1.21 Gigawatts of Opinion

Mr. Brown, the head of FEMA, which comes under the umbrella of the Homeland Security agency, needs to be fired, right here; right now. This agency has been running around with billions in their budget, chewing up taxpayer dollars and citizen rights carte blanche; they have not been held accountable on any front and when they are called into action they hold back. They lounge and blow smoke up the administrations ass. Rather than respond to the call for help from real people in dire need, they congratulate themselves on their existence, they promise a response in the future and they accuse the victims for being the authors of their own demise. "Silly niggers should a listened when we told them there was a mandatory evacuation. We're not going to risk good people to help some black folk too dumb to help themselves! No way. We'll go in when things are safer." Only things didn't get safer, they got worse.
No attempt was made to let the drowning people know that help was on the way, that they were worth saving, or that America would not let them down. Mr. Brown, the politicians, the news media spoke to those with televisions that worked. Their first concern was to ease the conscience of the American public who sat mesmerized by the tragedy unfolding within their own boarders. Imagine the effect it would have had on the battered victims of hurricane and flood to have at least heard from a leader on the ground that they were being heard; that help was on the way. It is incomprehensible to believe that a leader could not have arrived with the legions of news media that descended on the city to bring the story to the public outside of the disaster zone. This was a neglect of the same severity as total dereliction of duty.
The good people of Louisiana and Mississippi were subjected to rumor and abandonment fears supported by a society that has only recently made attempts to recognize them as citizens. If you doubt the strength of rumor to reek destruction then note that at the same time that America's tragedy was compounding, a panic was killing people across the world in Iraq where nearly a thousand people died in one brief incident all because of a hint of danger, rumored on the wind. Back home in the States, it has only been a few short decades since the American version of apartheid officially ended in these areas. It doesn’t take a long cultural memory for these people to fall into old belief systems that enforce that they are unimportant and unworthy in the social order. Even though they work and pay their taxes they have little or nothing. They are the working poor in a State responsible for the transportation of the fuel that runs the country. They clean hotel rooms, serve drinks and 'po-boys', they run the casinos and entertain the visible members of the American class system while they accept their position in the underclass; a strata in the social structure vehemently denied in the American self image. They are the silent and invisible majority that makes the cities function. They raise good people in good families which spawn more good families that go on to build communities, cities and a nation.
Fortunately, not everyone is trapped in old issues of hate and alienation. Some of these citizens were loyal to their leaders and heeded direction by taking refuge in the Superdome. Even though there was a mandatory evacuation order issued, there was no provision to remove people. Instead, FEMA and local government provided a gathering place where all of the poor, sick and vulnerable could die in one neat pile together and therefore aid federal agencies in the clean up of the city after the disaster passed. How dare the bastards survive to see the hundreds of school busses swamped, unused in a New Orleans's holding yard. If for nothing else, Mr. Brown should be fired for this.
Instead of compassion and respect, Mr. Brown's first response was contempt for the victims of a disaster they were as powerless to prevent as they were to resurrect their drowned loved ones laying in the flooded streets. There is no room for a reaction of this nature. It exemplifies his own fears and inadequacies to do the job he was trusted to do. He failed in his service to the public and the politicians that hired him as well as, and perhaps more importantly, in his values as a human being and as an American.
It is ironic that we weren't to find compassion and respect until a military General, an autocrat, a person with no time or room for democratic processes eventually arrived on the scene and dumped truckloads of these qualities by both his direction and his example. By his authority and his dedication to service to the American people, who pay his wage, he secured a salvation and a rescue for these poor victims of disaster; of neglect. General Honore exemplifies service and leadership and sets the standard to which all of the leaders who we trust with our lives, our money and our esteem should be judged. Everyone, all the way up to the President should fall under this scrutiny. The Commander in Chief has obviously surrounded himself with sycophants that lie to him. How can a leader have integrity when the information he receives is compromised by half truths designed to soothe him? It takes courage and integrity to serve a nation and these aren't just fancy words. They are desperate qualities required in leadership which need to be combined with the other ones already mentioned such as accountability, compassion and respect. Not one of these values was in evidence by the leadership prior to the General's arrival. If any people demonstrated these traits it was the poor black people that refused to join the morass of humanity writhing in the darkness, stench and panic at the Superdome; it was the people that stayed loyal to their weaker family members, to their homes and their values. That took real courage, real integrity, honest compassion and heartfelt respect. Although they wound up as victims of a powerful disaster unleashed by a force much greater than any terrorist threat, they are heroes of American values and I salute them. Let Mr. Brown and others of his ineptitude fall in their shadow.

Posted by: Baaa | Sunday, September 04, 2005