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New
Orleans is
Modern America
By Derek Seidman I highly recommend people go to cnn.com and
listen to the segment "Mayor: "Get off your
assess." It's a 20 minute interview with the mayor of New
Orleans, and it's the most honest and candid interview I've ever
heard from a US politician.
European papers are awed at (in their own
words) how the US is still living in the 1960s in terms of race.
Tens of thousands of black people, not able to leave because
they couldn't afford to, being stranded to just die. What an
indictment of this country. This disaster is revealing in such
stark simplicity how those rich white assholes have mismanaged
everything, the whole country.
Actually, I take that back: they've managed
everything quite well: they've wanted to cut public funding,
repeal and cut taxes, forget about the well-being of black
people, make the political climate hostile to compassionate
ideas, etc., for a long time. New Orleans is revealing their
astounding success.
My friend Pat Resta called me yesterday, an
hour after he heard that he's being deployed to New Orleans.
He's in the guard, and this is the third time in four years he's
being deployed. For guard duty, this is insane.
He got back from Iraq just a year ago. Now he's dropping
out of school again, getting ready for a six-month tour. He was
on the Cindy Sheehan bus tour when he heard he was being
deployed. 35% of the Louisiana guard is in Iraq.
Yesterday it was announced that 800,000 more
poor people are losing their Medicaid benefits. The day before
that, the census bureau announced a rise in poverty on the US
for the fourth straight year (and this according to their
dishonest poverty indicators).
What a disgrace. This is still a Jim Crow
country. Jim Crowed by race, Jim Crowed by class, Jim Crowed by
the fact that, in reality, in policy, in funding, in tax policy,
in housing policy, in media coverage, etc., some people are
clearly worth more than others.
It's been this way all along, and the New
Orleans disaster is just revealing what many people knew and
lived, but which was either covered up or denied so middle class
America could live in a bubble of moral innocence and so the
government could drum up support to do whatever the hell it
wanted.
derekseidman@yahoo.com
Fri, 2 Sep 2005
posted 2 September 2005 |
