Jumping in

I've been thinking through some things the last few days related to this discussion and the pursuit of justice for victims of unrepentant vigilantism during Hurricane Katrina.

After I suggested that some instances of abuse of power might be more easily prosecutable than others and wondered aloud whether or not some sort of truth commission deal might be appropriate for some of the cases, an anonymous commenter points out:

So the family of Emmett Everett, the black man killed by Doctors at Memorial hospital, only deserves an apology while the white cop who torched a black man deserves prison? The family of the black woman who died at the convention center because homeland security blocked ambulances deserves an apology while the police at Danzinger deserve jail?

This is moral relativism at its worse. If you killed someone under the color of law or in an official capacity as a medical care provider, you should pay the price.

We developed the Nurenberg acccords and International Court precisely to prevent people from using "special circumstances" as an excuse for murderous behavior.
Every human has an individual conscience and the history of human progress our of the ranks of primitive primates has been to get them to use it when mob mentality takes hold.

All true.

But earlier in the thread, the same (I think) Anonymous commenter points out:

Trust me, if these ever go to jury no white juror is going to hold the white defendants accountable. In their minds, blacks went wild and they share a collective guilt for the actions of a few, so the innocent ones deserve no sympathy.

So I guess I'm still not sure exactly what it is you do here.

If we have a moral standard for what justice should be in this case - i.e. appropriate criminal penalties for those that committed crimes during Katrina - but no practical means of enforcing the standard, how do you move forward?

Anon is right both about the plank you walk off when discussing moral relativism and about the low likelihood that a local jury would ever convict a DHS bureaucrat that blocked ambulances from the Convention Center or the Doctors at Memorial.

That's why I'm having a hard time resolving this.

Let's take the Memorial case.

I would applaud a criminal case being brought against Anna Pou. I think it is pretty damn clear that she killed Mr. Everett when he could have very easily made it through the evacuation.

But I highly doubt she'd be convicted. The trial would be highly polarizing, perhaps more so than the other cases, since I think people are naturally inclined to be sympathetic toward a medical professional and because of Ms. Pou's public exoneration tour.

So what kind of justice would be handed down from that kind of circus?

I'm curious to engage in a frank discussion about this. I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of my readers are in agreement that these cases should be pursued. But I wonder to what extent impediments to justice exist and whether those impediments limit the ability of our traditional system to actually deliver. Are there practicalities to consider?

--

Moving sideways...

I'm at least comforted by the knowledge the Eric Holder is the Attorney General of the United States. The administration is serious about empowering the Civil Rights Division to do what it is supposed to do. It's not a coincidence that the feds are now actively investigating some of these post Katrina horror stories to see what they might be able to successfully prosecute.

I am hoping Holder will utilize the powers established under the Clinton administration for the Civil Rights Division to take over police departments characterized by rampant civil rights violations. Forces with a "pattern or practice" of civil rights abuse can be effectively taken over using consent decrees. Cities are threatened with civil rights lawsuits unless they agree to a federal police monitor to implement sweeping reforms. Holder came to oversee the Civil Rights Division as Deputy Attorney General just as it began pursuing consent decrees against police departments in Pittsburgh and Los Angeles.

New Orleans was once a candidate for a consent decree from the Department of Justice. This outside pressure played a role in Marc Morial's decision to hire Richard Pennington, who presided over a pretty damn successful reform of the NOPD. Some background here.

This is something that people should pressure our Mayoral candidates about. Would they sign a consent decree to bring in federal oversight of the NOPD or not and why?

This is pretty much what I was trying to express

A thoughtful and articulate comment to this post:

me said...

I question the argument that Katrina was "color" blind in the sense that it affected blacks and whites the same. First, as a previous blogger points out, blacks were disprortionatley living in low areas because elevation costs more. When blacks first had an opportunity to buy where they pleased (1968 Fair housing Act) virtually all the above-sea level land was taken (the sliver along the river). They migrated first to the 9th ward and then their children to the East. All the studies showed that if you were black you were much more likely to have suffered severe flooding. So Katrina potentiated pre-existing racism--and the data indicate that color made a difference in who was most likely to be impacted by Katrina.

Second, whites had distinct advantages because of family networks and previous discrimination in housing and employment. The average extended black family found itself dispersed around the country: grandma had lived in the ninth ward; their middle class chilren in the East. In contrast, whites in flooded areas had relatives on how ground where they had purchased homes when blacks could not. Within a week after the flood, my block uptown had at least three families who had been flooded and were loaned homes or sharing homes. Because they did not have to leave, they held onto their jobs and began rebuilding their homes immediately. In contrast, blacks returning to New Orleans had no relatives to stay with as they attmepted to put their lives together; indeed, they were not allowed to stay overnight in the East even in gutted homes (the Vietnamese community for some reason had a special dispensation). In addition, resources and wealth affected how the storm impacted people. One poll showed that the majority of blacks who were in the shelters had no savings, though 2/3 were employed.

Bottom line is that because of racism past and present, any natural disaster will have a differential impact on African Americans in general and the poor specifically. This is important to acknowledge because it is not just a question of who suffered more (and some suffered tremedously) but that the recovery policies that were based on "common suffering" or "we were all in the same boat" failed to recognize that some groups had special needs if they were to return. One example is that renters suffered much more than home owners: they were not ensured a place to return; they were not compensated for contents of their homes, and most important, neither the BNOBC or the LRA allocated a penny in their initial plans to rebuild rental housing--while 70% of blacks rented. The rental policy was either just plain old racism to make sure the city was majority white and more affluent, or it was a byproduct of the notion of "common suffering"--that we all experienced Katrina the same way.

Of course Katrina was color blind--but the implication that its effects were race and class neutral is mistaken. Disasters potentiate old inequalities. We were not "all in the same boat" as Clancy Dubos once wrote: some of us were in the boat, some were clinging to the side, and some were adrift in the sea. By not addressing the inequalities during the recovery, we created racial distrust and anger. The first step to reconciliation of blacks and whites is acknowledging how Katrina affected us in different ways--and second that no one tried to prevent whites from returning, but there was a broad movement to prevent blacks from returning. One glance at the BNOBC map will tell you that virtually all black neighborhoods--rich and poor, were slated for demolition. While all the plan's targets were not black, all blacks were targets. That's an important difference

Rescuing Bobby Jindal From Media Floodwaters

As I'm sure you've heard, read, or seen by now, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal delivered a disastrous nationally televised speech in response to President Obama's first address to Congress. In what has become a media feeding frenzy, different aspects of Governor Jindal's speech have been picked apart and for additional comedic value or because it appears as though Jindal made various misleading distortions over the course of his speech. Meanwhile, Jindal's crack communications squad has reacted poorly to the various controversies by struggling to provide basic and consistent explanations to fairly fundamental media queries.

While I believe that there are more consequential lies within the speech delivered on Tuesday, the mainstream media has been particularly nosy about the story Jindal told about his presence in Sheriff Harry Lee's office during Katrina because it appears that the Governor made up the whole thing. His office basically admitted as much but has since changed their story several times since Wednesday. What could have been spun as an inconsequential exaggeration and immediately buried with little egg on the face has instead morphed into a week-long controversy that continues to undermine the governor's basic credibility as a professional.

I became extremely frustrated yesterday by the media's fixation on the Harry Lee lie, especially since I thought that his ridiculous distortion of the state of education in New Orleans, his inexplicable condemnation of volcano monitoring funds, and his hypocritical invocation of the nonexistent funding for a train from Las Vegas to Anaheim were several times more outrageous than the fibs used to embellish a largely tangential story.

But that's how it works. And besides, I've got some major news to break. I have obtained a copy of an alternative speech that Governor Jindal wrote instead of the now infamous McBreyer address. This version was ultimately rejected by Chief of Staff Timmy Teepell and Communications Director Melissa Sellers at the 11th hour. My highly trained show falcons retrieved the speech from dumpsters outside the governor's mansion in Baton Rouge. Much of the speech - congratulating Obama while highlighting his own biography - is the same. The middle part of the speech, however, is drastically different. I've provided the relevant clip from the original transcript and the rejected alternative follows below:

Republicans are ready to work with the new President to provide those solutions. Here in my state of Louisiana, we don't care what party you belong to if you have good ideas to make life better for our people. We need more of that attitude from both Democrats and Republicans in our nation's capital. All of us want our economy to recover and our nation to prosper. So where we agree, Republicans must be the President's strongest partners. And where we disagree, Republicans have a responsibility to be candid and offer better ideas for a path forward.

Today in Washington, some are promising that government will rescue us from the economic storms raging all around us.

Those of us who lived through Hurricane Katrina, we have our doubts.

Let me tell you a story.

During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office I'd never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: 'Well, I'm the Sheriff and if you don't like it you can come and arrest me!' I asked him: 'Sheriff, what's got you so mad?' He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go - when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn't go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, 'Sheriff, that's ridiculous.' And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: 'Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!' Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.

There is a lesson in this experience: The strength of America is not found in our government. It is found in the compassionate hearts and enterprising spirit of our citizens. We are grateful for the support we have received from across the nation for the ongoing recovery efforts. This spirit got Louisiana through the hurricanes - and this spirit will get our nation through the storms we face today.

To solve our current problems, Washington must lead. But the way to lead is not to raise taxes and put more money and power in hands of Washington politicians. The way to lead is by empowering you - the American people. Because we believe that Americans can do anything.

And here is the alternative that got tossed just hours before the cameras went live:

Today in Washington, some are promising that government will rescue us from the economic storms raging all around us. Because of how poorly the last Republican administration went about the business of governing, Americans are intelligently looking to the Obama administration and the federal government for a different approach.

In reality, however, Americans aren't asking for that much. They're asking for a sleek, well-defined government capable of delivering basic services in an efficient, cost-conscious way. Conservatives like me believe that the best way to stimulate the economy is to streamline bloated federal bureaucracies and immediately pass the savings on to small businesses and individual Americans.

But we conservatives also understand why the Republican Party doesn't have your trust and I might have the best understanding of all.

You see, my state, Louisiana, was a tragic casualty of the last Republican administration's failed governance. I voted for the last President because I thought that he and his Congressional partners would halt self-perpetuating federal bureaucracies, cut spending, and pass the savings onto you. Instead, in attempting to untie the constraints of big government, the knot only got bigger and tighter. Instead of small government, what we got was bad government.

My fellow conservatives and I still believe in the strength of the individual and in the ideal of small government but what we must prove is that not only do we believe in effective government but we have a plan for delivering just that.

Let me tell you a story to illustrate my point.

During Hurricane Katrina, the federal government was no where to be found. Local and state bureaucracies were incapable of handling the fallout from the levee failures and the communicative disconnect between local and federal officials contributed to property loss, unnecessary suffering, and even the deaths of patriotic American citizens.

When push came to shove, it was the individual that saved the day. I look at the story of Kimberly Rivers Roberts and her family, the subjects of an academy award nominated documentary. When the flood waters were rising in her neighborhood, she looked after her neighbors as her husband Scott delivered them to high ground on nothing more than an old punching bag that was floating by. Then, she did what so many other patriots from Louisiana have done, she returned home with her family to help rebuild the community.

When you drive through New Orleans or around the areas most badly damaged by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike, it isn't the government that has come in to rebuild those areas. The real work has been done by individual citizens.

This underscores my commitment to conservative ideals. It is the strength of the American citizen that makes this country great not the size of our government.

But the story also offers a lesson that conservatives around the country must learn as I have - that we must have an efficient federal government and it must effectively deliver on what little it promises.

I opposed the stimulus bill not because I don't believe that the federal government has a role to play in rescuing us from these choppy financial waters. Rather, I opposed the stimulus bill because I believe that the borrow and spend policy is not the most effective way to reinvigorate the marketplace. Instead, by prudently cutting the bloated bureaucracies that contributed to the ineffective response to Hurricane Katrina, we can cut taxes to put money back in the pockets of working families.

I know that it may take time for the Republican party to earn credibility in the eyes of the American public. I know this because my home state and my home district were victimized by our own party's inability to resist the temptations of power. Governors and young congressmen have learned this lesson the hard way. That is why the Republican party is proud to present a new generation of leadership that understands the difference between small government and ineffective government. We will work to keep the Democratic majority honest by standing up for true conservative principles. If we succeed in helping Barack Obama streamline bloated bureaucracies we will have the credibility to argue for the savings to be passed onto you, the individual, instead of spend once more on creating yet another bloated bureaucracy.

...

Wouldn't that have been a way better argument for conservative ideals? Wouldn't that have been a better way to avoid substantive issues? Wouldn't that have avoided days and days of relentless ridicule?

It still distorts history and glosses inconvenient truths but sentences that come from the mouths of Republicans tend to do that - I'm just trying to stay true to the template.

How sad is it that someone who rejects conservative principles can write a better argument in favor of them than Melissa Sellers or Timmy Teepell?


--UPDATE--

Just obtained this email from Timmy Teepell to Ben Smith of Politico:

BS (as in Ben Smith),

Teeps here. You misinterpreted previous emails and phone calls from me and my colleague, the Selldawg. Please disregard and instead check out this liberal blogger BS (as in ?) from WCBF which explains exactly what the governor meant on Tuesday.

X's and O's,

T squared

Good times...

"Liberal Blogger B.S."

A day of lies from the Jindal administration. Must be humiliating for them to have to deal with skeptical media. And the chess game continues.

This is stupid. I'm done talking about this.

State returned hospital money before asking for it

The Times-Picayune, September 27th, 2005 (only as pdf, sorry):

The Department of Health and Hospitals has declined the bulk of $352 million in disaster assistance handed to the state by the Federal Emergency Management Agency late last week, with agency officials saying that they spent only about $10 million during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The $352 million showed up in a list of projects approved by FEMA totaling $457 million, which was deposited by the federal government last week in the state of Louisiana’s bank account. But the state health department has taken only the roughly $10 million that it is entitled to so far, said Bob Johannessen, the spokesman for the agency.

--

While the federal dollars are beginning to pour in, some agencies are still waiting for help. Officials with the Louisiana State University Health Services Division, which runs the Charity Hospital System, expect that they will eventually be asking the federal government to pick up about $625 million of their interim costs as they try to rebuild the public hospital system in New Orleans after the storm.

Literally, the DHH returned to FEMA approximately $342 million that was sitting in state bank accounts ready to be spent to restore emergency medical infrastructure to New Orleans. How ironic is it that the LSUHSD's current shortfall on their megahospitalstrosity sits at just about $342 million? That's the current discrepancy between state and FEMA estimates for Charity's reimbursement cost.

Purge! Purge! Purge!

Our long national nightmare ends and so does an old nightmare of my own mind's creation.

From a fairly young age, I was fascinated by politics and concerned with government. As a kindergarten student, I had my mom write an antiwar letter to George H.W. Bush on my behalf. Though I abhorred war in general, I proposed what I thought was a fairly pragmatic compromise between total nonintervention and the loss of scores of American lives. The deal was that I was going to ask Santa for an army of robot soldiers which I would then lend out to the US government for the purpose of liberating Kuwait. This way, Bush wouldn't have to sacrifice either military objectives or the lives of our soldiers. The President wrote me back but I thought he really dodged the topic. Anyway, Santa got me toys instead and I was no worse for wear.

Another thing that really outraged me as a pretty young kid was the death penalty. I became really fascinated with the issue sometime during middle school/Clinton administration and read whatever showed up in the paper on the subject. I couldn't believe that our nation could execute so many human beings while the rest of our industrialized allies had outlawed the practice years ago. I was also quite disturbed by the racial disparities in the application of the death penalty. It sickened me and it was one of the first issues that really forced me to consider political philosophy, government, race, morality, etc. in more complex ways.

I believed the act of taking the life of another human being to be totally unconscionable and I didn't waver.

Slowly but surely, then the rest all at once, I wasn't quite so certain anymore. I became disillusioned by George Bush's theft of the election in 2000 and I grew increasingly cynical as the response to the 9/11 attacks developed into a bizarre 21st century religious crusade. And it only got worse from there. We all know the gory details. He was reelected in 2004 and then the summer of 2005 came.

I left the U.S. to spend some time studying at the University of Ghana around ten days before Katrina hit. I grew so upset and angry trying to follow the drowning of New Orleans from afar. Immeasurably furious. Angrier than I'd ever been about anything in my whole life.

I started having the most vivid and violent dreams, dreams of a variety that would have been unthinkable to a slightly younger me.

In one, I strangled George W. Bush to death with my bear hands. I remember crushing his windpipe with my thumbs. In another, I and a small mob of people hunted Karl Rove like a dog through unknown city streets. When we caught up to him we stomped him mercilessly, erected gallows, and hanged him on the spot to the cheers of a massive crowd.

What happened to my America and what happened to me? Such violent hate! How?

I used to pride myself on the opposite. I used to wonder if I would have even been able to flip the switch on Hitler if asked. But suddenly, I was dreaming about ripping George Bush limb from limb and was feeling no conflict about it at all. In fact, I enjoyed those violent dreams very much and blabbed about them excitedly to other Bush-bashing friends of mine. I thought they were hilarious because I was full of hate for these men.

(This is not to say that I had morphed completely from idealist to cynic, as I was very hopeful about the prospect for progressive change not so long after I shook the immediate depression that overcame me when George Bush won in 2004. I was an enthusiastic Obama kool-aid drinker on day 1 and was constantly talking up the change that I believed was going to come in 2008 when peers were being more skeptical. Obama's inauguration tomorrow means something else to me entirely. I might not ever be able to put it into words.)

But this post is about what it means to finally begin to exorcise the demons of the last 8 years. It feels so good. I'm still one that wants to hold individuals within the Bush administration accountable for their crimes - but it is immeasurably comforting to reflect back on my dreams from 2005-2006 again today.

Those vivid images of my own creation and born out of my own lust for vengeance feel as repugnant to me now as they should have felt all along.

And that feels great. Like a weight lifted off my shoulders. I hate the death penalty way more than I hate anybody in the Bush administration and I'm sure of it.

Now all that's left to decide is what we should do to punish all those administration criminals?

I'm not totally certain but all I want to do is sock them in the face.

Once each and that's it. Sometimes yes to nose-bleeds but they can all keep their front teeth.

A Day To Say Good Riddance

Today, I purge.

Tomorrow, I celebrate.

Timeline

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Heckuva job, now go to hell.

Heckuva Job Bushie! (And more thoughts on Katrina, the Left, and New Orleans)

The administration's response to Katrina was rapid, as I'm sure you recall:

"Don't tell me the federal response was slow when there was 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed," Bush said at what was likely his final news conference as president. "You know, I remember going to see those helicopter drivers, Coast Guard divers, to thank them for their courageous efforts to rescue people off roofs -- 30,000 people were pulled off roofs right after the storm moved through. That's a pretty quick response."

A heartfelt thanks to the Bush administration for its incredible compassion to the people of New Orleans. History books will remember those days very kindly. And since everything's fixed here, we can all have a laugh and move on, right?

--

This bit of revisionism is quite bold, don't you think?

Last weekish, Oyster highlighted this article from the Institute for Southern Studies.

In it, Chris Kromm highlights the latest confessions from aides close to Bush who point to Katrina as the absolute low point for the administration.

So it's kind of surprising that President Bush would bother trying to put any kind of silver lining on what is so indisputably a giant smelly turd. Wouldn't it be better to just admit that it was a low point, and use the mythology campaign to chisel away on issues that are at least a little bit more argueable?

--

But Kromm and ISS don't really hammer away at Bush in that article, rather they use the admission of these top-level aides to wonder about the Left:

What's shocking is how little progressives and Democrats understood this. In the months after Katrina, progressives were rightfully pouring into the streets to protest the Iraq war, and blogs and book writers were churning out millions of pages on human rights crimes like CIA torture flights and Abu Ghraib.

But on one of the biggest human rights tragedies within our own borders -- a hurricane which devastated an area the size of Great Britain, killed 1,800 people and uprooted a million residents -- progressives had little to offer.

It has been quite frustrating as a progressive living in New Orleans. Here's part of what I think happened:

Within the first few weeks of the storm, conservative talk radio had effectively galvanized listener opinion against storm victims. They intoned against victims of Katrina, simultaneously using racial imagery to depict victims of the federal flood and of slow administration response as responsible for their own predicament while pushing back hard against a caricatured interpretation of Kanye West's allegations of overt racism on the part of the administration.

While the vast majority of the American public tithed generously and remained largely sympathetic, the larger Right found refuge from accountability on the issues of poverty and race within the bosom of their base. This proved to be enough political cover to kill Democratic efforts for an independent commission on the Bush administration's Katrina response.

There was partisan stalemate in Washington. Democrats were in the minority and Republicans had enough juice from their base to limit federal intervention into the recovery process. President Bush and Karl Rove worked on doing public opinion damage control while the GOP caucus worked on limiting the ability of Congressional Democrats to claim that they'd won any victories on the matter.

Then what happened?

Then Ray Nagin was reelected Mayor.

Regardless as to what you personally believe about Mr. Nagin's culpability in the Katrina disaster, he was largely discredited at the national level. The Right may have overzealous in targeting Nagin as a means for absolving the Bush administration of responsibility, but it was clear to pretty much everyone that Nagin was an ineffective leader during those days. Some choice quotes during his reelection campaign only compounded his national image problem.

While locals know that Mayor Nagin got reelected by frightening a traumatized African American population with rhetoric while making specific political promises to local Republicans, national progressives and Democratic leaders were at a loss for an explanation. The Right was able to pounce on Nagin's victory as evidence to support the racist memes they had been pushing about storm victims all along. Elected Democrats and progressive bloggers, meanwhile, began to consider our issues to be something of a political hot potato. Mayor Nagin and indicted former Congressman Jefferson were public relations cancers and had to be avoided. As local and state level Democrats struggled with corruption and basic competence, national Democrats had to inch away from actual nuts and bolts recovery policies or else get their hands dirty in the clogged septic tank known as Louisiana politics. Progressive bloggers and advocates lazily abandoned the recovery of New Orleans because focusing on the original disaster response was such a simple sensational bludgeon.

If there was a popular, charismatic, and engaged Mayor elected in early 2006 instead of Mr. Nagin, I'd bet that we would have seen many more joint press conferences with Congressional Democratic leaders from here in New Orleans. It would have certainly been much easier to champion rebuilding and recovery as a mainstream campaign issue. Instead, Democrats stuck to running against general incompetence and for the need to fix FEMA. If you're a Democrat campaigning for Congress in Pennsylvania or Virginia or Indiana, why would you take the unnecessary risk of taking a position on Gulf Coast recovery when you can just rail against administration and FEMA incompetence? If you're a progressive activist, you wouldn't hold a congressional candidate from Indiana, Pennsylvania, or Virginia accountable (through the media or campaign donation) for not having a detailed position on rebuilding and recovery. National Democrats hammering on the issues facing the Gulf could too easily be faced with tough counter arguments related to the utility of sending more money into what was increasingly portrayed (somewhat accurately) as a garbage disposal.

Thus in so many ways, New Orleans ceased to be a national issue. "Katrina" was still a live battlefield but "New Orleans" was too complicated, with too many pitfalls for progressives.

I wrote about that in more detail after the Nation recently published an article about vigilante racism during the storm:

For the nation, the federal response Katrina signalled a final deathblow to President Bush and conservative governing philosophy. Polls demonstrate that the public pretty much turned on the GOP for good as a result of the Katrina saga. The PR battle that took place between the parties was one in which the Right blamed Nagin and the natives for their lack of "personal responsibility," while the Left (and the vast vast majority of the country) blamed Bush and his henchmen for their inexplicable and inexcusable inability to respond to an entirely predictable catastrophe in a major American city.

Since then, national analysis of New Orleans is through these lenses, not just the lens of 'Katrina' but the lenses of were was the immediate partisan reactions to Katrina.

The Left, during Katrina, was justifiably incensed over the way that African Americans were labeled "looters" while whites just looking for food. That's why it is unsurprising to see the lions of the liberal netroots (HuffPo, Think Progress, Color of Change) seize upon this story - it scores points in that old front against racist right wing media portrayal.

Katrina is an eternally smoldering political fire, that actual people live here New Orleans is an abstraction that most don't, can't, and won't think about in the midst of the constant drone of the 24 hour news cycle. That the story of New Orleans continues, that it takes on new twists and turns, that its existence continues to be tenuously propped up on a three-legged stool of racism, corruption, and incompetence seems lost on much of the progressive netroots, on thinkers who I respect greatly and read every day.

To get back to the article from ISS, it isn't that progressives didn't understand that Katrina had dealt a deathblow to President Bush. Rather, everyone seems to understand this quite well. The thing progressives didn't understand or work to learn was how to help New Orleans, partially because there weren't any local leaders to show them the way.

Interestingly enough, this theory of mine will be put to the test. New Orleans has another Mayoral election coming up next year. National progressives like blogging about elections, and national progressives are good at donating money to campaigns. One of New Orleans' most desperate needs is for progressive political reform, for new leadership.

Get it?

Heartbreaking (Still)

Incredible job by June Cross.

Full video available.

More to say later.

--

I'm not one for assigning homework but seriously if you don't watch June Cross' report for Frontline, well then I don't see how I can pass you.

There are a number of amazing things about it, whether we're talking about the Gettridge family on which the story is centered or the report's high production value, much enhanced online by all sorts of interesting interactive options to learn additional information.

Most remarkable is that it tells an incredible human story without sacrificing political or cultural context.

It's called the trifecta and this might be the only time I've seen it pulled off. A lot of journalists can get 2 of 3 but I've never really seen it all come together.

On the cultural front, Cross is able to describe the Gettredige Clan as part of a richer tribal fabric that weaves together generation after generation of New Orleanian not just as natives of a particular city but as a unique people. You even get the historic context, a description of how the Gettridge patriarch fought to integrate an elite tradesman guild reserved for creoles.

I just can't say enough about it. It's essential.

There are a couple of things I've really been chewing over in particular on the political front.

One is that I don't consider often enough the implications and injustice of Bush's waiver of the Stafford Act. There are books about this and I need to read one. (And please do recall that Helena Moreno the somehow the best New Orleans democrats could muster against Bill Jefferson.)

The second thing I don't consider often enough when I'm figurin' about local politics is the lingering implications of the decision to pink slip 50% of the municipal civil service. This devastated the African American middle class of course. And in spite of all the waste and inefficiency built into that system, the halving of the city's work capacity certainly hasn't done much to streamline the provision of services. There's an awful lot of resentment there. And it reinforces explanations as to why the Nagin administration's divisive communications strategy remained so powerful for so long.

--

Lastly, there's the untold story of Lawless High School. Cross uses powerful images of the inundated and unsecured Lawless High in the Lower 9th Ward as a device with which to contrast the resilience of individuals like Mr. Gettridge and the generosity of volunteers to the indifference and inefficiency of federal and local governmental rebuilding. She goes back to Lawless again and again to demonstrate the irrevocable nature of the changes Katrina wrought on New Orleans communities. The frustratingly slow process of home reconstruction was still nonetheless inspiring. But then Cross would go back to Lawless to demonstrate government's failure or refusal to restore neighborhood services or rebuild basic community institutions.

It was very powerful.

It struck me particularly hard because I know what happened to Lawless High School when the Orleans Parish School Board signed the Recovery School District's school facilities master plan into law.

I argued for months and months that this master plan was being formulated under the immoral premise of community "viability" under which only communities able to pass an artificial threshold of 'already-rebuilt' would be extended the privilege of public education. The worst damaged neighborhoods were not populated enough for schools and would thus not get schools. The worst-damaged neighborhoods were and are most in need of institutional reconstruction as catalysts for neighborhood revival but governmental reconstruction ideology was and is predisposed to starving the most desperate neighborhoods of services and institutions. This amounts to de facto shrinking the footprint and de facto racism. See this post:

Moments ago, I attended the media presentation of the master plan at the Contemporary Arts Center. I asked State Superintendent Paul Pastorek to what extent he believed the locations of schools facilities might impact future population patterns. He answered that he believed it would have a positive effect. I then quickly followed up by inquiring whether it then followed that the population of a community might be negatively impacted because it was not selected to receive a school. He had no satisfactory reply, stumbling toward an insistence that the master plan was not in the business of influencing re-population.

If the presence of governmental facilities, assets, and services contributes to an individual or family's decision to return and rebuild, to what extent does the absence of such basic maintenance discourage population renewal?

I was most upset because the Upper 9th Ward was not going to get a single high school. Both Carver and Frederick Douglass were slated for closure, with no school being rebuilt in Phase 1, the only portion of the plan with funding.

But what's remarkable is that Lawless HS was a Phase 1 project.

The money was ready and there was going to be a new Lawless High School in the Lower 9th Ward by 2012-2013 ish.

I was there as other communities deprived of schools organized to demand public education in their respective neighborhoods. It was something of a PR nightmare for the Recovery School District. The RSD team had to run away hard from the term (their term) "landbanking," which is what they planned to do to school properties that were not going to be rebuilt. When the Bureau for Governmental Research weighed in negatively about the financing outlook beyond Phase 1, communities scrambled hard to try to get their school on top of the first wave of construction.

Carver and Douglass High Schools made noise and won concessions. Douglass will not be landbanked as quickly as originally planned, opening the door for possible renovation of that building, which is still in decent shape. Carver HS got moved from Phase 2 to Phase 1.

These changes were previewed in the Times-Picayune on Saturday, released to the public Monday, and approved by the Orleans Parish School Board on a Thursday. So it wasn't as if there was a whole lot of time to review the modifications.

And guess who got screwed?

Lawless High School was removed from Phase 1 and Lower 9th Ward residents, who had assumed for months and months that Lawless would be there, were given all of four days to organize against the last minute changes.

-

Last week, I wrote about Louisiana officials' unambitious play for a piece of the upcoming infrastructure stimulus package. The school facilities master plan is not amongst the projects for which the state is requesting federal funds. Why not?

Those projects are as close to shovel-ready as any we have in this city. We could bump damn near every school construction project into Phase 1, including Lawless in the Lower 9th Ward.

Pastorek promised aggrieved Lower 9th Ward residents that the school facilities master plan was just a blueprint, that they would work with the community to resolve some of their issues.

Well now's the time. There is a going to be a bill in Congress that spends damn near a trillion bucks on infrastructure. We have Congresspeople, call 'em up. Get some extra money for the SFMPOP and break ground on new schools this year, including one called Lawless in the Lower 9th Ward.

Harry Shearer Gets It Wrong

I generally like Harry Shearer but his response to A. C. Thompson's article in the Nation profiling the racist killings on Algiers Point during Katrina is way off track.

It is not how I want to face the nation.

I actually had a number of concerns about A.C. Thompson's writing style and the lack of context too. I also lamented the lack of national progressive attention to issues like the closure of Charity Hospital.

But the facts were there for all to see. Maybe you've seen this despicable video by now:





Harry Shearer read that article and watched that video and started his response acknowledging that the actual crux of Thompson's article - the part about the supremacist white mobs hunting down unarmed black men during Katrina, bragging about it on tape, and the NOPD letting it slide - is solid journalism.

Then he proceeds to rip Thompson apart for "lies" related to basically off-topic factual infractions. For instance, Shearer complains that Thompson said Katrina "crashed" into New Orleans when it is technically true that it was the undermining of the poorly constructed Federal levee system that truly precipitated our tragedy. He implies that the article was written as part of some mainstream media refusal to investigate the levee failures.

Maybe so, but way way off-topic.

In downplaying the racial tensions that exist here, he suggests that Thompson's article - about the city ceding authority to a modern day lynch mob, their failing to investigate the murders they committed, and the free murderers basically confessing on tape that they went out and shot black people for sport, all chased down over 18 months - was published by the Nation because the publication had "contented itself with a crime story."

Certainly, Thompson's article included some unhelpful and inflammatory rhetorical embellishments. It also boasts some pretty gaping context gaps. But let's be real.

This disgusting event happened in our city. The tragedy of Katrina touched people of all backgrounds. But let's not pretend for one second that African Americans weren't treated "special." I'm not just talking about the indifference of Bush and Brownie because state and city officials also played their respective parts. So did some of our police and so did some of our citizens.

Shearer's pride in anecdotal "casual, easy, frequent interactions" with black neighbors just isn't evidence that this city doesn't have gravely serious racial tensions to work through. I'd point to statistics that discuss which community is disproportionately victimized by things like, I dunno, the criminal justice system, the public education system, neighborhood recovery policy, public health policy, post Katrina economic development policy, and affordable housing policy.

Progressive New Orleanians are working to form diverse coalitions around those actual policy matters. When African American victims of supremacist crimes cannot get the NOPD to investigate, there is a huge problem, one very indicative of the many forms of institutionalized racism that progressive New Orleanians must work to eradicate.

Shearer has worked hard as an advocate for New Orleans and for the need for a massive federal infrastructure intervention. His point has always been that America needs to step up and take responsibility for the 2005 flood.

And he's right.

But New Orleanians need to step up themselves and take responsibility for local institutionalized racism. Mr. Shearer could have made all the points that he did without totally brushing aside the matter at hand. Our African American neighbors are hurt by this. We shouldn't ignore that just because Thompson said 'race war' without offering a nuanced differentiation of liberal whites and the supremacist vigilante terrorists that appear in the video.

We can draw that contrast pretty sharply ourselves by condemning these acts and demanding a full criminal investigation.

Shearer should have used his national forum to do that first and foremost. His larger mission to hold the Federal government accountable would not be undermined, it would be that much more credible.

What Will We Do?

Anon calls out liberal whites in the comments section of this post:

So what will local "anti-racist whites" do? Should we be satisfied with leaving this issue to an outside, African American group, Color of Change? Did we leave Ray Nagin, Bill Jefferson, and Veronica White to some outside group? Will blacks have a point if they say that whites are quick to protest black officials but we wont take the lead in dealing with white racism in our own community?

Damn. In our face.

What do you think about that? What should we do and how should we do it?

In related news, I should point out that Rep. Conyers of Michigan is outraged about the revelations from Mr. Thompson's article. As Chair of the Judiciary Committee, he is actually positioned to do something about it, he can initiate a wide-ranging investigation. I've always liked John Conyers, don't know if I've ever mentioned that.

Meanwhile, Color of Change is pushing forward with requests to Buddy Caldwell and Bobby Jindal.

Katrina, the Left, and New Orleans Today

This article from the Nation is a painful read for a variety of reasons.

The investigation by A.C. Thompson details white vigilantism at Algiers Point during the immediate aftermath of Katrina. A group of white neighbors formed a militia to keep Algiers safe, which for them meant terrorizing African Americans, murdering them, shooting them in the back without any justification beyond what might be charitably described as a sick cowardly prejudice.

Thompson was able to interview some of the racist citizens who took up arms against victims of the floods. They express no remorse, instead glorifying themselves as protectors.

It makes your skin crawl.

Color of Change is pushing this petition, which calls on Governor Jindal, State Attorney General Caldwell, and the Justice Department to investigate racist vigilante shootings.

I have signed it and I recommend that you do too.

-

Yet on another level, I hate how the piece was written and am disheartened by Color of Change's call.

A little weird, I know, but let me try to explain.

-

One of the things I thought the article lacked was a complete context. Dambala gets at some of this in his reaction to Mr. Thompson's work. There's something gratuitous about the use of the phrase 'race war' in reference to what happened on Algiers point. Maybe I'm the one overgeneralizing a little bit here but my sense is that only a certain "type" of white guy chooses not to evacuate during a huge hurricane threat but instead to stick around with a gun collection. "Choose" being an extremely operative word that provides a not so insignificant contrast to the majority of people with basic means that chose to evacuate and to the masses of poor black people without those basic means that had no choice but to stay.

But maybe it's parsing to get all bent out of shape over the use of that phrase. We're a little bit sensitive to it I think because 'war' implies a certain ubiquity, implies that everyone was involved and that everyone chose a side. It totally oversimplifies the issue of race, but particularly so for the city of New Orleans, which has a complex history of racial tribalism that is not as simple as black vs. white. I think that I would have gone with "Katrina's unrepentant supremacist terrorists" instead of "Katrina's hidden race war," but that's just me.

The much more consequential whiff, on Thompson's part, was the failure to contextualize these vigilante killings as a part of a chaotic whole. He pays only lip service to the reality that there were scores upon scores of murders and rumored murders on the East Bank during Katrina. He couches the NOPD's failure to keep records during the storm or to disclose public records to him as specific to his investigation of the shootings on Algiers Point.

We know that there were grizzly acts of violence committed throughout the city during that time, by citizens, by the NOPD, by black people, by white people, by Ray Nagin, by Kathleen Blanco, by Michael Brown, by the Army Corps of Engineers, and by President Bush. Thompson cherry-picks a specific incident and doesn't do nearly enough to place it into the context of what was a much larger event. He boils down the entire injustice that was Katrina and the Federal Flood AND decades of systematizing racism via the criminal justice system into a digestible 'nobody is investigating these rednecks!'

But I don't want to just blame A.C. Thompson.

Color of Change should consider its reaction to this story.

They call on us to get to force "Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, and the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the racist shootings, and to demand accountability from Louisiana's dysfunctional criminal justice system."

Certainly, it's a noble thing to ask for, but at the same time, it's also short-sighted and maybe even a little bit selfish.

Even if Bobby Jindal were to call on an investigation and supposing that NOPD was able to piece together charges based on records they never kept and evidence they don't have, would it really be credible enough in a court of law to yield a conviction? What kind of healing would that bring for the victims? What about all the other horror stories from those days? Are we investigating all of them? Are criminal convictions possible for any of them?

What we need is an independent federal investigation into all of it: All of the vigilante killings, all of NOPD's desertions, all of Nagin's mistakes, all of Brownie's incompetence, all of Bush's neglect, and the Army Corps of Engineers for the failure of the federal levee systems. We need the truth and we need accountability, but what we really need is healing. Color of Change's call, even if it succeeds in precipitating an investigation into what happened in Algiers, is just as likely to salt our civic wounds as it is to sanitize them.

We needed it starting in late 2005 and we still need it today. Color of Change isn't going nearly far enough. They're flailing in Bobby Jindal's direction in reaction to the Thompson piece instead of actually putting forth a proposal that might help usher New Orleanians toward some sort of closure.

But again, I don't just want to call out Thompson and Color of Change. This instance is emblematic of the larger role that Katrina and New Orleans play in national political discourse.

For the nation, the federal response Katrina signalled a final deathblow to President Bush and conservative governing philosophy. Polls demonstrate that the public pretty much turned on the GOP for good as a result of the Katrina saga. The PR battle that took place between the parties was one in which the Right blamed Nagin and the natives for their lack of "personal responsibility," while the Left (and the vast vast majority of the country) blamed Bush and his henchmen for their inexplicable and inexcusable inability to respond to an entirely predictable catastrophe in a major American city.

Since then, national analysis of New Orleans is through these lenses, not just the lens of 'Katrina' but the lenses of were was the immediate partisan reactions to Katrina.

The Left, during Katrina, was justifiably incensed over the way that African Americans were labeled "looters" while whites just looking for food. That's why it is unsurprising to see the lions of the liberal netroots (HuffPo, Think Progress, Color of Change) seize upon this story - it scores points in that old front against racist right wing media portrayal.

Katrina is an eternally smoldering political fire, that actual people live here New Orleans is an abstraction that most don't, can't, and won't think about in the midst of the constant drone of the 24 hour news cycle. That the story of New Orleans continues, that it takes on new twists and turns, that its existence continues to be tenuously propped up on a three-legged stool of racism, corruption, and incompetence seems lost on much of the progressive netroots, on thinkers who I respect greatly and read every day.

The most frustrating thing to me is that the progressive netroots really can be of great assistance in this city, without really sacrificing the opportunity to score those political points.

It's great that Color of Change is pushing Bobby Jindal to investigate these vigilante shootings and I'm sure they'd also support a real truth commission for Katrina, but neither option is particularly viable in the short, medium, or long terms unless we start changing course at the municipal level.

What we really could use at this moment is help forcing the reopening of Charity Hospital and help preventing the needless demolition the historic black neighborhood of Lower Mid City. That fight is right now. It has real tangible consequences for the African American community, it speaks to national progressive issues, and Bobby Jindal is an obstacle.

For Color of Change and other progressive/netroots orgs, it's a battle they ought to be itching to join.

Save Lower Mid City, Reopen Charity

It's real in our lives right now.

--

*One of the biggest reasons national progressive advocacy organizations seem to be so ignorant as to the situation here is that local bloggers, myself very very much included, do a horrendous job of communicating to an audience that isn't totally ensconsed in the daily municipal minutia. We can definitely do a better job summarizing things more regularly for a national audience in a way that imparts the critical concepts without oversaturating names and locations. To that end, I'm crossposting this at Kos.

No Stability

NYT on the lost children of New Orleans.

The Sleaze Rubs Elbows With The Most Dangerous Man in America

Remember that time a major Hurricane devastated Steve Scalise's community and the Vice President spent the whole time on vacation in Wyoming and house shopping on the Chesapeake and then manipulated a tax loophole created to encourage donations to Katrina relief charities to lower his own personal obligation to fund the troops even though his contributions went to non-Katrina causes?

Water under the bridge, apparently!

Today, future ex-congressman Steve "the sleaze" Scalise held a private fundraising lunch at one of the city's most exclusive restaurants. A thousand bucks to get in, $2,300 to take a picture. No media allowed.

Was eugenics proponent and prominent Scalise-backer John LaBruzzo there too?

Trouble the Water at Canal Tomorrow

Everyone make sure to go see Trouble the Water at least five times tomorrow when it begins showing at Canal Place.

3 Years Ago Today

Government failed us at all levels.

I was so angry. I was so angry. I was so angry.



Created by a fellow New Orleans blogger named Mark Folse
"The survivors request anger in lieu of tears."

I live in New Orleans again and I am still angry.

It was a helpless anger. That's what was so scarring for me, and I imagine others as well, about the federal levee failures and the criminally negligent response of FEMA - there was nothing I felt I could do.

I had left the country about two weeks before the storm and was taking courses at the University of Ghana, just outside the capital of Accra. The computers were slow and there were frequent blackouts and I remember occupying three or four stations all slowly loading one devastating photograph after another. I felt so far away.

I am still angry today.

But no longer do I feel helpless - not because Bush administration is keeping its promises to rebuild New Orleans, not because the Army Corps of Engineers has made our levee system safe, not because our Mayor has taken bold steps to prioritize rebuilding efforts in the most devastated areas - because they have done none of these things.

I no longer feel helpless because I can recognize an energy here in New Orleans that is truly inspiring. People understand, with greater clarity every day, not just that they HAVE TO take back their government to make it work in the interests of the residents of this city, but that they CAN.

It is one thing to recognize the change in the national political climate but it is another to experience it every day on the local level right in front of your eyes - without the bombast, without the television cameras, without the production value.

I am proud to live in New Orleans.

But I will be angry until New Orleans gets the levee protection she paid for with her citizens' tax dollars and her citizens' lives. The nation must help in this effort and I have a feeling it will - but ultimately any action on behalf of New Orleans must be compelled by neighbors that understand the need to act up for their community - my neighbors that refuse to be helpless.

Inexcusable Callousness from a Hometown Favorite (updated)

Will Bunch, a Daily News writer and blogger at Attytood is a favorite of mine from Philadelphia. I have always held Mr. Bunch at high regard because when I was younger, he was way ahead of the curve on new media and the use of the internet for national and local progressive reform and he is a big influence on what I'm doing here at WCBF.

But I'm about to rip him.

Because this post is absolutely disgraceful.

I hope for the sake of the beleaguered Gulf Coast that this doesn't come to pass -- but from a realpolitik point of view, there is a potential nightmare for the Republican Party swirling around the warm Caribbean waters right now.

His name is Gustav.

That's real cold.

I agree that Republicans should be forced to defend themselves on the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, their refusal to properly investigate levee failures, and their reluctance to facilitate a faster and more equitable recovery - but in Bunch's mind, New Orleans needs to be on the brink of extinction for that to happen.

You know, the Republican convention will be right around the Katrina anniversary too. Isn't that enough pretext for bringing up GOP policies that exacerbate poverty and GOP ideology that inherently leads to ineffective governance?

As a matter of fact, why do we even need to have the anniversary of the greatest natural disaster in American history as a pretext to discuss the domestic implications of another neoconservative administration?

Mr. Bunch, do you think the Dems need the threat of Hurricane Gustav to be able to hit the GOP on the Katrina response right at the three-year anniversary mark, or is it merely 'fortuitous' timing?

Yo Will!

What the hell dude?

---

This is something I wrote at First Draft after encountering this Daily Kos thread.

The callousness is incredible. These bloggers want to talk about the FABULOUS political implications of Gustav's landing in the Gulf South but largely have nothing to say about the disgustingly reactionary recovery policies being imposed by the Bush administration and our own horrid Mayor. Where is their support for local progressive reform efforts? Where is the advocacy for an 8/29 investigation? It's sickening.

If these fools were really being wise to the political implications - instead of their reason d'etre being sickeningly beholden to posting SOMETHING relevant to a name in the news, they'd realize that if they wanted the GOP to have to answer for poverty, reactionary recovery policies in New Orleans, and the inherently ineffective neoconservative government in general - they would have been elevating progressive voices from New Orleans all along.

Now they find themselves epitomizing the most sickening comparison: they're no different from conservatives that wish for another terrorist attack in order to play on the Dems-can't-protect-America meme.

I meant it.

Especially because people really are worried about this storm. It's a constant topic of conversation. Already, everyone is asking everyone whether or not they have evac plans.

First thing tomorrow morning, I gas up the car and buy drinking water.

What is the Davis-Bacon Act?

One of my favorite things about the internet is the Daily Show 'way back randomizer' that selects a segment from the last decade - at random.

Here's one I just watched:



Remember when we cared about...

It's Not About a Hurricane, It's About America

Let me second Oyster's post on the incredible Trouble the Water, which will be released in New York and LA this weekend.

I also have high hopes for this film and hope that it helps to elevate a national discussion of poverty during this campaign season. This is critical especially now that Mr. Edwards can no longer effectively lead the poverty tour that had been planned for this fall.

This past weekend was the second time I've seen the film and the first time I got to shake hands with the Roberts family.

Kimberly Rivers Roberts, during the post-screening Q & A, had this to say about Ray Nagin:

"He has blood on his hands."

In Defense of Mayor Nagin

The American Zombie on Monday:

I just got an angry email in my AZ account from someone claiming that Nagin is being attacked because he's black and that I and "all the other bloggers" in the New Orleans blogosphere are racist....I guess the person wasn't including the African-American bloggers in this city who have been critical of Nagin as well.

By the way...is there a pro-Nagin blog out there?

Anywhere.....where.....where.....where....

Gambit contributor Kevin Allman in the comments section of that AZ post:

Just a note: I've got keys to the Gambit blog and I will GLADLY run a pro-Nagin essay by a New Orleans blogger as long as it's original and not a press release.

I've looked for pro-Nagin blogs so I can invite the authors to contribute. I can't find any.

Anyone: get in touch with me.

Yes, this will be a "pro" Nagin blog post.

--

There is an appropriate time to 'defend' Ray Nagin. It occurs just about once a year, around the anniversary time when conservative pundits can't avoid discussing Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf's recovery process.

Conservatives hate Hurricane Katrina because, perhaps more than any other singular Bush Administration failure, as the federal response to the disaster most irreparably battered the President's highly cultivated image.

Look at what happened to his approval ratings in late 2005 and early 2006.

Bush fluffers would prefer to ignore that painful episode as much as possible. It provides evidence of the fallacy of the neoconservative model of governance blatant enough that it doesn't take an effete Wall Street Journal liberal to point it out. (Cons: "Gov't=Bad" :: Cons manage Gov't badly :: Cons: "See how bad Gov't is?") The Katrina tragedy also brought the issue of poverty back into the national discourse. Conservatives don't like talking about poverty because the policies they advocate so often exacerbate it - and pretty much everyone knows that.

Thus, when discussion of Hurricane Katrina is unavoidable, like it will be next week, drowning conservatives have little flotsam to which they can cling.

There are only a few things they can try.

One is to blame the citizens of New Orleans for their 'refusal' to evacuate. This one is usually only parroted by uber-insulated conservatives like Rush Limbaugh that are not accountable to the mainstream public and never have to justify their statements with demonstrable fact. There are a few reasons why this argument isn't really attempted outside of ignorant talk radio. First, the rebuttal to this fabricated refusal myth is a discussion of poverty that conservatives don't want to have. Second, the language associated with the refusal myth, which touches on some expectation of government handouts, laziness, and stupidly is so racially loaded that any media personality that faces a mainstream audience knows better than to indulge.

What mainstream conservative pundits can do to is deflect criticism of the Bush administration and avoid substantive conversations about America's responsibility to the Gulf, the human rights of displaced New Orleanians, and poverty is to drop the hammer on C. Ray Nagin.

Last week, I did my first ever radio interview for an extremely obscure talk show based out of New York. Though the program was billed for political independents, I was greeted with the following question, which I will paraphrase:

The Hurricane was awful, we all remember the tragedy as it came into our living rooms, yada, yada, yada... In the days after Katrina, there was a fleet of school buses ready to go and Ray Nagin told them they weren't needed. Wasn't Ray Nagin terrible? Isn't it all Ray Nagin's fault? Isn't he an idiot and the worst guy ever?

Now certainly Ray Nagin deserves a great deal of blame for our failed hurricane preparation but to get a question like that three years after the fact demonstrates the lengths the conservative message machine has gone to put forth a revisionist history of the storm. This effort has been buttressed by more competent federal responses to the wildfires in California and the flooding in Iowa. It has given conservative voices an opening with which to carry out the Rove disaster response plan: blame the Democrats. (Never mind the fact that Mr. Nagin was instrumental in originally implementing the very Rove-hatched media response plan which Nagin himself is now the most direct target - I'm trying my best to make this 'pro' Nagin.)

It's funny because conservatives don't want to talk about Nagin's failures as a mayor post-Katrina because Nagin's most glaring failure has been his implementation of a generally conservative recovery ideology: outsourcing to private developers, dismantling public assets, stalling investment in the most devastated neighborhoods, and refusing to address low wages, high rents, and nonexistent health care. Instead, the focus is on Nagin's failures as an agent of FEMA during a 3 week period 3 years ago.

Beyond that, conservatives bring on local guests willing to talk about how far our tourism industry has come since Katrina and how you could walk the French Quarter and not even know a Hurricane had ever hit.

Ray Nagin is an unfair victim of conservative racism and attempts to paint the mayor of New Orleans as indicative lazy do-nothingness on the part of New Orleanians during the storm. Neoconservatives don't want to place the blame for the Katrina response where it really belongs, at the feet of their own ideology that implements broken government on purpose.

So:

Sometimes I feel like defending Nagin when he is used as a punching bag or used as a symbol for black people in general by neoconservative Bush administration brown-noses.

That's the best I can do for him.
--

There is a great irony here and it's not 'e doesn't actually like Nagin.'

All of the apologists out there that rail against Nagin critics by levying charges of racism are themselves ignoring what Nagin's policies are actually doing to the African American community of New Orleans.

The reality is that the biggest Nagin apologists out there aren't those that think attacks on Mr. Nagin are racist, they're the racist Republicans that themselves profit from Mr. Nagin's implementation of a bastardized free market disaster "recovery" policy slate that disproportionately hurts poor African Americans.

Recall that Ray Nagin himself contributed to George Bush's campaign in 2000 and nearly maxed out to the evil Billy Tauzin.

Also recall that campaign donations of members of the Bring New Orleans Back Commission, hand picked by Mayor Nagin, went to GOP candidates a whopping 94% of the time.

It is Nagin and the policies of his administration that are propping up and perpetuating the economic and racial injustice.

Those that call critics of Mayor Nagin's recovery policy racist should look in the mirror. They should think about who's really holding up Ray Nagin. They should look at who's really behind the Mayor's Excellence in Recovery Award (i.e. excluding those that were tricked into membership). They ain't exactly the victims of Katrina - they're the profiteers of false recovery.

So to Kevin and the American Zombie, if we're looking for a real pro-Nagin blog, maybe we should be contacting the exclusive class of boosters profiting from our city's unrecovery. They'll be above the Ritz on Friday.