11 Because state prisoners represent a source of income, local sheriffs have an
incentive to make bed space available to them, either through expansion of prison buildings or
creative housing arrangements. OPP has a long history of cruelty and neglect toward its
prisoners. In 1969, a prisoner named Louis Hamilton filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of all
of the individuals in OPP regarding their living conditions at the jail. In 1994, women prisoners
filed a separate lawsuit. They complained that they were kept shackled while in labour and one
female prisoner alleged that she was denied a gynaecological examination despite the fact that
she bled for thirty days after giving birth.12 Juveniles housed in OPP’s CYC faced similar
problems to the adult prisoners. In 1993, the Youth Law Center filed a lawsuit on behalf of CYC
juveniles, alleging that they were physically abused, denied educational programmes and
medical and mental health care, housed in unsafe environmental conditions and denied visits.13
In June 2004, two OPP deputies allegedly beat to death a man named Mark Jones after he was
picked up for public drunkenness. A number of OPP prisoners have also died in recent years
from medical conditions that appear to be entirely treatable. In October 2004, an OPP prisoner
died of a ruptured peptic ulcer. According to the Orleans parish coroner, the man probably
writhed in agony for twelve hours before his death.14 OPP has also had major problems with
the provision of mental health care. In 2001, a young man named Shawn Duncan entered OPP
on traffic charges. Identified as suicidal, Duncan was placed in HOD’s mental health tier. During
his seven days at OPP, Shawn Duncan was twice placed in five-point restraints: in a bed, his arms
were strapped down at his wrists, his legs strapped down at his ankles and a leather belt was
strapped across his waist, completely immobilising him. The second time he was placed in
restraints, he was left largely unsupervised for forty-two hours and died of dehydration. Less
than two years later, another suicidal OPP prisoner died while restrained in the same cell where
Shawn Duncan died. Hurricane Katrina exposed the deep racial divisions that have long existed
in New Orleans, which is one of the most segregated metropolitan areas in the country.15 Its
criminal justice system reflects this fact, from the disproportionate targeting of AfricanAmerican residents by its police department to the over-incarceration of African-Americans in
its jail. The New Orleans Police Department (NOPD), in particular, has a longstanding history of
racism and brutality. In 1980, a mob of white cops rampaged through a black section of the city
in retaliation for the murder of a police officer, killing four people and injuring as many as fifty.
According to reports, people were tortured and dragged into the swamps to face mock
executions. In 1990, a black man accused of killing a white officer was beaten to death by
officers who had gathered to wait for him at the hospital to which he was transported; no
officers were criminally prosecuted or administratively sanctioned. These incidents, which
would be termed a race riot and a lynching if performed by private citizens, are merely the most
sensational examples of the department’s racially discriminatory practices. Institutional racism
and the targeting of African-Americans by the NOPD have resulted in the over-incarceration of
African-Americans in OPP. Although Orleans parish itself was 66.6 per cent black prior to
Hurricane Katrina, almost 90 per cent of the OPP population was black. Racial considerations
pervade every aspect of the OPP story, from the administrative decision not to evacuate the
prison population to the mistreatment of individual prisoners in the weeks that followed. There
is no reliable count of the number of people in OPP on the day Hurricane Katrina hit but,
according to the Sheriff ’s statistics, there were 6,375 prisoners held.16 More than 300 of these
had been arrested and booked in the preceding three days, when the city of New Orleans and
the state of Louisiana were under states of emergency. One man was arrested five days before
the storm for allegedly having failed to pay an old debt of $100 in fines and fees.17 He was
assigned to Unit B-2, where he spent several days before the storm, sleeping in the common
area. He reports that the riot squad came through the tier to put everyone on lockdown. He was
placed in a cell with seven other people. ‘They maced our whole cell twice while locking us up
for asking when they would let us out.’ On the Sunday before the storm, many of the prisoners
had watched Sheriff Gusman’s televised announcement that they would not be evacuated but
would instead remain in the prison. But OPP was horribly ill-prepared for Hurricane Katrina. The
emergency operations plan that the Sheriff was relying on either did not exist, was inadequate
to provide guidance to staff and prisoners or was ineptly executed. Soon after Hurricane Katrina
hit New Orleans, the OPP buildings lost power. Prisoners spent their nights in total darkness, in
conditions that were growing increasingly foul due to the lack of ventilation and sanitation, and
the presence of chest-deep floodwaters on the lower levels of the prison buildings. Many
prisoners remained locked in their cells with bodily waste flowing out of the non-functioning
toilets. The jail became unbearably hot, which made it difficult for many inmates to breathe.
Female prisoners in Conchetta and Templeman IV, and male prisoners housed on some floors of
HOD, report that deputies largely remained on duty following Katrina. However, hundreds of
prisoners report that deputies from other buildings abandoned their posts during and after the
storm. Floodwaters began to enter the lower levels of the OPP buildings on Monday 29 August,
2005. On the first floor of Templeman II, prisoners saw water seeping into the dorm through
drainage holes in the floor. One prisoner recalls: Before I knew it my bottom bunk was
underneath water. At this point I knew for sure the deputies was nowhere in the building. . . .
No food for us to eat. Finally a female deputy came by we shouted to her about our conditions.
She than replied there’s nothing we can do because there’s water everywhere and she left. At
this point water had risen to at least 4 ft deep. I thought for sure I would never see freedom
again Many of the women in Templeman IV were being held on minor offences, such as
prostitution or simple drug possession. When water began to enter the building, it quickly rose
to chest-level, forcing the women to climb onto the second and third levels of their triplestacked bunk beds. One female prisoner reports: ‘[w]omen were made to urinate and deficate
over the sides of the beds into the water; the water was well over the toilet seats.’19 A prisoner
in Unit A-1 explains that the water was five to six feet deep by the time prison officials returned
to free the prisoners from their locked cells. ‘Inmates were on the top bunk in their cells trying
to escape the water. Due to the water the cell doors short circuited. The staff had to use long
hammers to try in force the doors open. It was a race against time!’ 20 Although the
contingency plan called for stockpiling enough food and potable water to last ninety-six hours,
nearly every prisoner with whom we spoke reports going days after the storm without receiving
either. In Templeman III, prisoners received no food after their Sunday night meal, according to
deputies.21 ‘People were still locked in lower cells screaming for us to help. There was no
guards in the control booths, no food, no water, lights, or medical attention.’ 22 With no water
to drink, many of the prisoners resorted to drinking the contaminated floodwater. Tensions
began to rise among the prisoners as conditions inside the prison buildings deteriorated and
deputies abandoned their posts. In Old Parish Prison, one prisoner explains that: there were
about 48 to 56 inmates located in one cell designed for 21 inmates. There was no water, food,
or air. Inmates began to be upset setting fires to plastic or whatever they could find to burn
through the double plated glass to allow some type of air to circulate on the floor [I]nmates had
reached a level of frustration at that point they began to destroy the cell breaking through the
chicken wire just to be able to move around, ripping the light fixtures from the ceiling to
attempt to break windows and with the stress level being so high fights began to break out and
the material that was ripped from the cell were at this time weapons.23 Many of the prisoners
began to believe that they had been abandoned. Prisoners in some buildings began to look for
ways out of the flooded buildings. Prisoners also hung signs outside of windows and set signal
fires in order to get help. One prisoner writes that, when he saw a news helicopter several days
after the storm, he and another prisoner hung a sign saying ‘HELP NO FOOD DYING’.24 Left
unsupervised, some of the prisoners were able to open their cells and free others. One recalled
that: ‘If it wasn’t for inmates somehow getting my cell open I probably would have died.’ 25 In
several buildings, prisoners tied bed sheets together to lower themselves out of broken
windows so that they could jump to safety in the water below. Deputy Reed, who was on the
mezzanine level of HOD, where he was stationed to watch for escapes, describes ‘people getting
shot by snipers around the jail. It looked like people were getting picked off.’ 26 Many prisoners
and deputies report seeing prisoners hanging from the rolls of razor wire lining the fences that
surround the facility. According to Ace Martin, a Templeman III prisoner: ‘One guy jumped out
of the hole and they shot him . . . He fell on a barbed-wire fence. They picked him up in a boat
and told us to stay in the hole or we’d be shot.’ 27 Sheriff Gusman has consistently stated that
there were no deaths at OPP during the storm and the subsequent evacuation.28 However,
several deputies and many prisoners report witnessing deaths at the jail. The evacuation finally
begins Prisoners went days without food, water or medical attention before officers from the
Angola state penitentiary arrived at OPP to begin an evacuation by boat. The process took over
three days and appears to have been completed at some point on Thursday evening or early
Friday. Boats dropped the prisoners off a short distance from the Interstate 10 on-ramp and
prisoners then waded through chest-deep water until they were able to get to the dry portions
of the Broad Street Overpass that rises above the Interstate. Thousands of prisoners were
eventually transferred to the Overpass, where they were placed in rows and were ordered to
remain seated back-to-back. They remained there anywhere from several hours to several days.
Sitting on the hot asphalt, prisoners began suffering from dehydration and heat exhaustion; and
they were assaulted by guards when they attempted to stand to go to the bathroom or ask for
food or water. Robie Waganfeald was arrested several days before the storm on a charge of
public intoxication; in a letter written to his father, he states that he sat in the sun on the
Overpass for ten hours with ‘no water and with National Guardsmen threatening to shoot
people. Some got hit with rubber bullets, others with pepper spray. It was the most humiliating,
unjustifiable thing I’ve ever seen.’ 29 Among those held on the Overpass were juveniles, some of
whom also witnessed excessive use of force. One 17-year-old states: One man was maced and
beat up really badly. His head was busted . . . They let the dogs loose on that man . . . The dogs
were biting him all over. They told people they would kill them if they moved . . . The worst
thing I saw was the guards beating that man while everyone was just sitting there. . . . Those
people need to go to jail or something. 30 There are also reports of youth being maced by
guards. One boy writes: ‘When [we] were shackled it was ten youth shackled together. [Another
boy] slipped out his handcuffs so they maced him and since we were all shackled together, the
other kids basically got maced too.’ 31 Another boy states: ‘Guards did not really care about us.
[One] kid got maced requesting water. Some kids were too weak to act, or do anything for
themselves.’ 32 In the five days before the storm, now-Chief Judge David Bell of the Orleans
Parish Juvenile Court issued orders releasing those pre-trial juveniles who were held in Orleans
Parish detention centres and were not deemed threats to society. Those release orders appear
not to have been executed and, to this day, it is still unclear how many children were detained in
OPP at the time of the storm.33 Abuses continue at other sites From Interstate 10, OPP
evacuees were bussed to prisons and jails throughout Louisiana. Most female prisoners were
sent directly to Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, while thousands of men were
transported to the undamaged Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel, Louisiana. There,
many of the OPP evacuees were consolidated onto a single field surrounded by a fence. Armed
guards watched over the prisoners from towers and from behind the fence. The guards
established a gun line along the length of the fence which prisoners were not permitted to
cross. Prisoners were not separated by offence. Pre-trial prisoners arrested on public
intoxication charges were held side-by-side with convicted felons. Municipal, state and federal
prisoners were also mixed together on a single field. Prisoners who were previously housed, for
good reason, in protective custody were suddenly placed on the field with no protection at all.
Given their sheer numbers, the evacuees found themselves sitting on a powder keg. Violence
broke out all over the large yard at Hunt. One man writes that on the yard, ‘people [were]
getting stabbed for they food and the guards just let it happen. Guys were constantly fighting
and stabbing each other up all day we could not really sleep because we had to watch ourselves
all the time.’ 34 Instead of intervening to control the prisoners, Hunt guards remained outside
the fence. Ronnie Lee Morgan, Jr, recounts how a fellow evacuee, like him a federal inmate in
protective custody, was wary of entering the yard ‘because he could see his enemies out there.
He walked onto the yard and got stabbed all over his face. Blood was like a waterfall out of his
face. He ran to the guards and they shot at him and then stripped him of his clothes. . . . I don’t
know if he lived or what, but he was pretty bad off.’ 35 Another man reports that after he was
stabbed on his left wrist by another prisoner, ‘I went for help [and] the guards pointed their
guns at me and told me to leave or I would be shot at.’ 36 Although OPP evacuees were handed
a sandwich when they first arrived at Hunt, food was delivered more haphazardly after the men
were placed on the yard. Hunt guards threw bags of sandwiches over the fence into the crowd
and hungry prisoners fought one another for food. One man writes: ‘When we was finally given
food they took bags with one or two sandwiches and threw them over a barbed wire fence, and
you had to fight for it like dogs. If you didn’t eat, you just went hungry.’37 One 53-year-old man,
held on a parole violation, reports: ‘Most of us older guys did without food and water while
there because guys was fighting, cutting each other, the deputies was just looking and laughing.
They were throwing sandwiches in the crowd like they were in New Orleans, at the Mardi Gras!’
38 From the yard at Hunt, prisoners were transported to a number of other facilities, where
many experienced racism. Vincent Norman, who had been arrested on 24 August 2005 on a
warrant for failure to appear in court and a $100 fine, was brought to the Ouachita Correctional
Center, where he suffered what he called ‘horrendous treatment’. ‘Ouachita was a reminder of
the old South,’ he says. I was exposed to overt racism, called racial slurs and subjected to
physical and mental anguish. I saw segregation and outright inhumane events. . . . They
wouldn’t talk to the inmates, and if we asked questions we would be maced or beanbagged. . . .
I’ve never experienced blatant racism – never seen it like that. After going through what I’ve
been through I wonder if I’ll ever be the same. They used to set the food trays on the floor and
we would have to pick it up from there. I asked why they did that and they said we were like
monkeys and that’s what you do with animals at the zoo. . . . I was in jail for almost four months
on a $100 fine that I didn’t even know I had to pay.39 Business as usual After the waters
receded, Sheriff Gusman quickly began the process of refilling OPP. When much of the city was
still assessing whether it was safe to return to flood-ravaged areas, the Sheriff was moving
people back into the jail, without putting into place the most basic safeguards for the health and
well-being of the men and women housed there. It is not difficult to understand why the Sheriff
quickly reopened the facility and returned prisoners to his jail: the Sheriff ’s office receives large
payments for housing federal prisoners.40 This may explain why thousands of local prisoners
charged with minor offences languished for months in state facilities without access to counsel
and without any chance of appearing in court, while federal prisoners were among the first to
be returned to OPP following the hurricane. The return of prisoners to OPP also provided the
Sheriff with the labour force that his office has long offered for private hire at the minimum
wage.41 From these wages, the Sheriff would deduct living expenses, travel expenses, support
costs of the prisoners’ dependants and payment of the prisoners’ debts, with any remaining
money going to the prisoner. If anything, Hurricane Katrina has accelerated the jail’s
exploitation of prison labourers. After the hurricane struck, Sheriff Gusman promised to make
prisoners available to assist in the recovery. Given the fact that the majority of prisoners had yet
to be convicted or were convicted of minor offences, this use of prisoners amounts to modern
slavery – or a throwback to the notoriously racist convict-lease and state-use prison labour
systems that proliferated in the South after Reconstruction. A disregard for dignity Like many of
the stories that came out of Katrina, the story of the prisoners at Orleans Parish Prison is one of
survival. With few exceptions, the prisoners held in OPP in the wake of Hurricane Katrina took
care of one another. They worked to free fellow prisoners trapped in cells filled with
contaminated floodwaters, watched out for the frail and sick, as well as for juveniles too small
to stand in the water without help. Without food, water, light, or ventilation for days, the
response of the prisoners to chaotic, terrifying conditions was remarkable. Many of the stories
are also about racially motivated animosity on the part of prison officials, while all of the stories
are about the blatant disregard for the dignity that was owed to each man, woman and child
trapped in OPP during and after the storm. The stories in this report are not, however, simply
about survival. Rather, they are stories of a criminal justice system that has had serious
problems for a very long time. The abuse of prisoners at OPP and the inattention paid to their
basic needs existed long before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. Likewise, the damage
caused by the storm only revealed how infirm Louisiana’s indigent defence system already was.
It is important that these stories are told, so that they are not forgotten. It is also important so
that the mistakes chronicled in this report are never repeated.
Structural violence – police state
New Orleans devastated by Katrina revealed “Bagdad Under Water” - Impacts
of Structural violence
Bargeron 2009 "Hurricane Katrina." American Decades: 2000-2009. Ed. Eric Bargeron and
James F. Tidd, Jr. Detroit: Gale, 2011. 218-220. Gale U.S. History In Context. Bargeron is a history
professor at the University of South Carolina. James F. Tidd, Jr. is the Pipeline Manager for
Bruccoli Clark Layman, Inc.
In New Orleans, where many vulnerable citizens had attempted to weather the storm in homes
or designated shelters such as the Superdome or convention center, more than 25,000 people
spent six terrifying days in the Superdome. Most of them were old, sick, or simply too poor to
leave the city. Days went by without electricity. The generators ran out of fuel, and the Superdome became sweltering, dark, and dangerous. Deaths and incidents of rape occurred while
people waited to evacuate. Hospitals, too, lost power, and nurses and doctors attempted to
keep patients alive with hand ventilators, food from vending machines, and dwindling supplies
of bottled water. New Orleansʼs streets became rivers filled with sewage, chemicals, and debris.
In some cases, people were forced to tear through their roofs hoping to be spotted by passing
helicopters. Across the city, looters broke into stores and restaurants, some in desperate search
for food and supplies, while others seized an opportunity to steal merchandise. At the same
time, millions watched the horrific events unfold and wondered how camera crews and news
commentators had reached the city while federal and state relief organizations failed to bring
assistance. Former Louisiana senator John Breaux labeled the city “Baghdad under water.” In
hospitals, homes, shelters, and the streets, corpses began to pile up.
Hurricane Katrina was worse than September 11th in terms of damage.
El-Ghobashy, ‘05(Tamer El-Ghobashy, New York Daily News reporter from outside the
Superdome in New Orleans. Interviewed by Amy Goodman, September 2, 2005. Daily News
Reporter in New Orleans: Scope of Destruction Much Worse Than 9/11,
http://www.democracynow.org/2005/9/2/daily_news_reporter_in_new_orleans, transcript)
{TAMER EL-GHOBASHY: Well, I mean, as far as the — I would have to say that this is much worse
in terms of the scope of the destruction. Ground zero was confined to a portion of the city that,
compared to the portion of the city that’s affected here, is a very small area in lower
Manhattan, although the — I was not here for the hurricane I can’t say that I ever really — I did
not see the destruction occur, although I did, on some level, see it occur downtown in New York.
But this is — this aftermath and the human toll in this case is in my opinion much worse.}
Police Enforcement of Structural Inequity Became a Police State
Attack on the Poor
Use of military personnel and a low tolerance for any other help lead to New
Orleans becoming the site of a military operation rather than a city in need of
help
Giroux, 06 (Henry Giroux, English Professor and cultural studies department at McMaster university
in Canada, 2006, Stormy Weather, Katrina and the Politics of Disposability)
Within a few days, New Orleans was under martial law occupied by nearly 65,000 U.S. military
personnel. Images of thousands of desperate and poor blacks gave way to pictures of squads of
combat-ready troops and soldiers with mounted bayonets canvassing houses in order to remove
stranded civilians. Embedded journalists now traveled with soldiers on Humvees, armored
carriers, and military helicopters in downtown U.S.A What had begun as a botched rescue
operation by the federal government was transformed into a military operation. Brian
Williams, reporting on MSNBC, commented that "[i)t is impossible to over-emphasize the extent
to which this area [New Orleans) is under government occupation, and portions of it under
government-enforced lockdown. Police cars rule the streets."137 Pg. 56
Militarization becomes violent Authoritarianism
Giroux, 06 (Henry Giroux, English Professor and cultural studies department at McMaster university
in Canada, 2006, Stormy Weather, Katrina and the Politics of Disposability)
A rebuilt New Orleans will attract very few of the minorities of class and color who left the
city, and if it does they will be living in trailers, housing projects, and run-down hotel rooms
serving the needs of the rich who will either live in or visit this new Disneyfied resort site.153
The militarization of New Orleans is also instructive in that it suggests a link between Iraq and
New Orleans, both of which point to war as a fundamental organizing principle of politics and to
militarism as the most important mechanism for holding society together. 154 In both Iraq and
New Orleans, humanistic values have given way to militaristic values as life is cheapened, the
reality of death is diminished, and civil society increasingly "organizes itself for the production
of violence."155 War now has no boundaries and is used as a metaphor to define and
criminalize those populations rendered as racialized others-whether they are blacks, Latinos,
immigrants, Muslims, or Arabs. Not only is a war increasingly waged against the racialized poor
at home and abroad, but the attack on the welfare state, the growing redundancy and
disposability of large segments of those marginalized by class and race, and the increasing
criminalization of social problems and reliance on the police and military to solve them point to
an emerging biopolitics in the United States that bears the fingerprints of a growing
authoritarianism. Pg 62
Use of military personnel and a low tolerance for any other help lead to New
Orleans becoming the site of a military operation rather than a city in need of
help
Giroux, 06 (Henry Giroux, English Professor and cultural studies department at McMaster university
in Canada, 2006, Stormy Weather, Katrina and the Politics of Disposability)
[Within a few days, New Orleans was under martial law occupied by nearly 65,000 U.S. military
personnel. Images of thousands of desperate and poor blacks gave way to pictures of squads of
combat-ready troops and soldiers with mounted bayonets canvassing houses in order to remove
stranded civilians. Embedded journalists now traveled with soldiers on Humvees, armored
carriers, and military helicopters in downtown U.S.A What had begun as a botched rescue
operation by the federal government was transformed into a military operation. Brian
Williams, reporting on MSNBC, commented that "[i)t is impossible to over-emphasize the extent
to which this area [New Orleans) is under government occupation, and portions of it under
government-enforced lockdown. Police cars rule the streets."137] Pg. 56
Police Barricades during Katrina demonstrated police violence against flood
victims: state became the enforcer of the hurricane on the poor.
Robertson ’11 (Campbell Robertson August 5, 2011, National Correspondent for the New
York Times, New York Times
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/r/campbell_robertson/index.ht
ml?inline=nyt-per)JW
Around 60 witnesses were called over the course of the month long Danziger trial, including
victims, one of whom was unable to raise her right hand to swear in because she lost it as a
result of the shootings on the bridge, and several officers who had been involved in the
shootings and the police investigation and later pleaded guilty. The trial was not only about
these five officers but also about what exactly happened in the weeks after the hurricane, a sort
of judgment on the initial widely held belief that the authorities were trying to control elements
of a citizenry run rampant. In the years since, that narrative has been qualified. While some
people did turn to crime and violence, it has become apparent that some of the bloodshed and
chaos was brought about by members of the long-troubled Police Department. Guilty Of
Shooting Six In New Orleans. Police Brutality and Misconduct Decisions and Verdicts Hurricane
Katrina New Orleans (La). In opening and closing arguments, prosecutors portrayed the
Danziger victims as people merely trying to survive when they were descended on by the police.
Instead of assessing the threat when they arrived on the scene, prosecutors said, these officers
tried to send a harsh lesson to people they had wrongly suspected of firing at the police. “They
thought they could do what they wanted to do and there wouldn’t be any consequences,” said
Theodore Carter, an assistant United States attorney, in his closing statement. “This led to their
crime, it led to their brazenness. It never occurred to them they were shooting up two good
families.” While some of the defense lawyers argued that the citizens were in fact armed, or
that other people in the vicinity were shooting at the victims, their main argument was that the
officers’ actions must be judged in the context of those first horrible days after Hurricane
Katrina, when New Orleans was a city on the verge of anarchy. As in a similar trial of the police
last year, defense lawyers said that the officers should be considered heroes for staying in the
city when so many others left and that, given the air of imminent and omnipresent danger in
those days, their instincts should not be criminalized. “He has to decide and act in a split second,
a nanosecond, to make a life or death decision,” said Paul Fleming, who represented Mr.
Faulcon. Given the circumstances, he said, “It is a decision that is reasonable, it is a decision that
is justifiable and it is a decision that is not a crime.” Jim Letten, the United States attorney for
Louisiana’s Eastern District, said that was exactly wrong. It is in situations like the anarchy after
Hurricane Katrina, he said, when it is most crucial that the police be depended upon to protect
citizens. “Who can we count on when our society is threatened?” he asked. “If we can’t depend
on them, who can we depend on?”
Police officers prevented the less fortunate from fleeing New Orleans from the
Crescent City connection during Hurricane Katrina by shooting at them but
were not prosecuted by the government
DeBerry 11 [Jarvis Tuesday, October 04 2011. The hurt from Hurricane Katrina
bridge blockade remains incalculable. Greater New Orleans Times Picayune.
(NOLA)
http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2011/10/the_hurt_from_hurricane_kat
rin.html Columnist and Reporter for the New York Times]
[During the despicable blockade of the Crescent City Connection the Thursday after Hurricane
Katrina a Gretna police officer fired a shot over the heads of pedestrians trying to flee the chaos
that had descended upon New Orleans. As Saturday's story about that incident puts it, "no one
was hurt." Accurate in the technical sense but not altogether true. Nobody was injured when
the police officer fired his weapon, it's true, but the hurt? The hurt caused by the blockade was
and remains incalculable. Consider the message the police conveyed with their actions: Your
distress, your fear, your peril, they all mean nothing to us. Go back to where you came from.
You'll find no refuge here. How could it not hurt when you find yourself in a life-threatening
crisis and the police you encounter are indifferent to your survival? Is this not America? Exactly
which American value is it that inspires law enforcement to brandish weapons at those seeking
safety and then forcing them back into danger? Over the past year, U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder's office and local U.S. Attorney Jim Letten have helped bring forth justice for Henry
Glover, justice for Raymond Robair, justice for Ronald Madison, James Brissette and four others
shot by New Orleans police officers on the Danziger Bridge. But there will be no justice for those
wrongly turned away on the Crescent City Connection. Attempts to punish the involved
departments proved unsuccessful, and on Friday Letten said that his office would not prosecute
the officers involved in the blockade.
Upholding Gretna blockade confirms Disposability: police officers refused to let
the poor community of New Orleans evacuate
DeBerry 11 [Jarvis DeBerry. Tuesday, October 04 2011. The hurt from Hurricane Katrina bridge
blockade remains incalculable. Greater New Orleans Times Picayune. (NOLA)
http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2011/10/the_hurt_from_hurricane_katrin.html
Columnist and Reporter for the New York Times]
[Hurricane Katrina served as proof that a catastrophe cannot create neighborliness where it
doesn't already exist. The levees happened to break in New Orleans and in St. Bernard Parish,
but they could have broken in Jefferson Parish. They could have broken on the West Bank. It
could have been West Bankers fleeing floodwaters and mayhem trying to cross the river into
New Orleans. What would they be saying if New Orleans police did to them what some have
cheered Lawson for doing to those attempting to leave New Orleans? How can people so
vulnerable to destruction themselves be so inhospitable and hard-hearted toward those trying
to get out of harm's way? Did Gretna police officers break the law when they turned those
pedestrians away? Letten, apparently, believes that they did not. But questions about the
blockade's legality have never been as important as questions about its morality. Blocking
people's escape from trouble is wrong. We don't need a criminal trial to tell us that.]
Police officers shot innocent citizens who were trying to cross the bridge to
escape and get food.
Robertson ’11 (Campbell Robertson August 5, 2011, National Correspondent for the New
York Times, New York Times
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/r/campbell_robertson/index.ht
ml?inline=nyt-per)JW
There they poured out of the truck and opened fire, without pausing or giving a warning, on
members of the Bartholomew family, who were walking to a grocery in the largely abandoned
city. James Brisette, 17, a friend of the family, was killed, and four others were gravely wounded
by the police, who kept firing as the Bartholomews raced for safety. Several of the officers then
chased Ronald and Lance Madison, two brothers, to the other side of the bridge, where Mr.
Faulcon shot Ronald, a 40-year-old mentally disabled man, in the back. Sergeant Bowen was
convicted of stomping him on the back as he lay dying. No guns were recovered at the scene,
and witnesses — both officers and citizens — testified that the victims were unarmed.]
Police officers prevented the less fortunate from fleeing New Orleans from the
Crescent City connection during Hurricane Katrina by shooting at them but
were not prosecuted by the government
DeBerry 11 [Jarvis Tuesday, October 04 2011. The hurt from Hurricane Katrina bridge
blockade remains incalculable. Greater New Orleans Times Picayune. (NOLA)
http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2011/10/the_hurt_from_hurricane_katrin.html
Columnist and Reporter for the New York Times]
[During the despicable blockade of the Crescent City Connection the Thursday after Hurricane
Katrina a Gretna police officer fired a shot over the heads of pedestrians trying to flee the chaos
that had descended upon New Orleans. As Saturday's story about that incident puts it, "no one
was hurt." Accurate in the technical sense but not altogether true. Nobody was injured when
the police officer fired his weapon, it's true, but the hurt? The hurt caused by the blockade was
and remains incalculable. Consider the message the police conveyed with their actions: Your
distress, your fear, your peril, they all mean nothing to us. Go back to where you came from.
You'll find no refuge here. How could it not hurt when you find yourself in a life-threatening
crisis and the police you encounter are indifferent to your survival? Is this not America? Exactly
which American value is it that inspires law enforcement to brandish weapons at those seeking
safety and then forcing them back into danger? Over the past year, U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder's office and local U.S. Attorney Jim Letten have helped bring forth justice for Henry
Glover, justice for Raymond Robair, justice for Ronald Madison, James Brissette and four others
shot by New Orleans police officers on the Danziger Bridge. But there will be no justice for those
wrongly turned away on the Crescent City Connection. Attempts to punish the involved
departments proved unsuccessful, and on Friday Letten said that his office would not prosecute
the officers involved in the blockade.
Upholding Gretna blockade confirms Disposability: police officers refused to let
the poor community of New Orleans evacuate
DeBerry 11 [Jarvis DeBerry. Tuesday, October 04 2011. The hurt from Hurricane Katrina bridge
blockade remains incalculable. Greater New Orleans Times Picayune. (NOLA)
http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2011/10/the_hurt_from_hurricane_katrin.html
Columnist and Reporter for the New York Times]
[Hurricane Katrina served as proof that a catastrophe cannot create neighborliness where it
doesn't already exist. The levees happened to break in New Orleans and in St. Bernard Parish,
but they could have broken in Jefferson Parish. They could have broken on the West Bank. It
could have been West Bankers fleeing floodwaters and mayhem trying to cross the river into
New Orleans. What would they be saying if New Orleans police did to them what some have
cheered Lawson for doing to those attempting to leave New Orleans? How can people so
vulnerable to destruction themselves be so inhospitable and hard-hearted toward those trying
to get out of harm's way? Did Gretna police officers break the law when they turned those
pedestrians away? Letten, apparently, believes that they did not. But questions about the
blockade's legality have never been as important as questions about its morality. Blocking
people's escape from trouble is wrong. We don't need a criminal trial to tell us that.]
***Images***
Government Refuses Help to Victims
Those to look up to in times of trouble rejected basic necessities and support to
the victims of Katrina.
Addison, 05(Annette Addison, African American survivor of Hurricane Katrina, interviewed by
Amy Goodman, October 24, 2005, Hurricane Katrina Survivor Recounts Days With No Water and
Her Son’s Ordeal in the Orleans Parish Prison,
http://www.democracynow.org/2005/10/24/hurricane_katrina_survivor_recounts_days_with,
transcript) KS
{ANNETTE ADDISON: During the Katrina disaster, I experienced something that I never imagined
in my life. I experienced the neglect of the ones that was supposed to be there for us, like the
army, the fire people, the police. They was there, but they did not assist us. And I also went
through, with my sister, we went through a struggle without lights and water for three days and
three nights. Example, we didn’t have no water, we went to the fire station, and we asked the
firemen, do they have any water that they can give us to drink. And the firemen told me and my
sister that they didn’t have any water to give us. They only had enough for their self. And so me
and my sister, we walked away, devastating. I kept passing out because of exhaustion,
depressed, oppressed.}
Media Depictions translated storm victims into criminals
Media depictions of “savagery” demonized flood victims coupled with failed
evacuation plans fueled racist militaristic police response
Rivera and Miller – 2007 (Jason David Rivera [Research Associate in the Liberal
Arts and Sciences Institute for Research and Community Service @ Rowan
University] and DeMond Shondell Miller PhD [Associate Professor of Sociology
and Director of the Liberal Arts and Sciences Institute for Research and
Community Service at Rowan University], “Continually Neglected: Situating
Natural Disasters in the African,” Journal of Black Studies, Volume 37, Number 4,
March, pp. 502-522. [Online] Sage)
On September 1, a new wave of problems manifested themselves when a Chinook helicopter
transporting evacuees out of the Superdome was fired on, causing helicopter transports to be
suspended temporarily (Reagan et al., 2005, p. 57). The suspension of air transport limited
evacuation to buses only, allowing for 10,000 individuals to be evacuated, according to Mayor
Nagin (Reagan et al., 2005, p. 82). Moreover, according to Mayor Nagin, by September 2, there
were still approximately 50,000 survivors remaining on rooftops and an assortment of other
places waiting to be rescued (Miller & Rivera, in press; Reagan et al., 2005). Ironically, Fidel
Castro offered to send 1,100 Cuban doctors and 26 tons of medicine to aid in the recovery of
Katrina; however, his offer was not accepted (Reagan et al., 2005, p. 90). By September 4,
30,000 people were evacuated out of the Superdome and another 20,000 people were
evacuated from the Convention Center (Reagan et al., 2005, p. 106). Because of the influx of so
many African Americans into predominantly White areas, they were sometimes met with open
resistance:
I don’t how to get this point across without being blunt, but white supremacists have dropped
the pretense of code-speak and are saying flat-out, “don’t let them back in,” using the n-word
for emphasis. These raw words echoed at the police blockade on the Mississippi River bridge
connecting New Orleans with the West Bank of suburban Jefferson Parish, where policemen
from Gretna, a notoriously racist town, fired shots over the heads of Convention Center
evacuees as they walked toward the on-ramp pursuant to instructions that buses were waiting
on the other side to carry them to safety. (Powell, 2005; see also Dyson, 2006, p. 153)
The evacuation of the Superdome was initiated not only to displace people from the destruction
left in the wake of Katrina but also to improve the safety of those individuals inside the
Superdome. In the aftermath of the disaster, there were massive reports of murders, rapes,
piles of dead bodies, and a number of other stories alluding to atrocious acts of behavior;
however, weeks after the hurricane such reports were hard to substantiate (Thevenot & Russell,
2005, p. A4). Again, racial biases had been manifested to create an imaginary scene of African
Americans raping and murdering each other, incapable of controlling themselves in the face of
confined habitation.
Media changed the public’s concept of Katrina victims of color in a derogatory
fashion.
Giroux, 06 (Henry Giroux, English Professor and cultural studies department at McMaster
university in Canada, 2006, Stormy Weather, Katrina and the Politics of Disposability)
[
In the case of Katrina, low-income blacks, long the victims of retrograde federal policies, the
hollowing out of the state, grinding poverty, and harsh treatment by the punishment industries,
were thrust into full view of the world; and within a very short time, images of despair and
human suffering were transformed into a monstrous spectacle that quickly passed from
demonization to criminalization to militarization. Cries of desperation and help were quickly
redefined as the pleas of "refugees," a designation which suggests that an alien force lacking
both citizenship and legal rights had inhabited the Gulf Coast.] Pg. 55
Media simplified New Orleans citizens still in the city after the storm into
images to victims or criminals
Tierney, Bevc, Kuligowski 06 (Kathleen Tierney, Prof Soc., Inst. of Behavioral
Science, at the U. of Colorado, Dir. of Natural Hazards Center, Christine Bevc,
Res Assoc with the North Carolina Preparedness and Emergency Response
Research Center (NCPERRC), Erica Kuligowski, PhD student in Soc U of Colorado, “
Metaphors Matter: Disaster Myths, Media Frames, and Their Consequences in
Hurricane Katrina” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science Vol. 604)
However, even while engaging extensively in both reporting and public service, the media also
presented highly oversimplify and distorted characterizations of the human response to the Katrina
catastrophe. Ignoring the diversity and com- plexity of human responses to disastrous events, media
accounts constructed only two images of those trapped in the disaster impact area: victims were seen
either as "marauding thugs" out to attack both fellow victims and emergency responders or as
helpless refugees from the storm, unable to cope and deserving of charity.
Media depictions of young black male Katrina victims characterized them
as “irrational thugs”
Tierney, Bevc, Kuligowski 06 (Kathleen Tierney, Prof Soc., Inst. of Behavioral
Science, at the U. of Colorado, Dir. of Natural Hazards Center, Christine Bevc,
Res Assoc with the North Carolina Preparedness and Emergency Response
Research Center (NCPERRC), Erica Kuligowski, PhD student in Soc U of Colorado, “
Metaphors Matter: Disaster Myths, Media Frames, and Their Consequences in
Hurricane Katrina” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science Vol. 604)
Even as media and official discourses acknowledged that "good people"- mainly women and
children-were among those victimized by Katrina, the terms used to describe the behavior of
disaster victims in New Orleans, the majority of whom were people of color, were identical to
those used to describe individuals and groups that engage in rioting in the context of episodes of
civil unrest. Those trapped in New Orleans were characterized as irrational (because they engaged in
"senseless" theft, rather than stealing for survival) and as gangs of out-of-control young males who
presented a lethal threat to fellow victims and emergency re- sponders. Officials increasingly
responded to the debacle in New Orleans-a debacle that was in large measure of their own
making-as if the United States were facing an armed urban insurgency rather than a catastrophic
disaster. As the situation in New Orleans was increasingly equated with conditions of a "war zone,"
strict military and law enforcement controls, including controls on media access to response activities
such as body recovery, were seen as necessary to replace social breakdown with the rule of law and
order
Militarization of Future Emergency Management
Katrina functions as a blueprint for Policymakers future designs for
Miltarization of extreme weather events nationwide
Tierney, Bevc, Kuligowski 06 (Kathleen Tierney, Prof Soc., Inst. of Behavioral
Science, at the U. of Colorado, Dir. of Natural Hazards Center, Christine Bevc,
Res Assoc with the North Carolina Preparedness and Emergency Response
Research Center (NCPERRC), Erica Kuligowski, PhD student in Soc U of Colorado, “
Metaphors Matter: Disaster Myths, Media Frames, and Their Consequences in
Hurricane Katrina” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science Vol. 604)
Reflecting on the fate of these stranded victims, it is important to note that many of the nation's
large urban agglomerations, and their populations, are at risk from future extreme events.
These large urban centers include New York City, Los Angeles, the Bay Area of Northern
California, and Miami. Highly vulnerable urban places are also home to highly diverse
populations, including many who are forced to live in poverty. Will other low-income inner-city
communities be seen as poten- tial hotbeds of urban unrest and potential "war zones" in future
disasters? Will the same images of violence and criminality that emerged following Katrina be
applied, perhaps preemptively, to other large cities affected by extreme events?
Due to misinterpreted images by media and public officials, military was
viewed as a “hero” in New Orleans.
Tierney, Bevc, Kuligowski 06 (Kathleen Tierney, Prof Soc., Inst. of Behavioral
Science, at the U. of Colorado, Dir. of Natural Hazards Center, Christine Bevc,
Res Assoc with the North Carolina Preparedness and Emergency Response
Research Center (NCPERRC), Erica Kuligowski, PhD student in Soc U of Colorado, “
Metaphors Matter: Disaster Myths, Media Frames, and Their Consequences in
Hurricane Katrina” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science Vol. 604)
Despite such protests, the concept of military control during disasters continues to gain
traction in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Distorted images disseminated by the
media and public officials served to justify calls for greater military involvement in
disasters. At a broader level, images of disaster victims as criminals and insurgents and of
military personnel as the saviors of New Orleans are consis- tent with the growing
prominence of militarism as a national ideology. We do not speak here of the military as an
institution or of its role in national defense. Instead, following Chalmers Johnson (2004), we
distinguish between the military and mili- tarism-the latter referring to an ideology that
places ultimate faith in the ability of the military and armed force to solve problems in
both the international and domestic spheres. Johnson noted that "one sign of the advent
of militarism is the assumption by the nation's armed forces of numerous tasks that should be
reserved for civilians" (p. 24) and also that "certainly one of the clearest signs of militarism
America, is the willingness of some senior officers and civilian militarists to meddle in domestic
policing" (p. 119). This is exactly what occurred during Hurricane Katrina-and what may
become standard procedure in future extreme events.
Opposition to military involvement in disasters is prevalent.
Tierney, Bevc, Kuligowski 06 (Kathleen Tierney(professor in the Department of
Sociology and the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado
and director of the University of Colorado Natural Hazards Center, Christine
Bevc research associate with the North Carolina Preparedness and Emergency
Response Research Center (NCPERRC), working on the NCPERRC Regional
Project, Erica Kuligowski doctoral student in sociology at the University of
Colorado and a graduate research assis- tant at the Natural Hazards Center., “
Metaphors Matter: Disaster Myths, Media Frames, and Their Consequences in
Hurricane Katrina” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science Vol. 604)
Calls for military control following disasters are not new. Many of the same arguments for greater
military involvement were made following Hurricane Andrew, which struck in 1992, and which
was followed by failures on the part of the intergovernmental emergency response system
that resembled those following Katrina, but on a smaller scale. However, a study later
conducted to analyze the response to Andrew and recommend improvements saw no
justification for giving broader authority to the military during disasters (National Academy of
Public Administration 1993). Even after Katrina, opposition to greater military involvement is widespread. For example, a USA Today poll of thirty-eight governors found that only
two governors supported the president's proposal that the military take a greater role in
responding to disasters (Disaster preparedness 2005).
Racism in the Media:
The harms caused by blocking evacuation routes are incalculable – The
NEG’s dismissal of the 1AC impacts mirrors governmental indifference
to human life.
DeBerry 2011 (Jarvis, Columnist and Reporter for the New York Times, “The hurt from Hurricane Katrina bridge blockade remains incalculable,” Greater
New Orleans Times Picayune, 04 October, http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2011/10/the_hurt_from_hurricane_katrin.html) nm
[During the despicable blockade of the Crescent City Connection the Thursday after Hurricane
Katrina a Gretna police officer fired a shot over the heads of pedestrians trying to flee the chaos
that had descended upon New Orleans. As Saturday's story about that incident puts it, "no one
was hurt." Accurate in the technical sense but not altogether true. Nobody was injured when
the police officer fired his weapon, it's true, but the hurt? The hurt caused by the blockade was
and remains incalculable. Consider the message the police conveyed with their actions: Your
distress, your fear, your peril, they all mean nothing to us. Go back to where you came from.
You'll find no refuge here. How could it not hurt when you find yourself in a life-threatening
crisis and the police you encounter are indifferent to your survival? Is this not America? Exactly
which American value is it that inspires law enforcement to brandish weapons at those seeking
safety and then forcing them back into danger? Over the past year, U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder's office and local U.S. Attorney Jim Letten have helped bring forth justice for Henry
Glover, justice for Raymond Robair, justice for Ronald Madison, James Brissette and four others
shot by New Orleans police officers on the Danziger Bridge. But there will be no justice for those
wrongly turned away on the Crescent City Connection. Attempts to punish the involved
departments proved unsuccessful, and on Friday Letten said that his office would not prosecute
the officers involved in the blockade.]
Racism in the media became extremely evident after Hurricane Katrina.
Giroux, 06 (Henry Giroux, English Professor and cultural studies department at McMaster
university in Canada, 2006, Stormy Weather, Katrina and the Politics of Disposability)
[In one of the most blatant displays of racism underscoring the biopolitical "live free or die"
agenda in Bush's America, the dominant media increasingly framed the events that unfolded
during and immediately after the hurricane by focusing on acts of crime, looting, rape, and
murder, allegedly perpetrated by the black residents of New Orleans. The day after the levees
broke, the Associated Press reported stories about massive looting only to be followed by an
endless stream of reports on FoxNews, in the mainstream newsmedia, and among rightwing
bloggers about cases of rapes, murders, and looting by black people, even though such stories
were unsubstantiated.123] Pg. 50-1
Media changed the public’s concept of Katrina victims of color in a derogatory
fashion.
Giroux, 06 (Henry Giroux, English Professor and cultural studies department at McMaster
university in Canada, 2006, Stormy Weather, Katrina and the Politics of Disposability)
[In the case of Katrina, low-income blacks, long the victims of retrograde federal policies, the
hollowing out of the state, grinding poverty, and harsh treatment by the punishment industries,
were thrust into full view of the world; and within a very short time, images of despair and
human suffering were transformed into a monstrous spectacle that quickly passed from
demonization to criminalization to militarization. Cries of desperation and help were quickly
redefined as the pleas of "refugees," a designation which suggests that an alien force lacking
both citizenship and legal rights had inhabited the Gulf Coast.] Pg. 55
***Biopolitics***
Katrina obviates American Two Worlds: Separate and Unequal
Color blind sociaty is a myth: The US Federal government expresses racism
towards African Americans during Katrina
White 07 [ Ismail K. PHD political science, Tasha S. Philpot, Kristin Wylie, and
Ernest McGowen ‘Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 37 No. 4, Katrina: Race, Class, and
Poverty’ March 2007 Sage Publications, Inc. ]
This analysis has sought to explain, as explicitly as possible, the role that in-group relevance
plays in shaping African Americans’ emotional responses to Hurricane Katrina. Here, we saw
that Black and White Americans had very different emotional experiences in response to the
event. Consistent with our expectation of a group centric response to the event, Blacks were
much more likely than Whites to be angered or depressed by the events surrounding the storm.
We also saw that the perceived racialization of the events that surrounded the storm strongly
predicted the anger of Black Americans and that the perceived complacency of the federal
government explained feelings of depression among Black Americans. Despite geographic and
socioeconomic differences, Black Americans throughout the country—as evidenced by their
unique emotional response to the disaster—identified with Hurricane Katrina’s primarily African
American victims. This conclusion points to the role of racial discrimination as a stimulus for the
activation of Blacks’ racial group interest in shaping Black emotional response—the perceived
racialization of the events surrounding the natural and human disasters of Hurricane Katrina
helps to explain Black Americans’ group centric response. We believe that this study constitutes
an important step in understanding group dynamics in American politics. In 1968. the Kerner
Report warned that the United States was “moving toward two societies, one black, and one
white—separate and unequal” (National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. 1967). The
extent to which this passage has proven prophetic can be seen when the country experiences
crises as it did in the late summer of 2005. By showing that Blacks as a group felt abandoned by
their government during one of the most devastating natural disasters this country has
experienced, we help illuminate why there persists a racial divide in lived experiences of Black
and White Americans. The distinct realities of Black and White Americans are perpetuated by
the myth of a colorblind society and threaten the very foundation of America’s allegedly
representative democracy. Until racial divisions in condition and opinion can be bridged, the
state of American democracy will be incomplete, lacking equal representation for all.
Biopolitics impact – value to life
The state’s focus on the body’s definition as an object of power rather than an
object of social and ideological purpose causes no value to life.
Giroux, 06 (Henry Giroux, English Professor and cultural studies department at McMaster
university in Canada, 2006, Stormy Weather, Katrina and the Politics of Disposability) - pg. 12
[Within the last few decades, matters of state sovereignty in the new world order have been
retheorized so as to provide a range of theoretical insights about the relationship between
power and politics, the political nature of social and cultural life, and the merging of life and
politics as a new form of biopolitics. While the notion of biopolitics differs significantly among
its most prominent theorists, including Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Michael Hardt
and Antonio Negri,24 what these theorists share is an attempt to think through the
convergence of life and politics, locating matters of "life and death within our ways of thinking
about and imagining politics."25 Central here is the task of reformulating the meaning of
politics and how it functions within the contemporary moment to regu- late matters of life and
death, and, in turn, how such issues are intimately related to both the articulation of
community and the social, and the regulation, care, and development of human life. Within this
discourse, politics is no longer understood exclusively through a disciplinary technology
centered on the individual body-a body to be measured, surveilled, managed, included in
forecasts, surveys, and statistical projections. Under the new biopolitical regimes, the body is
understood primarily as an object of power, but it is a body that is social and multiple, scientific
and ideological. Biopolitics points to new relations of power that are more capacious,
concerned not only with the body as an object of disciplinary techniques that render it "both
useful and docile" but with a body that needs to be "regularized," subject to those immaterial
means of production that produce ways of life that enlarge the targets of control and
regulation. ]
OPP – human disposability
Conditions in the Orleans Parish Prison after the storm as well as the
evacuation process were dehumanizing to prisoners.
NATIONAL PRISON PROJECT of the AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION 07
This article is based on the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project report
Abandoned & Abused: Orleans parish prisoners in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which is
available to download at <http://www.aclu.org/prison>. The report is the result of an elevenmonth investigation by local and national activists and attorneys, based on written accounts
from over 1,300 prisoners, who were in OPP when Katrina struck, and interviews with hundreds
of OPP evacuees, their family members, as well as former OPP deputies and staff. Race & Class
Copyright & 2007 Institute of Race Relations Vol. 49(1): 81–92 JA
[There is no reliable count of the number of people in OPP on the day Hurricane Katrina hit but,
according to the Sheriff ’s statistics, there were 6,375 prisoners held.16 More than 300 of these had
been arrested and booked in the preceding three days, when the city of New Orleans and the state of
Louisiana were under states of emergency. One man was arrested five days before the storm for
allegedly having failed to pay an old debt of $100 in fines and fees.17 He was assigned to Unit B-2,
where he spent several days before the storm, sleeping in the common area. He reports that the riot
squad came through the tier to put everyone on lockdown. He was placed in a cell with seven other
people. ‘They maced our whole cell twice while locking us up for asking when they would let us out.’
On the Sunday before the storm, many of the prisoners had watched Sheriff Gusman’s televised
announcement that they would not be evacuated but would instead remain in the prison. But OPP
was horribly ill-prepared for Hurricane Katrina. The emergency operations plan that the Sheriff was
relying on either did not exist, was inadequate to provide guidance to staff and prisoners or was
ineptly executed. Soon after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the OPP buildings lost power.
Prisoners spent their nights in total darkness, in conditions that were growing increasingly foul due
to the lack of ventilation and sanitation, and the presence of chest-deep floodwaters on the lower
levels of the prison buildings. Many prisoners remained locked in their cells with bodily waste
flowing out of the non-functioning toilets. The jail became unbearably hot, which made it difficult for
many inmates to breathe. Female prisoners in Conchetta and Templeman IV, and male prisoners
housed on some floors of HOD, report that deputies largely remained on duty following Katrina.
However, hundreds of prisoners report that deputies from other buildings abandoned their posts
during and after the storm. Floodwaters began to enter the lower levels of the OPP buildings on
Monday 29 August, 2005. On the first floor of Templeman II, prisoners saw water seeping into the
dorm through drainage holes in the floor. One prisoner recalls: Before I knew it my bottom bunk was
underneath water. At this point I knew for sure the deputies was nowhere in the building. . . . No food
for us to eat. Finally a female deputy came by we shouted to her about our conditions. She than
replied there’s nothing we can do because there’s water everywhere and she left. At this point water
had risen to at least 4 ft deep. I thought for sure I would never see freedom again.18 Many of the
women in Templeman IV were being held on minor offences, such as prostitution or simple drug
possession. When water began to enter the building, it quickly rose to chest-level, forcing the women
to climb onto the second and third levels of their triple-stacked bunk beds. One female prisoner
reports: ‘[w]omen were made to urinate and deficate over the sides of the beds into the water; the
water was well over the toilet seats.’19 A prisoner in Unit A-1 explains that the water was five to six
feet deep by the time prison officials returned to free the prisoners from their locked cells. ‘Inmates
were on the top bunk in their cells trying to escape the water. Due to the water the cell doors short
circuited. The staff had to use long hammers to try in force the doors open. It was a race against
time!’ 20 Although the contingency plan called for stockpiling enough food and potable water to last
ninety-six hours, nearly every prisoner with whom we spoke reports going days after the storm
without receiving either. In Templeman III, prisoners received no food after their Sunday night meal,
according to deputies.21 ‘People were still locked in lower cells screaming for us to help. There was
no guards in the control booths, no food, no water, lights, or medical attention.’ 22 With no water to
drink, many of the prisoners resorted to drinking the contaminated floodwater. Tensions began to
rise among the prisoners as conditions inside the prison buildings deteriorated and deputies
abandoned their posts. In Old Parish Prison, one prisoner explains that: there were about 48 to 56
inmates located in one cell designed for 21 inmates. There was no water, food, or air. Inmates began
to be upset setting fires to plastic or whatever they could find to burn through the double plated glass
to allow some type of air to circulate on the floor [I]nmates had reached a level of frustration at that
point they began to destroy the cell breaking through the chicken wire just to be able to move
around, ripping the light fixtures from the ceiling to attempt to break windows and with the stress
level being so high fights began to break out and the material that was ripped from the cell were at
this time weapons.23 Many of the prisoners began to believe that they had been abandoned. Prisoners
in some buildings began to look for ways out of the flooded buildings. Prisoners also hung signs
outside of windows and set signal fires in order to get help. One prisoner writes that, when he saw a
news helicopter several days after the storm, he and another prisoner hung a sign saying ‘HELP NO
FOOD DYING’.24 Left unsupervised, some of the prisoners were able to open their cells and free
others. One recalled that: ‘If it wasn’t for inmates somehow getting my cell open I probably would
have died.’ 25 In several buildings, prisoners tied bed sheets together to lower themselves out of
broken windows so that they could jump to safety in the water below. Deputy Reed, who was on the
mezzanine level of HOD, where he was stationed to watch for escapes, describes ‘people getting shot
by snipers around the jail. It looked like people were getting picked off.’ 26 Many prisoners and
deputies report seeing prisoners hanging from the rolls of razor wire lining the fences that surround
the facility. According to Ace Martin, a Templeman III prisoner: ‘One guy jumped out of the hole and
they shot him . . . He fell on a barbed-wire fence. They picked him up in a boat and told us to stay in
the hole or we’d be shot.’ 27 Sheriff Gusman has consistently stated that there were no deaths at OPP
during the storm and the subsequent evacuation.28 However, several deputies and many prisoners
report witnessing deaths at the jail.]
After the evacuation of OPP, police abused prisoners in extremely inhumane
ways.
NATIONAL PRISON PROJECT of the AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION 07
This article is based on the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project report Abandoned & Abused: Orleans parish
prisoners in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which is available to download at <http://www.aclu.org/prison>. The report is the
result of an eleven-month investigation by local and national activists and attorneys, based on written accounts from over
1,300 prisoners, who were in OPP when Katrina struck, and interviews with hundreds of OPP evacuees, their family members,
as well as former OPP deputies and staff. Race & Class Copyright & 2007 Institute of Race Relations Vol. 49(1): 81–92 JA
[Prisoners went days without food, water or medical attention before officers from the Angola state
penitentiary arrived at OPP to begin an evacuation by boat. The process took over three days and
appears to have been completed at some point on Thursday evening or early Friday. Boats dropped
the prisoners off a short distance from the Interstate 10 on-ramp and prisoners then waded through
chest-deep water until they were able to get to the dry portions of the Broad Street Overpass that
rises above the Interstate. Thousands of prisoners were eventually transferred to the Overpass,
where they were placed in rows and were ordered to remain seated back-to-back. They remained
there anywhere from several hours to several days. Sitting on the hot asphalt, prisoners began
suffering from dehydration and heat exhaustion; and they were assaulted by guards when they
attempted to stand to go to the bathroom or ask for food or water. Robie Waganfeald was arrested
several days before the storm on a charge of public intoxication; in a letter written to his father, he
states that he sat in the sun on the Overpass for ten hours with ‘no water and with National
Guardsmen threatening to shoot people. Some got hit with rubber bullets, others with pepper spray.
It was the most humiliating, unjustifiable thing I’ve ever seen.’ 29 Among those held on the Overpass
were juveniles, some of whom also witnessed excessive use of force. One 17-year-old states: One man
was maced and beat up really badly. His head was busted . . . They let the dogs loose on that man . . .
The dogs were biting him all over. They told people they would kill them if they moved . . . The worst
thing I saw was the guards beating that man while everyone was just sitting there. . . . Those people
need to go to jail or something. 30 There are also reports of youth being maced by guards. One boy
writes: ‘When [we] were shackled it was ten youth shackled together. [Another boy] slipped out his
handcuffs so they maced him and since we were all shackled together, the other kids basically got
maced too.’ 31 Another boy states: ‘Guards did not really care about us. [One] kid got maced
requesting water. Some kids were too weak to act, or do anything for themselves.’ 32 In the five days
before the storm, now-Chief Judge David Bell of the Orleans Parish Juvenile Court issued orders
releasing those pre-trial juveniles who were held in Orleans Parish detention centres and were not
deemed threats to society. Those release orders appear not to have been executed and, to this day, it
is still unclear how many children were detained in OPP at the time of the storm. 33]
After prisoners of the Hunt were sent to a contained area, police officers
treated them like they had no human value.
NATIONAL PRISON PROJECT of the AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION 07
This article is based on the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project report Abandoned & Abused: Orleans parish
prisoners in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which is available to download at <http://www.aclu.org/prison>. The report is the
result of an eleven-month investigation by local and national activists and attorneys, based on written accounts from over
1,300 prisoners, who were in OPP when Katrina struck, and interviews with hundreds of OPP evacuees, their family members,
as well as former OPP deputies and staff. Race & Class Copyright & 2007 Institute of Race Relations Vol. 49(1): 81–92 JA
[From Interstate 10, OPP evacuees were bussed to prisons and jails throughout Louisiana. Most
female prisoners were sent directly to Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, while thousands of
men were transported to the undamaged Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel, Louisiana.
There, many of the OPP evacuees were consolidated onto a single field surrounded by a fence. Armed
guards watched over the prisoners from towers and from behind the fence. The guards established a
gun line along the length of the fence which prisoners were not permitted to cross. Prisoners were
not separated by offence. Pre-trial prisoners arrested on public intoxication charges were held sideby-side with convicted felons. Municipal, state and federal prisoners were also mixed together on a
single field. Prisoners who were previously housed, for good reason, in protective custody were
suddenly placed on the field with no protection at all. Given their sheer numbers, the evacuees found
themselves sitting on a powder keg. Violence broke out all over the large yard at Hunt. One man
writes that on the yard, ‘people [were] getting stabbed for they food and the guards just let it happen.
Guys were constantly fighting and stabbing each other up all day we could not really sleep because
we had to watch ourselves all the time.’ 34 Instead of intervening to control the prisoners, Hunt
guards remained outside the fence. Ronnie Lee Morgan, Jr, recounts how a fellow evacuee, like him a
federal inmate in protective custody, was wary of entering the yard ‘because he could see his
enemies out there. He walked onto the yard and got stabbed all over his face. Blood was like a
waterfall out of his face. He ran to the guards and they shot at him and then stripped him of his
clothes. . . . I don’t know if he lived or what, but he was pretty bad off.’ 35 Another man reports that
after he was stabbed on his left wrist by another prisoner, ‘I went for help [and] the guards pointed
their guns at me and told me to leave or I would be shot at.’ 36 Although OPP evacuees were handed a
sandwich when they first arrived at Hunt, food was delivered more haphazardly after the men were
placed on the yard. Hunt guards threw bags of sandwiches over the fence into the crowd and hungry
prisoners fought one another for food. One man writes: ‘When we was finally given food they took
bags with one or two sandwiches and threw them over a barbed wire fence, and you had to fight for
it like dogs. If you didn’t eat, you just went hungry.’37 One 53-year-old man, held on a parole violation,
reports: ‘Most of us older guys did without food and water while there because guys was fighting,
cutting each other, the deputies was just looking and laughing. They were throwing sandwiches in
the crowd like they were in New Orleans, at the Mardi Gras!’ 38 From the yard at Hunt, prisoners were
transported to a number of other facilities, where many experienced racism. Vincent Norman, who
had been arrested on 24 August 2005 on a warrant for failure to appear in court and a $100 fine, was
brought to the Ouachita Correctional Center, where he suffered what he called ‘horrendous
treatment’. ‘Ouachita was a reminder of the old South,’ he says. I was exposed to overt racism, called
racial slurs and subjected to physical and mental anguish. I saw segregation and outright inhumane
events. . . . They wouldn’t talk to the inmates, and if we asked questions we would be maced or
beanbagged. . . . I’ve never experienced blatant racism – never seen it like that. After going through
what I’ve been through I wonder if I’ll ever be the same. They used to set the food trays on the floor
and we would have to pick it up from there. I asked why they did that and they said we were like
monkeys and that’s what you do with animals at the zoo. . . . I was in jail for almost four months on a
$100 fine that I didn’t even know I had to pay.39]
The dehumanization of prisoners of the OPP was to such an extreme extent
that they were treated as slaves from times before the Civil War.
NATIONAL PRISON PROJECT of the AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION 07
This article is based on the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project report Abandoned & Abused: Orleans parish
prisoners in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which is available to download at <http://www.aclu.org/prison>. The report is the
result of an eleven-month investigation by local and national activists and attorneys, based on written accounts from over
1,300 prisoners, who were in OPP when Katrina struck, and interviews with hundreds of OPP evacuees, their family members,
as well as former OPP deputies and staff. Race & Class Copyright & 2007 Institute of Race Relations Vol. 49(1): 81–92 JA
[After the waters receded, Sheriff Gusman quickly began the process of refilling OPP. When much of
the city was still assessing whether it was safe to return to flood-ravaged areas, the Sheriff was
moving people back into the jail, without putting into place the most basic safeguards for the health
and well-being of the men and women housed there. It is not difficult to understand why the Sheriff
quickly reopened the facility and returned prisoners to his jail: the Sheriff ’s office receives large
payments for housing federal prisoners.40 This may explain why thousands of local prisoners charged
with minor offences languished for months in state facilities without access to counsel and without
any chance of appearing in court, while federal prisoners were among the first to be returned to OPP
following the hurricane. The return of prisoners to OPP also provided the Sheriff with the labour
force that his office has long offered for private hire at the minimum wage.41 From these wages, the
Sheriff would deduct living expenses, travel expenses, support costs of the prisoners’ dependants and
payment of the prisoners’ debts, with any remaining money going to the prisoner. If anything,
Hurricane Katrina has accelerated the jail’s exploitation of prison labourers. After the hurricane
struck, Sheriff Gusman promised to make prisoners available to assist in the recovery. Given the fact
that the majority of prisoners had yet to be convicted or were convicted of minor offences, this use of
prisoners amounts to modern slavery – or a throwback to the notoriously racist convict-lease and
state-use prison labour systems that proliferated in the South after Reconstruction.]
Federal refusal of relief demonstrates disposability
Rural populations were left to die during hurricane Katrina
Bassett 09 (Debra Lyn Basset, Basset is a Professor of Law at the University of Alabama,
“Chapter 2, The overlooked significance of place in law and policy: Lessons from Hurricane
Katrina,” in Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina, Robert D. Bullard
and Beverly Wright [Editors])
[Another writer noted: "The horror [of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath] is being felt not only in the hell of New
Orleans, but also here in rural Mississippi, where most of the victims feel forgotten-by their countrymen, by rescuers
and by the media. Nobody brings food. There are no shelters" (Associated Press 2005). And according to another
article: "Rural communities in southern Mississippi have been especially hard hit, and unlike their larger counterparts,
such as Biloxi, Gulfport and Pascagoula, there seems to be little progress in restoring electricity to these areas"
(Zarazua 2005).
Some of the more detailed stories are heartbreaking:
Bond, Mississippi, isn't a town or a city, just a name on a green signpost along the highway that means little to people
who don't live here. But people do live here, back among the pines, in small houses and single-wide trailers. Most are
black, and most are poor, and they have been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. But they have been forgotten. They
have no food, no water, no gasoline, no electricity, and little hope of getting any anytime soon. "I ain't got nothing to
eat and I'm hungry," moaned one 81-year-old resident with diabetes. Clutching at the collar of her thin cotton
housedress, the old woman moves between despair and anger, "They got to send us something. We got nothing. People
back here are going to starve," she said, her voice picking up an octave. The Red Cross trucks and the National Guard
and the local power trucks roar right by this small enclave scattered off Highway 49, about 25 miles inland from the
Gulf of Mexico and smack in the path of Katrina's wrath (Hastings 2005).Everyday assumptions are often rendered
erroneous due to the differing practical realities of place. In particular, everyday assumptions routinely held by urban
dwellers often do not hold true for rural dwellers. Urban dwellers assume the ready availability of telephone service
and further assume that if an individual cannot afford traditionai telephone service, accessibility is nevertheless
available through a neighbor's phone, cell phone, or local pay phone. However, in remote rural areas a neighbor's phone
or pay phone may be several miles away, and cell phone service may not be available at all. Urban dwellers assume the
ready availability of Internet access, when in some rural areas high-speed Internet access is unavailable (Drabenstott
and sheaff2001), and dial-up Internet access not only requires telephone service, but often is available only through a
long-distance call (TVA 2001). Urban dwellers assume access to television, but cable television is not available or
affordable for all rural dwellers, and without cable, many rural homes are located too far from television stations to
receive any signal.
Urban dwellers assume the availability of transportation. Althollgh 1110sr people in both urban and rural areas own
a car (Pucher and Renne 200if), ill IIrh.1I1 :1I't':IS adThe Overlooked Significance of Place in Law and Policy
53
ditional, back-up forms of transportation also exist, whether taxicabs, subways, buses, light rail, or some other form of
mass transit. Many rural dwellers own older, unreliable vehicles (University of Wisconsin 1998), and in many rural
areas no alternative methods of transportation exist (Glasgow 2000). Moreover, although most urban areas have ready
access to an airport, nearly 83 percent of rural counties are beyond commuting distance to a major airport (Gale and
Brown 2000), We saw, in New Orleans, that forms of mass transit can become disabled and leave people stranded. But
in most remote rural areas, alternative methods of transportation are unavailable even before a disaster strikes.
These restrictions on the availability of technology, communications, and transportation increase vulnerability-as do
lower levels of education and income. And, it turns out, poverty is also tied to place. ] 52
***Investment***
Critiquing Katrina is Essential to assessing the biopolitical
American practices that produced racialized death and
destruction in the Gulf
Katrina showed the side of America that was hidden for the sake of the rich; the
poverty ridden side. Giroux, 06 (Henry A. Giroux. Professor in the English and Cultural Studies Department at
McMaster University in Canada. KS Pg. 24
One of the worst storms in our history shamed us into seeing the plight of poor
blacks and other minorities. In less than forty-eight hours, Katrina ruptured the
pristine image of America as a largely white, middle-class country modeled after
a Disney theme park. Janet Pelz is right in arguing that Katrina showed us the
murky quicksand beneath the Republican hype about the values and virtues of
the Hurricane Katrina showed us faces the Repub- licans never wanted us to
see-the elderly, the infirm, the poor. The ones with no car to get them out of
the city before the storm hit, the ones unable to pay for hotel rooms until the
waters receded. The ones with no health insurance to recover from the
ravages of insulin shock, kid- ney failure or dehydration. The ones lying face
down in the cesspool or dying of heatstroke in the Superdome.. .. As long as
the poor remained out of sight, they could be described in whatever
undeserving light the Republicans chose, and the rest of us would be
unwilling to challenge them. This second Bush administration was to be the
conservatives' crowning glory. They would finish slicing government to the bone,
sacrificing environmental protections, critical infrastructure investments, health
and human services, all to massive tax cuts. Yes, the long climb back from the
precipice of the New Deal was within reach. That is, until the poor came out
of hiding and shamed us into seeing them. The [neoliberals] had sold us their
theory-each of us should take care of ourselves. Citizens (at least those morally
upstanding enough to be wealthy) could do better for ourselves than the
government could do for us.62]
Katrina prophesizes the Evolving Biopolitical State is Culturally and Racially
Homogenious: Death of Black Peoples Ontology
Giroux, 06 (Henry A. Giroux. Prof. English & Cultural Studies,
McMaster U., Canada; Chapter 1: Katrina and the Biopolitics of
Disposability, Stormy Weather]KS
While the social contract has been suspended in varying degrees since the
1970s, under the Bush administration it has been virtually abandoned.
Under such circumstances, the state no longer feels obligated to take
measures that prevent hardship, suffering, and death. The state no longer
protects its own disadvantaged citizens-they are already seen as dead
within the global economic/political framework. Specific populations now
occupy a political space that effectively invalidates the categories of
"citizen" and "democratic representation" that are integral to the nationstate system. In the past, people who were marginalized by class and race
at least were supported by the government because of the social contract
or because they still had some value as part of a reserve army of the
unemployed. That is no longer true. This new form of biopolitics is
conditioned by a permanent state of class and racial exception in which
"vast populations are subject to conditions of life conferring upon them the
status of living dead,"56 largely invisible in the global media or, when
disruptively present, defined as redundant, pathological, and dangerous.
Within this wasteland of death and disposability, whole populations are
relegated to what the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman calls "social
homelessness."57 While the rich and middle classes in the United
States maintain lifestyles produced through vast inequalities of symbolic
and material capital, the "free market" provides neither social protection,
security, nor hope to those who are poor, sick, elderly, and marginalized
by race and class. Given the increasingly perilous state of those who are
poor and dispossessed in America, it is crucial to reexamine the ways in
which biopower functions within global neoliberalism as well as the
simultaneous rise of security states organized around cultural (and racial)
homogeneity. This task is made all the more urgent by the destruction,
politics, and death that followed Hurricane Katrina. 58]p.22
Katrina exposed the new race and class based biopolitics of disposability,
increasing the state’s exercise of biopolitical power to active extermination of
disposable populations
Giroux, 06 (Henry A. Giroux. Prof. English & Cultural Studies,
McMaster U., Canada; Chapter 1: Katrina and the Biopolitics of
Disposability, Stormy Weather]KS p21-2
Just as crime in the existing order becomes a cultural attribute of the
race- and class-specific other, disposability and death appear to be the
unhappy lot of most powerless and marginalized social groups. Broadly
speaking, racism justifies the death-function in the economy of
biopower," Foucault reminds us, "by appealing to the principle that the
death of others makes one biologically stronger insofar as one is a
member of a race or a population, insofar as one is an element in a
unitacy living plurality."53 I want to further this position by arguing that
neoliberalism, privatization, and militarism have become the dominant
biopolitics of the mid-twentieth-century social state and that the
coupling of a market fundamentalism and contemporacy forms of
subjugation of life to the power of capital accumulation, violence, and
disposability, especially under the Bush administration, has produced a
new and dangerous version of biopolitics.54 While the murder of Emmett
Till suggests that a biopolitics structured around the intersection of race
and class inequalities, on the one hand, and state violence, on the other, is
not new, the new version of biopolitics adds a distinctively different and
more dangerous register to the older version of biopolitics. What is
distinctive about the new form of biopolitics at work under the Bush
administration is that it not only includes state-sanctioned violence but
also relegates entire populations to spaces of invisibility and
disposability. As William DiFazio points out, “the state has been so
weakened over decades of privatization that it … increasingly fails to
provide health care, housing, retirement benefits, and education to a
massive percentage of its population.”55 While the social contract has
been suspended in varying degrees since the 1970s, under the Bush
administration it has been virtually abandoned. Under such
circumstances, the state no longer feels obligated to take measures that
prevent hardship, suffering, and death. The state no longer protects its
own disadvantaged citizens-they are already seen as dead within the
global economic/political framework. Specific populations now occupy a
political space that effectively invalidates the categories of "citizen" and
"democratic representation" that are integral to the nation-state system.
In the past, people who were marginalized by class and race at least were
supported by the government because of the social contract or because
they still had some value as part of a reserve army of the unemployed.
That is no longer true. This new form of biopolitics is conditioned by a
permanent state of class and racial exception in which "vast populations
are subject to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of living
dead,"56 largely invisible in the global media or, when disruptively
present, defined as redundant, pathological, and dangerous. Within this
wasteland of death and disposability, whole populations are relegated to
what the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman calls "social homelessness."57
While the rich and middle classes in the United States maintain
lifestyles produced through vast inequalities of symbolic and material
capital, the "free market" provides neither social protection, security, nor
hope to those who are poor, sick, elderly, and marginalized by race and
class. Given the increasingly perilous state of those who are poor and
dispossessed in America, it is crucial to reexamine the ways in which
biopower functions within global neoliberalism as well as the
simultaneous rise of security states organized around cultural (and racial)
homogeneity. This task is made all the more urgent by the destruction,
politics, and death that followed Hurricane Katrina. 58]p.22
Biopolitical power relegates poor and marginalized to invisibility to cover
Neoliberal lies and Goverments WAR ON THE POOR
Giroux, 06 (Henry A. Giroux. Prof. English & Cultural Studies,
McMaster U., Canada; Chapter 1: Katrina and the Biopolitics of
Disposability, Stormy Weather]KS pg. 23
Biopower in its current shape has produced a new form of biopolitics marked
by a cleansed visual and social landscape in which the poor, the elderly, the
infirm, and criminalized populations share a common fate of disappearing
from public view. Rendered invisible in deindustrialized communities far removed
from the suburbs, barred from the tourist-laden sections of major cities, locked
into understaffed nursing homes, interned in bulging prisons built in remote
farm communities, hidden in decaying schools in rundown neighborhoods
that bear the look of Third World slums, populations of poor black and brown
citizens exist outside of the view of most Americans. They have become the
waste-products of the American Dream, if not of modernity itself, as Zygmunt
Bauman has argued for some time. 60 The disposable populations serve as an
unwelcome reminder that the once- vaunted social state no longer exists, the
living dead now an apt personification of the death of the social contract in the
United States. Having fallen through the large rents in America's social safety
nets, they re- flect a governmental agenda bent on attacking the poor rather than
attacking poverty. That they are largely poor and black undermines the nation's
commitment to color-blind ideology; race remains the "major reason America
treats its poor more harshly than any other advanced country."61 One of the
worst storms in our history shamed us into seeing the plight of poor blacks and
other minorities. In less than forty-eight hours, Katrina ruptured the pristine
image of America as a largely white, middle-class country modeled after a
Disney theme park.
Biopower now allows for control over daily basic habits and lifestyles.
Giroux, 06 (Henry A. Giroux. Prof. English & Cultural Studies,
McMaster U., Canada; Chapter 1: Katrina and the Biopolitics of
Disposability, Stormy Weather]KS] pg. 16
[For Foucault, biopower no longer resembles the classical sovereign notion
of control "exercised mainly as a means of deduction-the seizing of
things, time, bod- ies, and ultimately the seizing of life itself."38 Instead,
biopower now registers the multiple ways in which power is organized
through precise controls and com- prehensive regulations to exercise a
positive influence on the life of the species. For Hardt and Negri, the
biopolitical signals "a form of power that regulates social life from its
interior,"39 mediated through the world of ideas, knowledge, new modes of
communi- cation, and a proliferating multitude of diverse social relations.
Biopolitics now touches all aspects of social life and is the primary political
and pedagogical force through which the creation and reproduction of new
subjectivities take place. According to Hardt and Negri, "Who we are, how we
view the world, how we interact with each other are all created through
this social, biopolitical production."40]
Over the last few decades state biopolitics has gained a new level of power,
leading to control over life and death.
Giroux, 06 (Henry A. Giroux. Prof. English & Cultural Studies, McMaster U., Canada;
Chapter 1: Katrina and the Biopolitics of Disposability, Stormy Weather]KS pg. 12
[Within the last few decades, matters of state sovereignty in the new world
order have been retheorized so as to provide a range of theoretical insights
about the relationship between power and politics, the political nature of
social and cultural life, and the merging of life and politics as a new form of
biopolitics. While the notion of biopolitics differs significantly among its most
prominent theorists, including Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri,24 what these theorists share is an attempt
to think through the convergence of life and politics, locating matters of "life
and death within our ways of thinking about and imagining politics."25
Central here is the task of reformulating the meaning of politics and how it
functions within the contemporary moment to regu- late matters of life and
death, and, in turn, how such issues are intimately related to both the
articulation of community and the social, and the regulation, care, and
development of human life. Within this discourse, politics is no longer
understood exclusively through a disciplinary technology centered on the
individual body-a body to be measured, surveilled, managed, included in
forecasts, surveys, and statistical projections. Under the new biopolitical
regimes, the body is understood primarily as an object of power, but it is a
body that is social and multiple, scientific and ideological. Biopolitics points to
new relations of power that are more capacious, concerned not only with the
body as an object of disciplinary techniques that render it "both useful and
docile" but with a body that needs to be "regularized," subject to those
immaterial means of production that produce ways of life that enlarge the
targets of control and regulation
Katrina showed the side of America that was hidden for the sake of the rich; the
poverty ridden side. Giroux, 06 (Henry A. Giroux. Professor in the English and Cultural Studies Department at
McMaster University in Canada. KS
Pg. 24
[One of the worst storms in our history shamed us into seeing the plight of poor blacks and
other minorities. In less than forty-eight hours, Katrina ruptured the pristine image of America
as a largely white, middle-class country modeled after a Disney theme park. Janet Pelz is right
in arguing that Katrina showed us the murky quicksand beneath the Republican hype about the
values and virtues of
the Hurricane Katrina showed us faces the Repub- licans never wanted us to see-the elderly,
the infirm, the poor. The ones with no car to get them out of the city before the storm hit,
the ones unable to pay for hotel rooms until the waters receded. The ones with no health
insurance to recover from the ravages of insulin shock, kid- ney failure or dehydration. The
ones lying face down in the cesspool or dying of heatstroke in the Superdome.. .. As long as
the poor remained out of sight, they could be described in whatever undeserving light the
Republicans chose, and the rest of us would be unwilling to challenge them. This second Bush
administration was to be the conservatives' crowning glory. They would finish slicing
government to the bone, sacrificing environmental protections, critical infrastructure
investments, health and human services, all to massive tax cuts. Yes, the long climb back from
the precipice of the New Deal was within reach. That is, until the poor came out of hiding
and shamed us into seeing them. The [neoliberals] had sold us their theory-each of us should
take care of ourselves. Citizens (at least those mor- ally upstanding enough to be wealthy)
could do better for ourselves than the government could do for us.62]
Free Evacuation Transportation Solves
Free transportation would have made more people evacuate – Could have
extracted half the population that stayed.
Litman 05 (Todd Litman, Founding Executive Director of the Victoria Transport Policy
Institute, “Lessons form Katrina: What A Major Disaster Can Teach Transportation
Planners,” 20 September. [Online]
http://www.torontowestcaer.com/speakers_files/louislaferriere/14%20%20VTPI%20Transport%20Lessons%20of%20Katrina.pdf)
[It is important to understand why some people refused to evacuate when ordered before and
after Katrina struck. Interviews indicated various reasons: - Many lower income people lacked a
vehicle and money. - Many had no place to go and were fearful of conditions in emergency
shelters. - Many had survived previous hurricanes safely in their homes. - Many did not expect
the hurricane to be as bad as it was. - Some wanted to protect their homes or pets. - Some were
proud of their ability to endure disaster risks and discomfort. Various strategies could be used to
increase evacuation rates, including more information on the risks facing people who stay,
subsidized transportation, more comfortable and secure shelters, and better protection of
homes. Had residents been offered free transportation out of and back to the city, and
assurance of a relatively comfortable and safe refuge, perhaps half of those who stayed would
have left. This would have greatly reduced crowding at emergency shelters and subsequent
rescue problems. Assuming 200,000 residents had accepted free evacuation transportation at a
cost of $100 each, it would have required $20 million in subsidy. This may seem costly for a
single city (it represents about 20% of the regional transit agency annual budget), but is tiny
compared with the costs it would have avoided.]
Neighborhoods of choice solve for racism and economic isolation
Neighborhoods of choice are the best model for rebuilding New Orleans, this
model produces “desirable communities” for “all income levels” - Such
neighborhoods “reject concentrated poverty, residential segregation and
economic isolation.”
Jefferson 05 (Representative William Jefferson (D-La), “A vision and strategy for rebuilding
New Orleans,” Testimony at the HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AND SUBCOMMITTEE ON
WATER RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT OF THE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND
INFRASTRUCTURE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS FIRST
SESSION, 18 October.) JA
[The images that pervaded media coverage in the days after Hurricane Katrina struck New
Orleans exposed what President Bush has described as a deep, persistent poverty. As we move
forward with the rebuilding of New Orleans, therefore, we must replace neighborhoods of
extreme poverty with neighborhoods of choice and connection. The Brookings Institution report
I referenced earlier describes neighborhoods of choice as ‘‘desirable communities that families
of all income levels seek out for their quality, distinctiveness, sociability, location and amenities.
These neighborhoods are most importantly economically integrated, or mixed income
neighborhoods.’’ ¶ The same report defines neighborhoods of connection as those that lead
families to opportunity rather than isolated by residents. These neighborhoods offer their
residents good schools and timely services, provide their citizens easy access to nearby or
distant job markets, as well as a connection to the mainstream life of the region. ¶ Shortly after
Katrina hit, the American Institute of Architects reached out to me and others in Government to
offer their expertise in planning and helping to develop just such neighborhoods in a renewed
New Orleans. Such neighborhoods may represent the best hope to solve many of the city’s
urban dilemmas. They rejected the concentrated poverty, residential segregation and economic
isolation that characterized too much of the city. They also represent a vision of a city rich in
economically integrated neighborhoods, attractive to all classes of people, with schools on a
path to excellence, traversed by notably better public transportation, and tighter links to greater
economic opportunity.] 13-14
Social Location/Standpoint Epistemology Key
Recovery is in the eye of the beholder – Suffering and recovery are both
distributed unevenly throughout the city.
Bullard (founding Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center @ Clark Atlanta
University) and Wright (founding Director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice @
Dillard University) - 2009 (Dr. Robert D. and Dr. Beverly, “Afterword: Looking Back to Move
Forward,” in Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina, Bullard and Wright
[Editors]) KS
[Suffering in post-Katrina is not uniformly spread across the city. The New Orleans downtown is
displaying the same charm as before Katrina. Tourism is increasing, and large conferences,
sports events, and festivals have returned. The streets are clean, the streetlights are working,
and it appears that the city is on track for a slow but steady and full recovery. Some impacted
New Orleanians have made progress in rebuilding their lives and retaining stability, while others
continue to face barriers to recovery. But how do we measure the progress of the city's
recovery? Recovery is certainly in the eye of the beholder. Where you lived before the storm
may well determine how you live after the storm.] p. 268-269
***A/Ts***
A/T Politics
Political decision-making is corrupt and should be problematized – Bush rejects
medical aid from Cuba.
Zunes 05, Professor of Politics at USF [ Stephen, October 19 2005, ‘Bush
Administration Refuses Cuban Offer of Medical Assistance Following Katrina’
http://www.fpif.org/articles/bush_administration_refuses_cuban ]
The Cuban government made its formal offer on September 2, as desperately overworked
health-care providers in New Orleans were unable to meet the needs of thousands of survivors
due to the lack of medicines, equipment, and personnel. At that time, Senate majority leader
and physician Bill Frist, who was visiting that flooded city, stated, “The distribution of medical
assistance continues to be a serious problem.” He confirmed reports from Louisiana's Health
Department that scores of people were dying as a result. The following day, the Washington
Post reported that southern Mississippi's most essential need, in addition to fuel, was medical
assistance. In the evacuation center in Houston's Astrodome, where infectious diseases were
spreading, only a small portion of those seeking medical assistance were receiving care due to a
shortage of medical personnel and supplies. To both demonstrate the seriousness of his
government's offer and as a shrewd propaganda ploy, Cuban president Fidel Castro assembled
1586 doctors with backpacks filled with medical equipment at the Havana Convention Center on
September 4, announcing their readiness to leave at a moment's notice. Gulfstream Airways, a
regional carrier based in Florida , offered to fly them into the affected region free of charge.
There was no response from Washington. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus tried to pressure
the administration to accept the Cuban aid, with even the staunchly anti-Castro CubanAmerican Republican Senator Mel Martinez of Florida stating, “If we need doctors, and Cuba
offers them, and they provide good service, of course we should accept them.” News reports
indicate that Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco, who had visited Cuba earlier this year, would
have welcomed the assistance. A full week after President Castro's initial offer, the State
Department finally did respond, officially rejecting the offer on the grounds that the United
States did not have full diplomatic relations with Cuba.
Bush cared more about foreign relations than the safety of his people.
Zunes 05, Professor of Politics at USF [ Stephen, October 19 2005, ‘Bush
Administration Refuses Cuban Offer of Medical Assistance Following Katrina’
http://www.fpif.org/articles/bush_administration_refuses_cuban ]
Notably, the Bush administration did accept aid from the government of Taiwan , with which the
United States does not have full diplomatic relations either. Despite Cuba's many problems, the
Communist country has established one of the finest public health care systems in the
developing world, exporting thousands of doctors to poor parts of the Caribbean, Latin
American, Africa, and Asia. The island nation is frequently hit by hurricanes and—despite its lack
of resources—has demonstrated a far greater ability to handle these storms' extreme winds and
flooding with minimal loss of life than the far wealthier United States. Similarly, its doctors are
well-trained to deal with such natural disasters. Curiously, despite outcries by Congressional
Democrats regarding other areas of negligence and incompetence by the Bush administration
surrounding Hurricane Katrina, little attention has been given to the Bush administration's tragic
decision to reject the offer of Cuban aid. Part of the reason may be that the Democratic Party
has for decades shared the Republicans' seemingly pathological hostility toward Cuba even as
they have supported bipartisan efforts to pursue close economic relations and even military and
police aid to regimes with even worse human rights records. The problems with the Cuban
government—particularly regarding individual liberties and democratic governance—and other
failures of Cuba's brand of socialism are very real. However, this is no reason to have rejected
the offers of badly-needed assistance which could have decreased the suffering and saved the
lives of hundreds of Americans. No serious inquiry into the mismanagement of the response to
Hurricane Katrina should avoid holding those responsible for rejecting the Cubans' offer of
medical assistance accountable for their actions.
Political Tradeoffs Motivated Criminal govt neglect of storm
Privatization of state powers leads to a growing gap between the rich and poor,
leaving the less fortunate to fend for themselves.
Giroux, 06 (Henry Giroux, English Professor and cultural studies department at McMaster university
in Canada, 2006, Stormy Weather, Katrina and the Politics of Disposability)
[the compulsion to accumulate capital now overrides social provisions for the poor, elderly,
and youth. Individual responsibility has replaced investing in the common good or taking
seriously the imperatives of the social contract that informed the earlier policies of the New
Deal and President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs of the 1960s. Advocates of
neoliberalism wage a war against the gains of the welfare state, renounce its commitment to
collective provision of public goods, and ruthlessly urge the urban poor, homeless, elderly, and
disabled to rely on their own initiative.. As the government is hollowed out, privatization
schemes infect all aspects of society. As the state gives up its role as the guardian of the public
interest and public goods, reactionary politics takes the place of demo- cratic governance. ''The
hijacking of public policy by private interests," [Paul Krugman observes, parallels "the
downward spiral in governance."19 And one con- sequence is a growing gap between the rich
and the poor and the downward spiral of millions of Americans into poverty and despair. The
haunting images of dead bodies floating in the flooded streets of New Orleans following
Hurricane Katrina, along with thousands of Americans stranded in streets, abandoned in the
Louisiana Superdome, and waiting to be rescued for days on the roofs of flooded houses serve
as just one register of the despairing racism, inequality, and poverty in America.] Pg. 86
The government turned its attention away from the importance of hurricane and flooding
protection, leading to fatal consequences.
Giroux, 06 (Henry A. Giroux. Prof of English & Cultural Studies, McMaster U., Canada
Chapter 1: Katrina and the Biopolitics of Disposability, Stormy Weather) KS
The weeks and months leading up to Hurricane Katrina were more of the same. The White
house focused on a multi-trillion-dollar plan to privatize Social Security, and a plan to repeal the
federal estate tax. Meanwhile, as the Financial Times reported, the President proposed a
budget that "called for a $71.2 million reduction in federal funding for hurricane and flood
prevention projects in the New Orleans district, the largest such cut ever proposed." In
addition, "the administration wanted to shelve a study aimed at determining ways to protect
New Orleans from a Category 5 hurricane." This, in the face of a March 2005 report by the
American Society of Civil Engineers that warned 3,500 dams were at risk of failing unless the
government spent $10 billion to fix them.98
President Bush did not address questions about the lack of proper funding for the levees.
Instead, he played dumb and, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, came up with
one of the most incredible soundbites of his career: "I don't think anyone anticipated the
breach of the levees."99 In fact, Bush was briefed the day before Katrina hit and
emphatically warned by a number of disaster officials that the levees could breach-a position
Bush, of course, later denied.100} Pg 38
Dominant Public Katrina Narrative demonstrates sophisticated Public critical
race understanding and concerns.
Chamlee-Wright and Storr 10 (Emily Chamlee-Wright is a Professor in the Department of
Economics and Management at Beloit College. Virgil Henry Storr is a professor at the Mercatus
Center, “Expectations of Governments response to Disaster”, Public Choice, Volume 144,
Number 1, July, pp. 253-274. [Online] SpringerLink)
Given the demographic makeup of these neighborhoods, the existing literatures anticipate ¶ two
likely narratives. The emphasis the public choice literature places on rational ignorance ¶
(beginning with Downs 1957) and rational irrationality (Caplan 2007) suggests that the
nonacademic ¶ public can and are likely to hold unrealistic views of government, both in terms ¶
of its intention to serve the public effectively and its capacity to do so. The public choice ¶
literature, then, suggests that we should expect the dominant narrative to reflect a naively
optimistic ¶ belief that government intends to restore devastated communities, has the capacity
to ¶ do so, and therefore will intervene with effective forms of assistance. On the other hand, the
¶ institutional racism literature would anticipate a very different narrative to dominate within ¶
the non-academic public, one that we might call a naïvely pessimistic view. This is the
assumption ¶ that, while government has the capacity to intervene effectively, political leaders ¶
have racially charged intent to do harm, and therefore will not do so even if it could.4 To be ¶
sure, both of these views were expressed by some residents from the Ninth Ward community. ¶
The dominant narrative that emerges, however, is neither naively optimistic nor naïvely ¶
pessimistic about the prospects of government aiding the recovery of damaged communities. ¶
Instead, most residents from this community were disappointed but not surprised by ¶
government’s lackluster response to the disaster and articulated sophisticated critiques of ¶
government failure that surprisingly align with the academic critiques emanating from the ¶
institutional racism and public choice literatures, particularly in terms of the underlying
intentions ¶ of political and bureaucratic actors. Further, demands for government actions were ¶
predominantly framed in terms that reflected a relatively sophisticated contractarian view of ¶
the state, as opposed to a naïve overestimation of government’s capacity to restore all that ¶
had been destroyed by Katrina. The strategies that residents, business owners, non-profit
directors ¶ and church leaders adopted after Katrina make sense once we take into account their
¶ expectations about what government was likely to do and/or could be made to do.
FEMA Money spent on Enriching Profiteers and Political Cronies
Giroux, 06 (Henry Giroux, English Professor and cultural studies department at McMaster university
in Canada, 2006, Stormy Weather, Katrina and the Politics of Disposability)
[The paramount beneficiaries of Katrina relief aid have been the giant engineering firms KBR (a
Hal- liburton subsidiary) and the Shaw Group, which enjoy the services of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh
(a former FEMA director and Bush's 2000 campaign manager). FEMA and the Army Corps of
Engineers, while unable to explain to Governor Blanco last fall exactly how they were
spending money in Louisiana, have tolerated levels of profiteering that would raise eyebrows
even on the war-torn Euphrates. (Some of this largesse, of course, is guaranteed to be
recycled as GOP campaign contributions.) FEMA, for example, has paid the Shaw Group $175
per square (100 square feet) to install tarps on the storm-damaged roofs in New Orleans. Yet
the actual installers earn as little as $2 per square, and the tarps are pro- vided by FEMA....
Every level of the contracting food chain, in other words, is grotesquely overfed except the
bottom rung, where the actual work is carried out. ] Pg. 59
A/T States & Local
Local evacuation plans failed because few steps were taken to assist vulnerable
disabled populations
Johnson and Torres 2009 (Race, place, and environmental justice after Hurricane
Katrina. Robert D. Bullard Ed. Pgs 63-87. Glenn S. Johnson, Research assoc,
Environmental Justice Resource Center & Prof Sociology and Criminal Justice at
Clark Atlanta U and in the Department of Newspaper. Angel O. Torres is a GIS
Training Specialist with the Environmental Justice resource Center at Clark
Atlanta U)
The National Council on Disability (2006) reports that local evacuation plans during Katrina failed
to adequately provide for the transportation needs of people with disabilities for two reasons.
First, many local planners. reported they were unaware that people with disabilities have special
evacuation needs. second, when local planners were aware of the need to plan for people with
disabilities, the plans failed because people with disabilities had not been involved in their
developments
A 2007 study commissioned by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) office of civil Rights
found that most of the transit agencies as well as the metropolitan planning organization and
state departments of transportation surveyed had taken limited steps to address the needs of
vulnerable populations in an emergency; these same agencies have not thoroughly identified
the transportation-disadvantaged populations within their areas, and they do not routinely or
systematically address their needs (Milligan and Company 2007,42]). 77
Federal Court and jury 6 years after the event, police officers were finally
convicted of murdering citizens while they tried to escape New Orleans
Robertson ’11 (Campbell Robertson August 5, 2011, National Correspondent for the New
York Times, New York Times
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/r/campbell_robertson/index.ht
ml?inline=nyt-per)JW
[NEW ORLEANS — In a verdict that brought a decisive close to a case that has haunted this city
since most of it lay underwater nearly six years ago, five current and former New Orleans police
officers were found guilty on all counts by a federal jury on Friday for shooting six citizens, two
of whom died, and orchestrating a wide-ranging cover-up in the hours, weeks and years that
followed. The defendants were convicted on 25 counts, including federal civil rights violations in
connection with the two deaths, for the violence and deception that began on the Danziger
Bridge in eastern hit and the levees failed. New Orleans on Sept. 4, 2005, just days after
Hurricane Katrina
“The officers convicted today abused their power and violated the public’s trust during the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, exacerbating one of the most devastating times for the people
of New Orleans,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said. “I am hopeful today’s verdict brings
justice for the victims and their family members, helps to heal the community and contributes
to the restoration of public trust in the New Orleans Police Department.” six people on the
bridge that day. In a grisly account, prosecutors said four of the defendants — Sgt. Kenneth
Bowen, Sgt. Robert Gisevius, Officer Anthony Villavaso and former Officer Robert Faulcon — had
raced to the bridge in a Budget rental truck that morning, responding to a distress call from
another officer.
Permutation: Feds and states and locals have to act together
National Research Council of the National Academies 08 (June, "Potential Impacts of Climate
Change on U.S Transportation" Transportation Research Board Special Report 290
http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/sr/sr290.pdf) JA
Recommendation 1: Federal, state, and local governments, in¶ collaboration with owners and
operators of infrastructure,¶ such as ports and airports, and private railroad and pipeline¶
companies, should inventory critical transportation infrastructure¶ in light of climate change
projections to determine¶ whether, when, and where projected climate changes in their¶ regions
might be consequential.¶ Inventorying transportation assets essential to maintaining
network performance¶ to determine their potential vulnerability to projected
climate¶ changes is a sensible first step. Information about projected climate¶
changes is currently available from climate scientists for large subcontinental¶
regions—a scale more relevant than global projections for regional¶ and local
transportation infrastructure. Although such an inventory must¶ be updated
periodically as new scientific knowledge about climate change¶ becomes available,
inventorying is a relatively low-cost activity. Many of¶ the tools needed for the
purpose [e.g., geographic information systems¶ (GIS)] are available. The
inventorying process itself should help identify¶ Potential Impacts of Climate Change on
192 U.S. Transportation¶ with greater precision the data needed on transportationrelevant climate¶ changes and encourage collaboration between transportation
professionals¶ and climate scientists.¶ HOW SHOULD TRANSPORTATION DECISION MAKERS
RESPOND?¶ Finding: Public authorities and officials at various governmental¶ levels and
executives of private companies are continually making¶ short- and long-term
investment decisions that have implications¶ for how the transportation system will
respond to climate change¶ in the near and long terms.¶ Transportation decision
makers have an opportunity now to prepare for¶ projected climate changes.
Decisions made today, particularly those related¶ to the redesign and retrofitting of
existing or the location and design of¶ new transportation infrastructure,will affect
how well the system adapts to¶ climate change far into the future. Many
transportation facilities, such as¶ bridges, large culverts, and rail and port facilities,
are designed with long¶ service lives and help shape development patterns that,
once in place, are¶ difficult to change. Thus, transportation planners and engineers
should¶ consider how projected climate changes in their regions might affect these¶
facilities.]
A/T Capitalism
Disparities in current reconstruction efforts prove that this is a race thing, not a poverty thing.
Bullard 2009 (founding Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center @ Clark Atlanta
University) and Wright (founding Director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice @
Dillard University) (Dr. Robert D. and Dr. Beverly, “Afterword: Looking Back to Move Forward,”
in Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina, Bullard and Wright [Editors])
KS
[The New Orleans East community, however, is vibrant and hopeful. Community and
neighborhood meetings and meetings with state and federal officials are well attended. The
number of returning resideants increases daily. There are signs of work being done on increasing
numbers of homes.
New Orleans East is home to seven exclusive subdivisions built on man-made lakes, two of
which are gated communities-Eastover and McKendal Estates. There are playgrounds and green
spaces as well as a very large park housing a wildlife pre¬serve that were centers of community
recreation and family activity before Katrina. Neighbors can now be seen once again walking in
the mornings and evenings, tend¬ing their lawns and gardens. Children are playing more
outdoors, and once again, family pets can be seen and heard throughout the neighborhoods.
Affluent black homeowners, including doctors, lawyers, insurance executives, and a few
professional athletes and entertainers understand too well that that they are not immune to the
slow pace of services returning to their exclusive neighborhoods. Black professionals in the East,
like individuals in Section 8 rental units in the neigh¬borhood, are forced to drive long distances
to shop, eat at a sit-down restaurant, and take in a first-run movie. This reality cannot be
reduced to a "poverty thing.”] p. 271
Race trumps class when push came to shove: Society is allowing for certain
citizens to be considered unwanted, and Katrina outlined exactly which people
they were
Giroux, 06 (Henry A. Giroux. Prof. English & Cultural Studies, McMaster U.,
Canada; Chapter 1: Katrina and the Biopolitics of Disposability, Stormy
Weather.)KS
With the social state in retreat and the rapacious dynamics of neoliberalism
unchecked by government regulations, the public and private poli- cies of
investing in the public good are dismissed as bad business, just as the notion of
protecting people from the dire misfortunes of poverty, sickness, or the random
blows of fate is viewed as an act of bad faith. Weakness is now a sin, punishable
by social exclusion. This is especially true for those racial groups and immigrant
populations who have always been at risk economically and politically.
Increasingly, such groups have become part of an ever-growing army of the
impoverished and disenfranchised-removed from the prospect of a decent job,
productive education, adequate health care, acceptable child-care services, and
satisfactory shelter. As the state is transformed into one of the primary agents of
terror and corporate concerns displace democratic values, official "power is
measured by the speed with which responsibilities can be escaped."73 With its
pathological disdain for social values and public life and its celebration of unbridled individualism and acquisitiveness, the Bush administration does more
than undermine the nature of social obligation and civic responsibility: It sends a
message to those populations who are poor and black-society neither wants,
cares about, nor needs you. 74 Katrina revealed with startling and disturbing
clarity who these individuals are: African-Americans who occupy the poorest
sections of New Orleans, those ghettoized frontier-zones created by racism
coupled with economic inequality, which designate and constitute a "production
line of human waste or wasted humans.''75. p.28
A/T Disaster Capitalism
Disaster Capitalism is structurally non-unique: Federal and local New Orleans
reconstruction programs are structurally raced and classed – Post-Katrina,
residential segregation sharply increased.
Bullard (founding Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center @ Clark Atlanta
University) and Wright (founding Director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice @
Dillard University) - 2009 (Dr. Robert D. and Dr. Beverly, “Afterword: Looking Back to Move
Forward,” in Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina, Bullard and Wright
[Editors]) KS
[August 29, 2008, marked the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Recovery and
reconstruction over the tumultuous three years have been mixed and uneven. There has been a
slow but steady return of individuals and families to the city. Repopulation of New Orleans is
tied more to who has resources, including financial settlements of housing and insurance claims,
transportation, and employment. Thousands of native New Orleanians who were displaced by
Hurricane Katrina, most of whom are black and poor, still have a desire to return home but lack
the resources. The shortage of low-income and affordable rental housing will keep most of
these evacuees from returning (Bullard 2007).
Many of the families fall into the category of internally displaced persons-not refugees (Kromm
and Sturgis 2008). For some, the evacuation via bus, plane, and train set in motion their
permanent displacement. To ensure that this "black diaspora" is complete, numerous obstacles
have been erected in their way, such as the demolition of public housing, failure to rebuild
working-class housing that was destroyed by the storm and flood, loss of small minority
businesses, lack of clean-up of contamination and toxic hot spots left by receding floodwaters,
and spotty efforts to target federal rebuilding funds to hard-hit mostly black areas of the city.
Some policy analysts and elected officials have presented the plight of the city's displaced
citizens as a "silver lining" in dispersing New Orleans' poor in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio,
Memphis, and Jackson. They spin it as an unintended positive effect of the storm-breaking up
concentrated poverty-something that government officials had been crying to achieve for
decades. However, the best way to break lip is not displacement but concentrated employment
had evacuees had worked IWO minimum-wage jobs just to get by before the storm. Louisiana is
a right-to-work state. Some critics would argue that it's a "right to work for nothing" state,
making low-wage, non-union service workers vulnerable. The same jobs performed by hotel,
restaurant, casino, entertainment, taxi, and tourist workers in Las Vegas or Atlantic City pay a
livable wage, but not in New Orleans. Many of these service jobs are performed by the working
poor.
Katrina allowed "disaster capitalism" to shift into high gear (Klein 2008). Let's face it. There are
big bucks in disaster. Immediately after the flood, billions of no-bid contracts were awarded to a
handful of politically connected national contractors; the federal Davis-Bacon Act, which
mandates workers be paid the prevailing wage, was suspended; and a host of environmental
waivers were granted.] p. 265-266