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The shared pain of New Orleans
During the dying days of the month of August we followed with concern
the news that yet another hurricane was approaching the Atlantic coast
of the Southern United States. This was Hurricane Katrina which finally
devastated the US Gulf Coast on August 29, leaving a catastrophic human
tragedy in its wake, especially in the historic city of New Orleans,
Louisiana, which one commentator described as being “87 percent black
and 30 percent poor”.
Day after day since the defences of the city against destructive floods
collapsed, we have followed with deepening despair the suffering visited
on the sister people of the United States by Hurricane Katrina.
Unfortunately, it is clear that the dismal news will get worse with each
passing day. Already it has been reported that the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, FEMA, has stocked 25 000 body bags, fearing that as
the search for missing people continues, thousands of corpses will be found.
Long distances separate us from the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and
Alabama that bore the brunt of the destructive fury of Hurricane
Katrina. But as human beings, and given our historic links with the
American people, we cannot but share their pain at this moment of a
degree of suffering that no human beings should be asked to endure.
At this moment of great tragedy for the American people, we cannot but
recall that they helped to prepare some of our greatest liberators for
the work they did to establish and lead our movement, the ANC. I refer
here to the fact that Pixley ka Izaka Seme, John Langalibalele Dube and
Charlotte Maxeke were all educated in the United States.
Neither can we forget the intense and sustained struggle they waged as
an important part of the world anti-apartheid movement, which played
such a vital role in helping us to achieve our freedom. With great
foresight, shortly before our liberation, they helped us to impart
skills to people from among the oppressed, to increase our capacity
successfully to manage and develop a liberated South Africa.
It is therefore both natural and inevitable that we too should grieve
with the American people as they strive to cope with the catastrophe
imposed on them by the ferocious Hurricane Katrina. As an expression of
that grief, we have conveyed our sincere feelings of sympathy and
solidarity to President Bush, the government and people of the United
States.
We did this hoping that the knowledge of our sentiment would, at least,
help to assuage their pain and strengthen them in their efforts to
rebuild the lives of the living, who have lost everything, including
their loved ones, their homes and possessions, and their means of
livelihood.
The scale of the tragedy was described in a few cryptic words by the
on-line “Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia”, which says:
“Hurricane Katrina was one of the most destructive tropical cyclones
ever to hit the United States. It caused extensive damage to the coastal
regions of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. The storm caused several
sections of the levee system in New Orleans, Louisiana to fail, flooding
most of the city (most of which lies below sea level) and resulting in
widespread damage and many deaths. Current estimates place the death
toll place in the thousands, and the damage is expected to surpass
Hurricane Andrew as the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. Over
a million people are known to have been displaced — a humanitarian
crisis on a scale unseen in the U.S. since the Great Depression.”
But perhaps we would understand the tragedy brought about by Hurricane
Katrina better, if we see it through the eyes of other US citizens who
know through their own experience, what it means to be caught in the
jaws of a natural or human machine that knows nothing about the quality
of mercy.
The September 8, 2005 edition of a publication of the Native American
(Indian) people, “Indian Country Today”, carries an ‘Editors Report’
entitled, “Hurricane Katrina uncovers a tale of two Americas.” Here is
what “Indian Country Today” says about the tale of two Americas.
“Almost all of the white folks got out. Many people of colour, it would
seem, did not. This is the unavoidable and indelible reality confronting
anyone and everyone who watched on television the horrific series of
events that has unfolded in the city of New Orleans.
”In the face of an impending and overwhelming catastrophe, as Hurricane
Katrina increased to Category 5, then dropped to 4 and set its sights on
the Gulf Coast communities of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi,
evacuation orders went out. Yet, as is now evident, many in Katrina's
path did not have the means to evacuate.
”For middle-class and wealthy Americans, months of survival at a
relative's house or in a hotel could be covered by a check or charged to
a credit card. The purchase of a new home in another area outside the
emergency zone is even within reach for some. But then there are those
hundreds of thousands who live week to week on pay checks from
low-paying jobs and who are reliant on public transportation. Among
those families, as in all families, are newborn babies, the sick and the
elderly. Suddenly, picking up and leaving doesn't seem so easy.
”America's contradictions are coming into full view in this tearful saga
being played out before the country and the world. Among the first is
that the limiting and sometimes dangerous condition of poverty remains
very much a reality of life for blacks and other people of colour. As
America's media have become more corporate and propagandistic in format,
style and tone, very little attention has been paid in recent years to
the legions of Americans who still live life on the edge of survival,
often without adequate income and without even basic health care coverage.
”Indian faces have been equally invisible along with the beleaguered
survivors of New Orleans' (African-American) Ninth Ward, until now. As
our Brenda Norrell reports in her excellent series on the hurricane, the
state-recognized (native) tribes of Louisiana's coast sustained heavy
damage and still remain largely out of touch as of this writing.
”Until this crisis made these conditions and these faces unavoidable to
the cameras, one would have believed that racial disparity was a thing
of the past, that opportunity had indeed levelled out and that the
admonitions of the civil rights movement were anachronistic. After all,
Michael Jordan made it. So, too, did Will Smith and Condoleezza Rice.
See Oprah Winfrey: she made it big in the country that rewards honest,
hard work. She bought a $50 million home in Montecito, Calif. and revels
in lavish parties with the rich and famous. Few income and racial
barriers remain in the wealthiest country on Earth, or so we are often
led to believe…
”The mitigation of the disaster after Katrina had stormed through was,
in some respects, basic. People needed water, food and transportation
out of the disaster zone - immediately. Numerous stories have been told
of private Americans making their way to the water's edge to launch
small boats in an effort to ferry residents to the New Orleans Superdome
or to highways leading out of town.
”Indian tribes have responded, too. The Tunica-Biloxi have sheltered
more than 500 evacuees in their Paragon Casino. NIGA and the NCAI have
set up relief funds. The Mohegan-owned Connecticut Sun basketball team
dedicated the gate from its WNBA playoff home game to hurricane relief.
But even these valiant efforts were far too few to handle the volume of
the need…
”Hurricane Katrina did even more than ravage entire communities,
demolish houses and uproot trees, causing violent death and destruction.
It also blew the lid off America's carefully crafted veneer. America's
inner cities are heavily populated by people of colour - many who are
poor and, as a result, remain particularly vulnerable to both natural
and human-made disasters. Much more needs to be rebuilt than the
buildings and industries of New Orleans and those other devastated Gulf
Coast communities.”
David Brooks echoed this sentiment in his article, “Katrina's Silver
Lining”, published in the September 8, 2005 edition of the “New York
Times”. He wrote:
“As a colleague of mine says, every crisis is an opportunity. And sure
enough, Hurricane Katrina has given us an amazing chance to do something
serious about urban poverty.
“That's because Katrina was a natural disaster that interrupted a social
disaster. It separated tens of thousands of poor people from the
run-down, isolated neighbourhoods in which they were trapped. It
disrupted the patterns that have led one generation to follow another
into poverty.
“It has created as close to a blank slate as we get in human affairs,
and given us a chance to rebuild a city that wasn't working. We need to
be realistic about how much we can actually change human behaviour, but
it would be a double tragedy if we didn't take advantage of these unique
circumstances to do something that could serve as a spur to antipoverty
programs nationwide.
“The first rule of the rebuilding effort should be: Nothing Like Before.
Most of the ambitious and organized people abandoned the inner-city
areas of New Orleans long ago, leaving neighbourhoods where roughly
three-quarters of the people were poor.
“In those cultural zones, many people dropped out of high school, so it
seemed normal to drop out of high school. Many teenage girls had babies,
so it seemed normal to become a teenage mother. It was hard for men to
get stable jobs, so it was not abnormal for them to commit crimes and
hop from one relationship to another. Many people lacked marketable
social skills, so it was hard for young people to learn these skills
from parents, neighbours and peers.
“If we just put up new buildings and allow the same people to move back
into their old neighbourhoods, then urban New Orleans will become just
as rundown and dysfunctional as before…
“We can't win a grandiose war on poverty. But after the tragedy comes
the opportunity. This is the post-Katrina moment. Let's not blow it.”
Another commentator, Carlos Barria, writing for the Reuters news agency
said: “Ben Wisner, a hazards specialist with the Environmental Studies
Programme at Oberlin College, Ohio, says what the United States needs is
not higher levees (flood barriers), but another civil rights movement.
What are the lessons from the human catastrophe taking place after
Hurricane Katrina?
“It wasn’t just the winds and floodwaters that put people at risk along
the Gulf of Mexico. The human tragedy in New Orleans and many lesser
known communities along the U.S. Gulf Coast has deep roots in a
neo-liberal ideology that favours lax regulation and a return to massive
investment in petrochemical and other industries with little concern for
social and environmental consequences…
“Meanwhile low-income, black families have been mired in poverty by the
“downsizing” of the federal state. That has meant less money for
education, for small businesses and for decent, low-cost housing...
“Non-governmental organisations, faith communities and activist groups
need to mobilise the mass of the population in affected area to see
themselves not as victims of nature but victims of a late phase of
globalising Capitalism. The affected people will then be in a position
to see themselves as agents of their own wellbeing and victims no longer
as they demand social change.
“In concrete terms, there is one project that seems to me a priority.
Planning for recovery needs to occur in a participatory and inclusive
manner. Women, people of colour, people living with disabilities and
children and youth need to be part of the process in the post-Katrina
situation.”
During the second week of this month, September, 185 Heads of State and
Government will gather in New York and celebrate the 60th anniversary of
the establishment of the United Nations Organisation. They will also
discuss the progress made to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) that were adopted in 2000.
Perhaps if these leaders of the nations of the world fully absorb the
great lessons communicated by the tragedy in New Orleans, they will take
the necessary decisions to ensure that all humanity achieves the MDGs.
In this regard, again bearing in mind the painful lessons of the tragedy
in New Orleans, they, and us, will have to understand and accept:
* the central and critical importance of the global struggle against
poverty;
* the need to transfer developmental resources from the rich to the
poor;
* the imperative, globally, to respect the practice of human
solidarity especially in our highly interdependent and globalising
world;
* the strategic role of government in these processes; and,
* the vital necessity to involve the masses of the people in the
challenging effort to determine their destiny.
Once more we convey our heartfelt sympathy and solidarity to the sister
people of the United States, especially the residents of New Orleans. To
all of them we reaffirm that because they know what suffering means, our
own people share the pain afflicting especially the black, the Native
American, and the poor of the United States of America as they strive to
overcome the consequences of Hurricane Katrina.
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