Jesse
Jackson: Hurricane Katrina Ripped the Cover Off Poverty
By
Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr
Katrina
hit with nature's fury. But the suffering in the storm's wake
should spark American fury. Nature did its worst, but the
suffering and human toll have been greatly magnified by an
unconscionable failure of leadership.
I
was in New Orleans on Thursday night with State Sen. Cleo
Fields. Fields has been running private buses into New Orleans,
desperately trying to rescue as many people as possible. We
took the buses to Xavier University to pick up 450 displaced
students. When we got there, a human circle of desperate families
surrounded the buses. They were without food or water. They
prayed the buses were for them. We took as many as possible.
But we were forced to leave more than a conscience can bear.
Katrina
was a nightmare of a storm, but she hit a country suffering
a nightmare of neglect. Just as when storms hit Haiti
or Indonesia, Katrina ripped the cover off poverty in
America. Residents were warned to leave New Orleans
and coastal regions as Katrina approached. But many
of the poor -- mostly urban black in New Orleans, rural
white and black in Mississippi and elsewhere -- had
no car. It was the end of the month, when money runs
short. Many could not afford gas, train or bus. Some
were too sick to travel. In New Orleans, the affluent
tended to live on the high ground; the poor in the bottoms.
The affluent generally got out. Disproportionately,
the poor, the old, the sick, the vulnerable were left
behind.
Many
went where they were told to go -- to the Superdome
or the convention center. There they found ... chaos.
Food and water exhausted. Medical care inadequate. Bathrooms
not working. And worse, no military or police to keep
order.
Katrina
veered off at the last minute and didn't hit New Orleans
directly as was feared. But even so, the levees didn't
hold and, as many feared, the city was flooded.
The
weakness and inadequacy of the levees were not secrets.
A hurricane hitting New Orleans was one of the top three
priorities of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
But the plans to strengthen the levees -- to rebuild
the natural delta and barrier reefs that protected the
city for decades -- were postponed and delayed by inadequate
budgets. The White House has been squeezing budgets
for infrastructure work and the Army Corps of Engineers.
The Republican Congress has appropriated to them more
than the president asked for, but far less than what
was needed.
Where
was the money? The first Bush priority was tax cuts,
which went generally to the wealthy, not to the poor
who suffered the brunt of the storm. The second priority
has been Iraq, a war the president's men promised would
pay for itself. Now its cost is $200 billion and counting.
National
Guard troops didn't arrive until Thursday, with a promise
of deploying 1,300 or so troops a day. In the meantime,
lawlessness reigned in New Orleans, as the desperate
now had to fend off the violent.
Where
were the troops? One third of the National Guard of
Louisiana and Mississippi is deployed in Iraq. These
soldiers often come from fire and police departments,
sapping the local Guard and the local emergency forces.
There are enough Guard members in other states to make
up the difference, but it takes time to get them there
-- and they don't know their way around. In the wake
of Katrina, time is everything.
A
natural catastrophe exposes us. It reveals heroism,
generosity, as well as thuggery, incompetence. Katrina
showed New Orleans to be a city not of glitter but of
impoverished and abandoned people. It exposed a society
in which the most vulnerable are left to fend for themselves.
It exposed an administration that is spending billions
on vainglorious wars of its own choosing abroad while
failing to invest in even basic infrastructure and emergency
public health measures at home. And it exposed a president
who is asking Congress to cut taxes on the wealthiest
estates in America even as he insists that the thousands
of poor people you see abandoned in New Orleans lose
their health care, as Medicaid and Medicare are cut.
The
response of the Bush administration to Katrina is widely
seen as an "embarrassment." But the priorities
of the president and his administration are worse than
embarrassing. They are costly and increasingly dangerous.
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