The InterActivist
Es mejor morir de pie que vivir de rodillas.-Emiliano ZapataOpen Heart, Open Mind: A Leftist's Perspective
Four Years Too Long?
I am your typical softhearted liberal who is emotionally affected by nearly every humanitarian crisis that I learn of. However, I feel a special connection to the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, as I traveled there a few years ago on a mission trip and was shocked, even then, at how little had been restored. Bridge pillars were left standing alone, with no roadway to hold. Gaping holes were strewn across the walls of houses throughout the area. Pieces of fence lay on the ground of the property they used to enclose, with large sections missing that had presumably been swept away in the flood. That was 2007. Two years later, much is still awry. Nonprofits such as the church group I traveled with cannot be expected to fix everything. Where is our government when we need it?
Many at the higher level of our government would argue that New Orleans’ most recent statistics are nothing but positive. However, the New Orleans economy is booming because billions of dollars have been poured into reconstruction. This money will not last forever, and neither will the jobs it is enabling. The foreclosure is low because leniency was given after Katrina for obvious reasons. This too, can only last so long. Even the low unemployment rate is deceiving – many of New Orleans’ poorest never returned. So if all of the stats our government is throwing out aren’t reality, then what is?
Though around 75% of New Orleans population has returned, 36% of its housing is still unoccupied, which translates to nearly 66,000 homes. How is this possible, you ask? The population statistic very much depends on the area. Ironically enough, though not surprising, the poorest areas that were devastated the worst have been ignored the most in the rebuilding process. Only 20% of the original population has returned to the extremely underprivileged lower Ninth Ward. This is primarily due to just one of the government’s idiotic ideas: replace affordable public housing with new residences that don’t match occupancy one for one. In other words, a complex suitable for four families at a low rate would be replaced with a higher priced home suitable for one. And where are the other three families supposed to go? Apparently the government wasn’t too worried about that. Still worse is the fact that New Orleans is still the number 2 city for poverty in the nation, even without much of its poor population.
Click here or more on Louisiana’s current condition
So just how did our government manage to leave a city so unprotected that four years after the disaster, much of it is still destroyed?
First, we can look to the joke that is the Army Corps of Engineers. Allow me to state the obvious. If the levees had not failed, the disastrous floods in New Orleans would have been averted. Yet throughout its career in that area, the Corps managed to build almost everything but adequate levees, with strong influence from Congress that such projects should be the most beneficial economically. Yes, I said economically… never mind the welfare of the people. As if that’s not bad enough, these water projects actually ended up being main components in the destruction of New Orleans by destroying natural processes and directing waters right toward the city. And the levees? They were placed primarily around uninhabited wetlands to dry them out so that their landowners could sell them. Disgusting. These levees left inhabited areas vulnerable and were not even constructed soundly enough to protect those who had just been conned into buying swamp for property. The reason for the latter is that Congress (a recurring culprit) felt that Category 3 strength levees were uncalled for, and refused to provide the necessary funding. In other words, to our Congress, the profitability they saw in the wetlands was more important than preventing a flood that would demolish a city and produce over 1,000 casualties. Most disturbing, though, is that current efforts are focused on reconstruction, and still not the levees. Who’s to say the exact calamity is not going to happen again?
Click here for more about the Corps
And why aren’t things, four years later, looking up?
Despite a specific department existing in our country for the handling of crises –that of Homeland Security – no actual viable crisis plan was ever created. In a scenario quite typical of politics, most elected Homeland Security officials were chosen due to the favors they had done for others, and therefore were largely unqualified to enact any kind of damage control. Such a plan would not have taken much time or money to devise. Simply having a template plan for the creation accessible escape routes, sanitary and safe shelters for the displaced, and an idea of how to approach reconstruction would have been usable in multiple situations and cities in the event of multiple disasters – both natural and man-made. A whopping 88 congressional committees were supposed to be overseeing the actions of the Department of Homeland Security. None seemed concerned that it was making no actions regarding the security of the homeland, and now New Orleans has suffered the consequences.
So for whom is our government really working? For many, the answer is obvious. A vast majority of Americans have grown to expect nothing from the government, and the government has capitalized on this notion. Our government is in it for its own good, and it’s our job to call the politicians out on it. If our government can’t find a conscience and learn from history that it is more important to expect and prepare for the worst than to make a buck, then we should learn that we have the power to make a change. George Bernard Shaw once said, “We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.” Let’s prove him wrong
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