Gulf Storms, Fables of Reconstruction and Hard Times for the Big Easy
The Wind Has Changed
By T.W. CROFT
What has happened down here is the winds have changed,
Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain.
Rained real hard and it rained for a real long time,
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline.
The nation was in the August dog days of a boring, hot summerjust your every day distant wars, White House investigations, missing persons' exposes on Fox News, massive bankruptcies and pension looting, and annoying gas prices and the like.
The President was on vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, trying to ignore the distraction created by Cindy Sheehan and a little tent city called Camp Casey. The White House had announced that President Bush was reading John Barry's The Great Influenza. Perhaps he should have picked another book by Barry, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.
Why? Because, by the end of August, the wind had changed, and the tide was rising. Hurricane Katrina lurched across Florida, stumbled south of the keys, turned north and slammed into the Gulf. The rest of the horrific story played out on 24-7 news channels. I've experienced a few hurricanes. This one was different. Rita came ashore soon after.
Mass misery emerged from the devastation of Katrina, bringing with it the shock of more than 1,300 deaths and thousands of injuries; the destruction of many Gulf communities and the flooding of New Orleans; a stunned disbelief in the inability or neglect of FEMA and the federal government to respond to disasters; a clawing agony for the ongoing plight of the refugees; and distress at the energy crunch that swept far beyond the gulf.
How badly mangled have the federal response and recovery efforts been, in the main? To paraphrase Ken Patchen (Journal of Albion Moonlight), "Give me just one speck of proof that this couldn't have been handled better by a half-dozen drugged idiots bound hand and foot at the bottom of a ten-mile well."
Most of us are now squeezed by the higher gas prices, and many of us will get whacked by natural gas price hikes this winter. Business magazines report that shortages could close factories and schools (Denver Business Journal, 10/05). Meanwhile, ExxonMobil declared a $10 billion profit for the third quarter, a 75% increase; as did other petro giants. Seems the ghost of Enron is hard to banish.
The federal government has already allocated $70 billion, and may spend up to $200 billion in assistance, clean-up and reconstruction. These commitments have been slowed down and complicated by federal scandals, budget and political problems, piling debt, and a huge money ship steaming daily to the sands of the Tigris and the Euprates.
As a point of reference, the post-WWII Marshall Plan, based on the share of America's gross domestic product then, would have cost $200 billion today, according to Anthony Gottlieb, who reviewed the book "Postwar" in the New York Times book section (10/16). Gottlieb attests that Western Europe witnessed dramatic improvements as soon as a decade after the devastation. If there is some uneasiness about federal leadership in this disaster, compared to, say, Truman and Eisenhower, it's understood.
Meanwhile, there's been a growing brou-ha over the re-colonization of New Orleans, given the large numbers of residents who are unable to return. The people of the Gulf, their lives already a catastrophe, are not protected from the vultures now descending on the coast. Many local workers and refugees from the storm are being overlooked for the initial clean up and construction jobs. At the same time FEMA threatens to cut off hotel/motel payments to people scattered all over the country, landlords are preparing evictions for thousands of residents who can't return, and refuges from the N.O. 9th ward and elsewhere fear their homes will be bulldozed.
A number of sizable no-bid contracts were let to Halliburton, Bechtel and other mega-corporations. The Governor of Louisiana urged FEMA to overturn the contracts, as they run counter to the local contracting/hiring preferences of the Stafford Act. As of mid-November, 5.4% of the contracts had gone to Louisiana firms, 3.45% Mississippi, 5.15% Alabama (Gannett). Local business leaders, including minority firms, screamed they are not being deployed for reclamation and re-building, and, as of 12/5, only 2,063 out of 28,540 small businesses that had applied for SBA disaster loans had loans approved.
In many parts of black New Orleans and rural Mississippi, the economic situation was dire before the storm. Mississippi and Louisiana never fully recovered from the 2001-2002 recession, with Mississippi at 6.7% unemployment and Louisiana at 6.1% before the storm. Poverty rates for the area were 19.4% in Louisiana and 21.6% in Mississippi. And their pay was 19-28% below national averages, respectively. (Tarpanian, LRA Online, 11/05).
If the controversy is somewhat reminiscent of the sad beautiful song "Louisiana 1927", by Randy Newman, John Barry reminds that that flood clobbered seven states, killing hundreds and flooding one million homes. "By August 1927 the flood subsided. During the disaster 700,000 people were displaced, including 330,000 African-Americans who were moved to 154 relief camps. Over 13,000 refugees near Greenville, Mississippi were gathered from area farms and evacuated to the crest of an unbroken levee, and stranded there for days without food or clean water, while boats arrived to evacuate white women and children. Many African-Americans were detained and forced to labor at gunpoint during flood relief efforts" (Wikipedia).
Barry asserts that the fallout from government negligence--then-- sparked a demand for a stronger federal government. The disaster was said to have helped elect Herbert Hoover, who ably led the Red Cross effort. But as long-term federal promises were reneged, and as the Depression grew, political support shifted to Huey Long in Louisiana and the New Deal nationally, and African-Americans shifted allegiance to the Democrats.
The "re-colonization" of the Big Easy and the Gulf is, similarly, a watershed for all Americans. We will either allow tens and tens of thousands of people to be blown away permanently to the Creole Diaspora, or we will fight for their rights to live and work in dignity, we will help defend New Orleans. The President has proposed a Gulf Opportunity Zone, or GO Zone. It might as well be called a War Zone, as the bureaucratic battering of the people of the Gulf has already yielded combat fatigue, the featherbedding and carpet-bagging is in full bore, and the rip-offs are mounting.
This article will describe problems with the reconstruction process, examine a few of the models for response to major disasters, and suggest some targeted strategies that focus resources on the needs of people and communities. People in the Gulf are still waiting for "the leader" to sort out this mess, as long-time resident Cokie Roberts confided on NPR recently. They're still waiting for the federal cavalry. But like New York City during 9/11, the federal cavalry may not show for awhile. Local residents, the army of the Creole Diaspora, and a new generation of working class heroes will have to take the reins, and pressure governments to fund a strategy that is focused on the needs of the people and their communities, not just those of big business and big real estate holders.
QUOTE
...New Orleans and the Gulf belong to its people, the Creole Diaspora and the survivors, not to an ideology or market. So much of what they owned has been destroyed or is now being taken away. They are our brothers and sisters, and they are beseeching us, crying for our help. That is not easy, they are proud people. Let's help them re-build the Big Easy and Gulf. Let's help them re-claim their home and hope. As the Commander Robert Gould Shaw said in the movie Glory, "We fight for men and women whose poetry is not yet written." This is a good fight, a fight for the future. We all own this fight.
http://www.counterpunch.org/croft12302005.html
