On Saying Goodbye to New Orleans


I arrived on Friday afternoon, August 26, expecting to visit friends
and
stay until Monday evening. My friend tells me Saturday morning to call

the
airlines and change my ticket so I can leave Sunday. He and his
partner
are
packing basics and their two dogs and are evacuating the city very
early
Sunday morning.



On Sunday I am among the last to flly out of the city since our plane
left
at 10 AM and they closed the airport, I am told, about an hour later.
I
imagined what it must have been like leaving Saigon before the
fall-much
more desperate of course judging from the photos I remember. Here in
New
Orleans, there was calm and an eerie peace that prevailed. Yet my
feelings
were these: Will I ever see this amazing city again? Will its history
and
museums and music and mementos and architecture be lost forever? Will
the
houses I viewed walking in amazing neighborhoods just yesterday be lost

for
ever? What if the plane is cancelled, will I ever get out of harm's
way?



How fleeting it all is-even the history and magnificent achievements
of
this
one-of-a-kind city can be engulfed and swallowed up in one gigantic
heave
of
nature.



"Why is the plane not full and overflowing", I ask myself. Why
have
United
and Delta cancelled all their flights instead of adding many new
flights
to
transport people out of the city? How can they call for a complete
evacuation but have no planes, trains, or buses lined up to evacuate
the
people? The highway is bumper to bumper with cars. But clearly not
all
people have cars or have cars that will make it to safety. My cab
driver
who took me to the hotel airport on Saturday (I insisted on staying
near
the
airport) first got stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on Airline
Boulevard
but then took side streets instead. In these streets, all black
neighborhoods, kids were playing about the yards and no one seemed to
be
going anywhere. Yet the storm was to land in 28 hours or so. In the
hotel,
when we finally arrived, things were far from normal. Airlines were
canceling their flights in and out; many hotel employees had fled the
city;
the restaurant was being staffed by a manager and a janitor who were
staying
and apparently their families too intended to ride out the storm at the
hotel.



In the food line at the airport-which resulted in running out of most

foods
(except grits) after a one hour wait-stories were being told by
freshmen
college students who had just arrived that weekend to begin their first

day
of college and had been told to turn around and go home with their
parents
who brought them.



We careened down the jet way toward take off and I said to myself
"this
pilot is a cowboy'; but then I realized that there were no other
planes
anywhere in sight at the airport; the place was deserted; why not fly
down
toward the runway on the way to taking off? If was the fastest I had
ever
traveled on a jet way by far. We went aloft and I thanked Southwest
airlines for being our 'savior' who intervened to free us from the
impending
disaster. I was struck by how many people were stranded by other
airlines
who cancelled at the last minute.



Sunday Night home in Oakland: I went to bed feeling the worst-that
the
city
we know as New Orleans would no longer exist when I woke up. I woke up
several times in the night very concerned. "Sic transit gloria
mundi."



But getting up at 6:30 I heard the good news. That the storm center
had
at
the last minute veered to the right of New Orleans sparing it its worst
onslaught. New Orleans will survive! Vive la New Orleans!! All is
not
lost, most of the levees are holding.

Alleluia!



Yet the old lessons are learned and relearned. The smallness of
humans.
Even our greatest enterprises and achievements are like blades of grass
or
grains of sand and putty in the big hands of Mother Nature. Creation
dictates. We follow. A good time to evaluate again our priorities.



But the good news shifted suddenly when the levees started giving way.

Even
though the storm was now passed, the real brunt of it was being felt by

the
levees after it passed through. They were no longer holding.



People are flocking to the superdome and wherever they can get to
higher
ground, taking their loved ones-children and old folks, people in
wheelchairs and various stages of incapacity with them. Looting begins

but
there is a difference between stealing necessities in a crisis and
taking
the 'extras' of tv sets or guns. The superdome is becoming a place
sans
air, sans food and water, sans law and order. Where are the national
guard?
Where is the rescue?



They tell us the sewer system is backing up, that oil and sewage, feces

and
dead bodies, make up some of the flooding waters on the streets and in
the
homes and businesses of New Orleans.



But it is not just sewage and oil discharge, dead bodies and feces that

are
rising for all to see and smell. It is also the classicism and racism
in
America and the poverty of America's underclass that is on display.
And-more importantly-the decision-making by the ruling classes.
(The same
decision-makers who want to do away with all inheritance taxes and who
just
gave the energy companies another windfall tax break even though their
profits were at all-time highs this year.) All this stinks and is at
least
as toxic as the fetid waters in the streets.



Specifically I speak of the following realities.


Yes, New Orleans if 70% black and is an impoverished city with much
unemployment even before this latest crisis. But notice how 95% of the
TV
pictures of those who did not make it out are black. Why were there no
plans to evacuate the poor? Telling people to evacuate when they have
no
cars or their cars don't work is no plan. Why weren't buses and
boats,
trains and planes, sent in all day Saturday and Sunday to evacuate the
poor?
How is it possible that 20,000 National Guard can be flown in and
driven
in
in trucks but food, water diapers, cots, tents cannot be flown or
driven
in?
Why did the airlines cancel all flights on Saturday and Sunday instead
of
increasing flights to get people out? Why didn't FEMA push the
airlines
to
do this and offer financial incentives if needed?
Where is the Red Cross? Where is FEMA? With water food, shelter,
cots,
medicines and necessities of life for people stranded day after hot day

out
in the open on freeways and underneath viaducts?
Where is the vice president of the United States, Dick Cheney? Is he
hiding
in his now-famous bunker? Is he hosting meetings with oil presidents
and
Halliburton about how to make more money on this crisis? (This
morning's
paper confirmed what I suspect: Halliburton has been hired to rebuild
Louisiana at tax payer expense.)
Where was the press when the president of the United States and the
congress
voted to cut money for the building of levees and preserving of
wetlands?
How come CNN, CBS, NBC can get reporters into New Orleans and beam
pictures
out but no federal agency can get water, food, or supplies into New
Orleans?


This tragedy unmasks the real issues in American life today. The
Theocracy
wing of the Republican party who represent the worst of selfish
corporate
capitalism wedded to a crackpot Christianity ("Kill a commie for
Christ"
is
now altered to "kill a duly elected president for oil" by a
Republican
presidential candidate whose followers including the president have
barely
rebuked his outrageous outbursts of hatred and homicide).



This theocracy is anti-science ("There is no global warning;"
"creationism
should be taught in science classes;" etc. etc.) Global warming is
contributing to the increase of hurricanes and their ferocity.



This New Orleans tragedy proves that, aside from the questionable
morality
and legality of being in Iraq, we simply cannot afford it. Our
national
guard is dying in Iraq supposedly to bring "democracy" there. And
they
are
absent from their primary purpose: To help in national disasters.



The latest rationale for the destruction of Iraq is that we are there
to
bring democracy (even if they don't want it). But the truth is:
There is
no
democracy in America-that is where we should be focusing our
attention.
We
have an oligarchy, not a democracy. A rule of the few, not of the
people.
I live in a state of 34 million people and I have as many
representatives
in
the senate (two) as the 600,000 people of Vermont; the same as the
500,000
people of Wyoming or the 900,000 people of Montana. This is not
representative and it is not a democracy.



It is a rule of the few and by the few and for the few. My values of
eco-justice, racial justice, gender justice, economic justice, and
gender
preference justice are not represented in congress. The lower house
has
been 99% bought and kept and paid for by lobbyists and theocrats of the
punitive Father God who hate women, blacks, homosexuals, wetlands, with
equal vengeance.



Yes, the rising sewers of New Orleans are revealing the shadow side of
human
nature and of America. That side is not the individual looting so much
as
the structural, political, economic, racial and religious looters who
roam
the halls of congress and executive and judicial branches of government

and
the media with impunity. They are stealing our rights as a democracy
and
the vision and hopes and future of our children. Isn't it time to do
something? Isn't it time for a populist political uprising that
demands
that we get our money's worth from our tax dollars and that
corporations
pay
their fair share and that all the citizens be represented equally?