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Shouting Underwater
by WALTER MOSLEY
This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070910/mosley
[from the September 10, 2007 issue of The Nation]
We are coming up on the two-year mark since the Katrina
debacle in Louisiana and Mississippi. I hesitate to
call this date an anniversary because the word implies,
in some way, a celebration, a birth. What we are
scratching on the calendar is more like a notch on a
raw gravestone, a count of the days and years that have
passed without a reckoning for those who died, those
who lost loved ones and for a city that is still in
critical condition.
Not only did our government fail to answer the call of
its most vulnerable citizens during that fateful
period; it still fails each and every day to rebuild,
redeem and rescue those who are ignored because of
their poverty, their race, their passage into old age.
The disaster named after the hurricane is not confined
to the areas affected. Every emergency room, empty bank
account and outsourced life's work could be named. We
live in a country rife with ignored and condemned
poverty. The rich, high on their great corporate
steeds, ride over us believing that they are out of the
reach of global warming and its symptoms, of terrorism
and dwindling natural resources. When government
officials tell them to evacuate, they drive their cars,
board their corporate jets or simply climb to higher
ground with ease. At this very moment they are looking
down on Baghdad and New Orleans, Pakistan and Sudan,
you and me. The feeling of invulnerability that these
people have is unfounded, but nonetheless it makes them
reckless. They take chances and cut corners believing
that everything will come out all right. Their
delusions of grandeur and ultimate power put us in ever
more dire straits.
If we call ourselves Americans (and mean it), then we
are all victims of Katrina. If we breathe the air or
eat fresh fruit, if we call on our cellphones, drink
water from a plastic bottle or just nibble on a
chocolate bar, then we are Katrina; we are the rising
waters around the ankles of this world.
When the day comes to mark off the two-year point since
the deluge descended on the Gulf of Mexico, we should
take care not to make too much noise. We shouldn't
march in that shadow of time or even protest. Rather,
we should sit alone in a room with our imaginations
open to feel what they experienced on that day: the
waters rising, rising and us climbing stairs and
ladders, chairs and fire escapes; sitting on rooftops
while bodies float by; calling out to passing boats and
helicopters that go by in mute witness; being pressed
to the roof by the rising tide and being engulfed
shouting, shouting out for the ones we love underwater,
unheard; the darkness swirling around us as we die with
no one coming to save us, or themselves.
Two years have passed and Americans are still
displaced, waters are still rising. Wars are raging and
we are waiting for a day to vote for a man or a woman
who works, not even in secret, for the rich. We wait
for this man or woman to lead us out from the disaster
like chattel. We feel sorry for the victims as so many
felt sorry for Rodney King, not realizing that his
defeat was our loss; the blows that rained down on him
were also aimed at our freedom, our ability and feeling
of responsibility to fight back. Two years have passed
and the dead are still dead and the dying are still
dying. The clouds gather like angry anthropomorphic
gods, and we stumble and fall unable to make a stand or
lend a hand or protest all the victims in ghettos,
retirement homes, prison wards and dark skins.
Two years have passed and we are still exporting
democracy while we continue living under the
semibenevolent oligarchy of international corporations
and their candidates. This two-year point measures how
far we have sunk under the weight of the rich and their
political flunkies--while so many of us still celebrate
them as if they were pop stars. We experience the
silence of drowning men and women. We call out and are
not heard. We believe in systems and people who have no
faith in us. We perpetuate the rising temperatures and
waters and hatred and feelings of hopelessness. New
Orleans's defeat is also our defeat. Its closed schools
are a metaphor for our minds and our futures. We see
the storm's passage but we don't see it coming. But it
is coming. And there are no leaders, no corporations,
no benevolent billionaires who are going to save our
grandmothers and our babies. We must unite outside of
the systems that lie like fast food heaped on golden
platters at our feet. We must organize at the ground
level, where the water has already begun to rise.
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about Walter Mosley
Walter Mosley is the author of the bestselling Easy
Rawlins series of mysteries, the novel R.L.'s Dream,
and the story collection Always Outnumbered, Always
Outgunned, for which he received the Anisfield-Wolf
Book Award and, most recently, Life Out of Context,
published by Nation Books. He was born in Los Angeles
and has been at various times in his life a potter, a
computer programmer and a poet. His books have been
translated into twenty languages. He lives in New York.
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