New Orleans
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08.28.06
“9th ward diagonal car 1″
Matt Cohen, August 26, 2006
Broken bottles, broken plates,
Broken switches, broken gates,
Broken dishes, broken parts,
Streets are filled with broken hearts.
Broken words never meant to be spoken,
Everything is broken.
– Bob Dylan, “Everything is Broken”
Last year, I posted the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “Everything is Broken,” and linked various phrases to images from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The degree to which Dylan’s words fit the events unfolding before us was uncanny.
A year later, New Orleans remains a city crippled not only by a natural disaster, but by a man-made one: a Republican administration that sat on its ass and ate birthday cake while a city drowned has compounded that frightening lack of human decency by breaking promise after promise to those in the region.
Of course, only a fool would think that that has been an accident. Bush put Karl Rove in charge of the administration’s post-Katrina strategy, an act of bad faith of such magnitude that one recoils from the sheer monstrosity of it. As Dan Froomkin noted at the time:
Rove’s leadership role suggests quite strikingly that any and all White House decisions and pronouncements regarding the recovery from the storm are being made with their political consequences as the primary consideration. More specifically: With an eye toward increasing the likelihood of Republican political victories in the future, pursuing long-cherished conservative goals, and bolstering Bush’s image.
That is Rove’s hallmark.
And that is exactly what has come to pass: a bungled recovery process that has allowed the wreckage of the storm to fester under the hot Louisiana sun. And it’s all being done with political objectives in mind, as Frank Rich noted in the The New York Times this past Sunday:
Douglas Brinkley, the Tulane University historian who wrote the best-selling account of Katrina, “The Great Deluge,” is worried that even now the White House is escaping questioning about what it is up to (and not) in the Gulf. “I don’t think anybody’s getting the Bush strategy,” he said when we talked last week. “The crucial point is that the inaction is deliberate — the inaction is the action.” As he sees it, the administration, tacitly abetted by New Orleans’s opportunistic mayor, Ray Nagin, is encouraging selective inertia, whether in the rebuilding of the levees (“Only Band-Aids have been put on them”), the rebuilding of the Lower Ninth Ward or the restoration of the wetlands. The destination: a smaller city, with a large portion of its former black population permanently dispersed. “Out of the Katrina debacle, Bush is making political gains,” Mr. Brinkley says incredulously. “The last blue state in the Old South is turning into a red state.”
All across the media landscape, the Bush administration is being shown for what it is: a callous political machine that cares only for its own survival.
That is going to be brought home over the next two days, as President Bush attempts to whitewash his response to the storm with a series of PR stunts. After all, you don’t introduce new products in August: you just shine up the old lies and put them out on the shelf in some new packaging.
As noted here a few days ago, Matt Cohen, who blogs at 1115.org, decided to take a first-hand look behind the Bush administration’s spin. Traveling down to New Orleans with his camera, Matt has posted a powerful set of pictures on flickr that document the all-too-slow recovery of New Orleans (I thank him for granting me permission to use a few of his images here), and he has just written a searing account of his trip through the 9th Ward.
It’s called A Victory Lap for Broken Promises:
But all of that is just the least bad part. What remains of Lakeview and the Lower 9th Ward is a national embarrassment. One year after Katrina, and some houses rest off their foundations and in the streets. Cars sit upside down or crushed, some even under buildings washed away by flood waters. Water-damaged and mud-caked objects are distributed inside houses and in yards. Block after block, the damage appears infinite. The fact that $44 billion has been released for recovery, yet the ruins of the 9th ward are allowed to stand almost frozen in time, is nothing short of disgusting. With so many of our ruling Republican majority subscribing to the “Broken Window” theory, it’s amazing that the ultimate broken window is the flood damage allowed to remain across New Orleans.
It’s an amazing post that showcases the best of what blogs can do. Please go and read it.
Of all of the images that Matt has posted, the one below struck me most deeply:
“HOME This was HOME,” the spray-painted eulogy reads. The house still stands, but the home inside it is gone, for now. It will be vanquished permanently, if the Bush administration has its way.
And that is something that we will never forget.
Update: Please visit Shakespeare’s Sister for many more perspectives on the first anniversary of Hurrican Katrina. In her post, Shakes argues convincingly that “Katrina was the inevitable failure in the wake of Bush Conservatism’s success.”
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By Matt
posted in Politics, Best Posts, George W. Bush, New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, Conservative Ideology, FEMA, Michael Brown, Criminal Incompetence, Criminal Negligence, Bob Dylan, Natural Disasters, Photography, Bush Administration
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08.25.06
Matt Cohen, the founding force behind the political group-blog 1115.org, has traveled down to New Orleans for the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Matt promises to strike through the mask of lies that the Bush Administration will be pedaling over the next few weeks as it attempts to whitewash its horrifying response to the storm last year.
In his first post from New Orleans, Matt writes:
You have no idea how bad it is down here.
The President plans to swagger down here on Monday to brag about how he’s keeping his promise to the people of New Orleans.
I’m going to bring you reality.
I have no doubt that he will. In addition to being a passionate, fiercely intelligent writer, Matt is also an ace photographer. Keep your eye on 1115 and on Matt’s flickr stream in the coming days to see what’s really going down in the Big Easy.
Update: Here’s his first set of photos from the 9th Ward. Tremendous work all around; this is the one that affected me most strongly.
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08.21.06
Not to caption — just to contemplate:
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Spike Lee’s documentary and the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina will put New Orleans and the Gulf Coast back on TV for a short while. But it won’t take long for them to disappear again.
Yahoo caption: A sign in the Lower Ninth Ward was nailed to a pole in front of a partly demolished home in New Orleans on Monday, July 24, 2006. Hurricane Katrina struck this neighborhood hard last August.
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10.20.05
Crooks and Liars has the video of a story about New Orleans that aired on NBC and MSNBC last night. It’s a must-watch report.
In testimony to the Senate, FEMA official Marty Bahamonde revealed that on August 31st, he had sent urgent messages from his blackberry, telling FEMA Director Michael Brown about the deteriorating conditions in New Orleans. The situation is “past critical,” Bahamonde wrote from the Superdome, where he was reportedly Brown’s “eyes and ears.” “Estimates are many will die within hours.”
He never got a response from Brown, but someone did forward to him an email written on the same day by Brown’s press secretary; it reveals where FEMA’s attention was as thousands struggled for their lives in New Orleans:
. . . It is very important that time is allowed for Mr. Brown to eat dinner. Given that Baton Rouge is back to normal, restaurants are getting busy. He needs much more than 20 or 30 minutes.
Bahamonde’s response?
OH MY GOD !!!!!! Just tell her that I just ate an MRE and [went to the bathroom] in the hallway of the Superdome along with 30,000 other close friends, so I understand her concern about busy restaurants.
It’s gratifying to see that people like Bahamonde have the courage to speak up about this. But you know it’s just a matter of time until the administration starts to slime him, and distance itself from the press secretary.
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09.09.05
Caught between grief and rage, anger and shame, I’ve been searching for something that would begin to release the knot in my chest.
I once was lost, but now I’m found:
George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People (MP3). (By The Legendary K.O. Produced by Kanye West. Words by Big Mon and Damien a/k/a Dem Knock-Out Boyz) [Via All-Spin Zone]
Download, listen, and repeat, repeat, repeat.
Because George Bush isn’t the only Republican who hates “naygers”.
This is the soundtrack to the revolution.
Blast it from the fucking rooftops.
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By Matt
posted in Politics, Books, Movies, Music, Television, George W. Bush, New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, Race, Conservative Ideology, FEMA, Criminal Incompetence, Criminal Negligence
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09.08.05
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.
– T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land 
Rick Bowmer/AP
Some will see these photographs as an exploitation of tragedy; others will see them as unduly macabre;
and some will recognize that only when we are willing to look at what our nation has wrought can it be saved, if it still can be saved.
Found via Talk Left and Pam’s House Blend, they are graphic and disturbing. Click on them at your own risk:
Avoid them at your nation’s risk.
In an essay that appeared in an 1863 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote about Matthew Brady’s photographs of the Civil War dead — the first wartime photographs that brought the reality of war to American breakfast tables. Holmes wrote:
Many people would not look through this series. Many, having seen it and dreamed of its horrors, would lock it up in some secret drawer, that it might not thrill or revolt those whose soul sickens at such sights. It was so nearly like visiting the battlefield to look over these views, that all the emotions excited by the actual sight of the stained and sordid scene, strewed with rags and wrecks, came back to us, and we buried them in the recesses of our cabinet as we would have buried the mutilated remains of the dead they too vividly represented.
We cannot allow the dead of New Orleans to be locked in a secret drawer or buried in the recesses of our cabinet. Not if we want our republic to rise from its knees and live again. Not while these people hold the reins of power.
There are too many stories yet to be told. We need to hear them. We need to see them.
But even that is not enough.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: ‘Stetson!
‘You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
‘That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
‘Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
‘Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
‘O keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
‘Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
‘You! hypocrite lecteur! –mon semblable,–mon frere!
– T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Clearly, the federal officials purportedly in charge of the disaster recovery efforts bear the heaviest burden for these deaths. The President who appointed them, and those who continue to support him, have revealed themselves for the callous, inhumane, immoral creatures that they are.
But I can’t help feeling that we are part of the problem, too. By continuing to participate in this corrupt and morally bankrupt society, we all bear some measure of the burden.
We live in a country whose President openly wonders “what didn’t go right?” as FEMA orders 25,000 body bags.
He will never know, because he will never face these dead.
But we can, and we must.
The last five posts I’ve written, and then deleted, have all been titled “What’s the Point?” In the face of our failed efforts to make a change before this disaster, I’m still trying to figure out the answer to that question, but the one thing I do know is that everything is different now. After Katrina, things cannot continue to go on as they did before. Something has to change. Everything has to change.
We need action. We need to open the doors of this cabinet of horrors, this grotesque nation of repulsive privilege and old bigotry.
We need a revolution.
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By Matt
posted in Politics, Science & Health, Media Criticism, Best Posts, George W. Bush, Corruption, Missing Persons, Police State, New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, Race, Journalism, Newspapers, Magazines, FEMA, Michael Brown, Criminal Incompetence, Criminal Negligence
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09.07.05
From the New York Times
At a news conference, Pelosi, D-Calif., said Bush’s choice for head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency had “absolutely no credentials.”
She related that she had urged Bush at the White House on Tuesday to fire Michael Brown.
“He said ‘Why would I do that?”‘ Pelosi said.
“‘I said because of all that went wrong, of all that didn’t go right last week.’ And he said ‘What didn’t go right?” I don’t even know where to start.
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09.06.05
Compiled after reading this.
Broken lines, broken strings,
Broken threads, broken springs,
Broken idols, broken heads,
People sleeping in broken beds.
Ain’t no use jiving
Ain’t no use joking
Everything is broken.
Broken bottles, broken plates,
Broken switches, broken gates,
Broken dishes, broken parts,
Streets are filled with broken hearts.
Broken words never meant to be spoken,
Everything is broken.
Seem like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground.
Broken cutters, broken saws,
Broken buckles, broken laws,
Broken bodies, broken bones,
Broken voices on broken phones.
Take a deep breath, feel like you’re chokin’,
Everything is broken.
Every time you leave and go off someplace
Things fall to pieces in my face.
Broken hands on broken ploughs,
Broken treaties, broken vows,
Broken pipes, broken tools,
People bending broken rules.
Hound dog howling, bull frog croaking,
Everything is broken.
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By Matt
posted in Politics, Books, Movies, Music, Television, Best Posts, George W. Bush, New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, Criminal Incompetence, Bob Dylan
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09.06.05
This is one of the most strident, well-written, and insightful pieces of commentary I’ve seen on Hurricane Katrina. May our corporate media bless us with more journalists like Keith Olbermann, who have the guts to speak truth to power. (via Shakespeare’s Sister and Atrios)
The video is here (watch it!). The transcript is reproduced below, as Atrios says, for posterity:
SECAUCUS — Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said it all, starting his news briefing Saturday afternoon: “Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater…”
Well there’s your problem right there.
If ever a slip-of-the-tongue defined a government’s response to a crisis, this was it.
The seeming definition of our time and our leaders had been their insistence on slashing federal budgets for projects that might’ve saved New Orleans. The seeming characterization of our government that it was on vacation when the city was lost, and could barely tear itself away from commemorating V.J. Day and watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus, to at least pretend to get back to work. The seeming identification of these hapless bureaucrats: their pathetic use of the future tense in terms of relief they could’ve brought last Monday and Tuesday — like the President, whose statements have looked like they’re being transmitted to us by some kind of four-day tape-delay.
But no. The incompetence and the ludicrous prioritization will forever be symbolized by one gaffe by of the head of what is ironically called “The Department of Homeland Security”: “Louisiana is a city…”
Politician after politician — Republican and Democrat alike — has paraded before us, unwilling or unable to shut off the “I-Me” switch in their heads, condescendingly telling us about how moved they were or how devastated they were — congenitally incapable of telling the difference between the destruction of a city and the opening of a supermarket.
And as that sorry recital of self-absorption dragged on, I have resisted editorial comment. The focus needed to be on the efforts to save the stranded — even the internet’s meager powers were correctly devoted to telling the stories of the twin disasters, natural… and government-made.
But now, at least, it is has stopped getting exponentially worse in Mississippi and Alabama and New Orleans and Louisiana (the state, not the city). And, having given our leaders what we know now is the week or so they need to get their act together, that period of editorial silence I mentioned, should come to an end.
No one is suggesting that mayors or governors in the afflicted areas, nor the federal government, should be able to stop hurricanes. Lord knows, no one is suggesting that we should ever prioritize levee improvement for a below-sea-level city, ahead of $454 million worth of trophy bridges for the politicians of Alaska.
But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn’t even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans — even though the government had heard all the “chatter” from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn’t quite discern… a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection — or at least amelioration — against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.
It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.
Mr. Bush has now twice insisted that, “we are not satisfied,” with the response to the manifold tragedies along the Gulf Coast. I wonder which “we” he thinks he’s speaking for on this point. Perhaps it’s the administration, although we still don’t know where some of them are. Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man whose message this time last year was, ‘I’ll Protect You, The Other Guy Will Let You Die’?
I don’t know which ‘we’ Mr. Bush meant.
For many of this country’s citizens, the mantra has been — as we were taught in Social Studies it should always be — whether or not I voted for this President — he is still my President. I suspect anybody who had to give him that benefit of the doubt stopped doing so last week. I suspect a lot of his supporters, looking ahead to ‘08, are wondering how they can distance themselves from the two words which will define his government — our government — “New Orleans.”
For him, it is a shame — in all senses of the word. A few changes of pronouns in there, and he might not have looked so much like a 21st Century Marie Antoinette. All that was needed was just a quick “I’m not satisfied with my government’s response.” Instead of hiding behind phrases like “no one could have foreseen,” had he only remembered Winston Churchill’s quote from the 1930’s. “The responsibility,” of government, Churchill told the British Parliament “for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence.”
In forgetting that, the current administration did not merely damage itself — it damaged our confidence in our ability to rely on whoever is in the White House.
As we emphasized to you here all last week, the realities of the region are such that New Orleans is going to be largely uninhabitable for a lot longer than anybody is yet willing to recognize. Lord knows when the last body will be found, or the last artifact of the levee break, dug up. Could be next March. Could be 2100. By then, in the muck and toxic mire of New Orleans, they may even find our government’s credibility.
Somewhere, in the City of Louisiana.
My favorite lines are the “sorry recital of self-absorption” and “It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.”
My own take on the larger picture is here.
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09.05.05
One of the small bits of good to come out of Latoyia Figueroa’s disappearance was that it engaged bloggers both here and abroad, and made many of us acutely aware that Latoyia was only one of many missing persons whose stories needed to be publicized.
Philly blogger Pax Romano, along with British bloggers Taz and Piggy, came up with the idea to have bloggers set aside one post on the first Monday of every month in order to publicize a missing persons case in their area. It’s called Missing Monday. Other Philly bloggers participating in Missing Monday can be found here.
Blogs are perfect vehicles for spreading the word on missing persons cases. All it takes for one of these cases to be solved is for the right pair of eyes to catch sight of a familiar face.
If you blog, please consider joining us.
I’d like to focus on two cases today. The first is a Pennsylvania case:
Alfred Yersevich
DOB: Jan 30, 1990
Missing: May 2, 2005
Height: 5′9″ (175 cm)
Eyes: Brown
Race: White/Hisp
Age Now: 15
Sex: Male
Weight: 130 lbs (59 kg)
Hair: Brown
Missing From:
ALLENTOWN
PA
United States
Alfred was last seen on May 2, 2005. He may be traveling with a male companion and an adult female companion. They may still be in the local area, or they may have traveled to Reading, Pennsylvania. They may be traveling in a white Honda Civic with Florida license plates X66JVU. Alfred may use the alias first names Christian or Cris, or the alias last name Campos.
ANYONE HAVING INFORMATION SHOULD CONTACT
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
1-800-843-5678 (1-800-THE-LOST)
Allentown Police Department (Pennsylvania) 1-610-437-7753
The second case involves children who were separated from their caretakers in the New Orleans airport after Hurricane Katrina:
Lyndell and Demarco Robinson
Lyndell:
DOB: Sep 3, 1993
Found: Sep 4, 2005
Age Now: 12
Sex: Male
Race: Black
Hair: Black
Eyes: Brown
Height: Unknown
Weight: 43 kg (95 lbs)
Found:
NEW ORLEANS
LA
United States
Demarco:
DOB:
Found: Sep 4, 2005
Age Now: 4
Sex: Male
Race: Black
Hair: Black
Eyes: Brown
Height: 91 cm (3′0″)
Weight: 27 kg (60 lbs)
Found:
NEW ORLEANS
LA
United States
These are pictures of children who became separated from their caretakers by Hurricane Katrina. They were picked up from the New Orleans airport on September 4, 2005. They were in the company of their cousin, Johnny Robinson, who is also featured on www.missingkids.com. Lyndell has scars on both his knees.
ANYONE HAVING INFORMATION SHOULD CONTACT
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
1-800-843-5678 (1-800-THE-LOST) or contact NCMEC Cold Case Review Unit at 1-877-446-2632, ext. 6235 or 6295
Louisiana Missing Childrens Clearinghouse - 1-225-342-8631
I found all of these cases on the website of The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which has a page devoted to connecting children missing after Hurricane Katrina.
More Katrina-related missing persons links (via Disenchanted Forest):
Again, if you blog, take a good look at those faces, and please consider joining Missing Monday.
One post on one day a month. Surely, that’s not too much to ask.
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9th ward this was home, Matt Cohen, August 26, 2006
