New Orleans Evacuees and Activists Testify at Explosive House Hearing

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/09/1443240

New Orleans Evacuees and Activists Testify at Explosive House Hearing on the Role of Race and Class in Government's Response to Hurricane Katrina


Three months after Hurricane Katrina ripped through the southern coast of the United States, decimating communities in Mississippi and Louisiana, we play excerpts of an explosive congressional hearing focusing on race and the government's response to the disaster.


WOW! I'm shocked!!! :wow:
I'm not sure, if this is the right place to post this, if not, sorry.

and much dicussion on it I believe. Try looking in
"Greatest threads" back to Tues.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/12/7/13757/8197

Do you see the Katrina Response as Ethnic Cleansing?

# Yes, especially Bush not funding rebuilding the marshes or levees and many other reasons
74%
# No, Bush and Brownie are simply incompetent, and would never deliberately use bureacracy to kill and cleanse unwanted populations as the Fascists did in WWII.
25%

Votes: 1823

Do you see the Katrina Response as Ethnic Cleansing?

Yes, especially Bush not funding rebuilding the marshes or levees and many other reasons 1368 votes - 75 %
No, Bush and Brownie are simply incompetent, and would never deliberately use bureacracy to kill and cleanse unwanted populations as the Fascists did in WWII. 456 votes - 25 %

1824 Total Votes

and i found this exchange, between this very hateful, anally retained representative (Rep. Jeff Miller), and New Orleans survivor (Leah Hodges), extremely enlightening.... this dialogue ensues after he asks leah hodges if it is true that certain parishes are refusing to allow temporary housing of certain of its residents:


LEAH HODGES: Very true. Very true. Particularly true of and Jefferson Parish. Jefferson Parish is where the Causeway concentration camp was housed, where we experienced the Gestapo-type oppression, as opposed to being rescued. We were three minutes away from the airport. They could have taken us to the airport. Those military vehicles could have taken us to any dry, safe city in America. Instead, they dumped us at a dumping ground, sealed us in there, and they backed up all their authority with military M-16s.

And there were thousands and thousands of people. On the last day we were in there -- and let me tell you something -- they hand-picked the white people to ride out first. Yes, racism was very much involved. They hand-picked the white people to ride out first. Every day, the crowd got darker and darker and darker until finally there were only – there were 95% people of color in that place.

REP. JEFF MILLER: Miss Hodges, would you be offended if I respectfully asked you not to call the Causeway area a concentration camp?

LEAH HODGES: I am going to call it what it is. If I put a dress on a pig, a pig is still a pig.

REP. JEFF MILLER: Are you familiar with the history?

LEAH HODGES: Yes, sir, I am. And that is the only thing I could compare what we went through to: a concentration camp.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: And that's the truth.


and i say, viva leah hodges for not being intimidated by the likes of jeff miller. for telling it like it is. for calling a pig, a pig. for calling the causeway area THE CAUSEWAY CONCENTRATION CAMP and for those who supported you and said that while people may have not been gassed, people died for lack of water, for lack of food, for the absolute NEGLECT the federal government held them in. all that was lacking in that ex-change was for that miller man to have stood up in the middle of the hearing, and to lift his right hand and say, "heil hitler", or "heil bush".
america, if you have not seen the growing naziism in america and in our own government up to now, you can for certain see it in that exchange!

I found Chris Shays despicable in the only part of the tetimonies I was able to catch. Thanks for posting and commenting.

How did these people become so pompous and full of themselves?

We have horrible leaders in this country.

mckinney and a few others. they rock!

Dyan French testimony:
rtsp://video.c-span.org/project/hur/hur120605_evacuees.rm?mode=compact

If the link doesn't open you can view them on the CSPAN homepage.
http://www.c-span.org/

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

But what you say DOES NOT address the facts. "Why" NO was flooded is not what they're talking about: they're talking about the way the MINORITIES were treated AFTER the flood. And they were treated HORRIBLY.

I'm tired of the rightwing talking points being given equal time on DU.

:kick:

about the impending hurricane didn't convince her??

myself and many other artists/creatives, elderly and minimum wage slaves among them. Were we supposed to sprout wings and fly?

The ability to evacuate had more to do with class than race, although I can understand why many people of color felt it was racist. There were far more of them left behind than caucasians. Speaking as an ailing white female, I was lucky to get out, for surely I would have drowned alone in my Gentilly home. In the eleventh hour (almost literally) I was able to get a ride to safety.

In your world, you can't get by without a vehicle. In mine, I can't get by with one.

Believe me, I tried to get out. Amtrack shut down on saturday, as did Greyhound. Sunday in the early pre-dawn hours, when they COULD have been evacuating, those of us calling received a recorded message stating "due to Hurricane Katrina we are not in service at this time." That was a full 24 hours before the storm made landfall!

Walk a few miles in my shoes.

claiming that he should have "warned people" about the severity of the storm..

I feel terrible about the people who could not get out..I would have stayed if I could not have gotten my pets out with me.I would not leave them behind..

sensitive about this issue. Some days it seems like I will never recover.

in a coastal area of Alabama.

Fortunately, their housing project wasn't too badly damaged, but they had had no electricity or running water for days.

When asked why they didn't leave, one man said that he did have a car, but his he was the only person in his extended family (parents, grandparents, siblings, siblings' children) who did, and if he fled, how would he choose whom to take and whom to leave behind?

During the interview, there was a sudden shout of joy. The electricity had come back on. You could hear people in the background celebrating because the lights were back on.

:cry:

what is your problem anyhow?

"It fine to feel bad for people that could not get out but I wonder how many of those faces we saw on TV belong to criminals... you know (rapists, drug dealers, gang bangers, etc...)":puke:

children and elderly involved. I watched with horror what my government was doing to those people who were in dire danger of drowning in their homes..and many did. How can you blame the people who were stuck there? Many of them depended on public transportation for their mobility to take care of their daily needs.
When a disaster is too large for a state to handle, the federal government is called upon to help. The federal government sat on their hands and went shopping, to dinner, to a birthday party. I certainly hope I'm never in a position to have to depend on them for anything!

it demeans us, go back to your hole back at www.freerepublic.com

...but the RESPONSE to Katrina did. I'm a white (born redneck southerner), and was quite impressed with the response to Ivan (Pensacola) a year earlier (it was an election year).

FEMA etc... just fell apart w/respect to Katrina/Rita/Wilma. There are still places in MS/LA/FL that have yet to hear from FEMA.

The FEMA trailers here (from Ivan) have somewhat disappeared, I guess headed west - but why are people still living in tents across the gulf coast?

The 'powers that be' appear to have written off the gulf coast. I know there are alot of dedicated feds who are trying to help, but the GOP led gov't (let's not forget, they own congress, the white house and most of the courts - this is happening on their watch).

I predict a sea change in congress next year - we need another 'Vote the Bums Out' campaign.

Katrina another Bush failure

The fourth major failure of the Bush administration leading to tragedy has unfolded in gruesome detail in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. It revealed the hypocrisy of “small government” and sham privatization of emergency services. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was professionalized under the Clinton administration by former Director Jamie Lee Witt was gutted by President Bush.

FEMA’s incompetent political-crony appointees delayed responding to Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s pleas for federal help, which she issued three days before Katrina hit. While people were dying there, the president returned to his fake ranch, the vice president bought a mansion, and the secretary of state shopped Ferragamo’s for $1,000 shoes.

The first failure was cutting Army Corps of Engineers funding to strengthen the levees. Technology to provide equivalent Category 5 hurricane flood protection has been implemented by Holland engineers for decades. Bush’s reduction of funding for this project guaranteed levee failure and disaster.

The second failure, the purposeful dismissal of warnings that al-Qaida was an imminent terrorism threat, led to the disaster of Sept. 11, 2001. The Bush administration downgraded terrorism as a priority, defunded a program monitoring U.S.-based al-Qaida operatives, and replaced counterterrorism Justice Department programs with anti-drug and domestic policing. After 9/11, this was quietly reversed.

The third failure, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, was based on lies and “cooking” of intelligence. This was confirmed by the Downing Street memo and the “9/11 Commission Report.” This administration didn’t care enough about servicemembers or a successful occupation to provide sufficient troops, protective armor or an exit plan. Staying longer in Iraq and failing to secure it means profit for politically connected firms.

Troops in Iraq and veterans were abandoned by a war-profiteering government, as New Orleans residents were. This presidency is deadly, knows it, and doesn’t care.

M.D. Wooldridge
Würzburg, Germany


http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=31168&archive=true