If they succeed in driving New Orleans out of our collective memory—you know who “they” are, and we all know how we forget—that will be a great loss and sorrow. We must not forget.
The subject has virtually disappeared from the blogs, all of them: liberal, conservative, and in between. If it does show up, it does so with its political wrapping—what does the failure of the feds mean for Bush & Co? Will NOLA help the Dems or the GOP?
Fortunately, there are a few who have not yet forgotten and who are doing their best to keep the memory alive for all of us. Boing Boing has been spectacular, with post after post keeping us alert to what’s going on in the devastated city. A post today, from a cameraman in the city, is brilliant and chilling; and if it is accusatory, the accusations are based on what the accuser sees, there and now, and on what he does not see:
There are dead bodies on the street. Yesterday, I watched as a man tried to flag down a cop. There was a middle aged woman who had been dead for days, and yet no authority seems concerned. We can see that there was no plan for the living, but you would think that there would be some respect for the dead. When he was finally able to get a cop to stop - not an easy thing to do since they drive through at such high speed…. the cop said that they didn’t care about removing bodies. Someone’s mother, or child, she was still there late last night as I drove out.
I have driven from one end of New Orleans to the other - a drive of over 7 miles, and repeatedly not seen one cop, guardsman, trooper…. And where is the Red Cross? Not ONE. Everyone on the street says, “Where’s the Red Cross? I gave them so much money after 9/11 and the tsunami - where’s the Red Cross�. The cops I’ve asked say they are not here because they are afraid. The Red Cross says that the authorities are not letting them in the city. I find that hard to believe. The police can’t even secure a few blocks, let alone keep the Red Cross out. Helping victims in New Orleans is exactly why the Red Cross was created.
Eric Berger, the SciGuy, has also kept his focus. Today’s post reprints a long essay from Dr. Leigh Bishop, a psychiatrist at the Michael DeBakey VA Medical Center, detailing the experience he had caring for the evacuees who arrived from Louisiana:
I walked toward him. He paced back and forth like an agitated bear until I caught his eye and was able to introduce myself. With barely an acknowledgement, he began talking rapidly. He was a critical care specialist, on duty since before the storm rolled in. “You can’t imagine what it’s like back there.” I was to hear that several times in the next two days. “Try to imagine carrying a patient on a heart-lung machine down a darkened stairwell. We were running out of medications, running out of fluids. There was shooting outside. We did this for four days. And the airport is unbelievable-total chaos. Ambulances dropping people off like packages and immediately leaving to pick up someone else. They are putting patients who aren’t expected to make it off to one side, black-tagging them so that they can deal with the ones who can still be saved. I’m too tired to move, but I don’t know if I’ll even be able to sleep tonight. What I want right now is a shower and some alcohol.” His speech began to lose some of its pressure as he talked.
I asked how much sleep he had had, and how recently. “I don’t know. Maybe this afternoon for about twenty minutes. I can’t remember.” He paused, eyes glazed a moment. “There were bodies in the water everywhere. Someone said that you could see sharks in Metairie from the air.”
We can’t be distracted, even for something as important as the Roberts confirmation; we have to remember that half of a major city is still under water, that most of the loss was experienced by those who had the least, that there are hundreds of thousands still homeless, tens of thousands still missing, and God knows how many bodies lying out for the kites and rats and alligators to feed upon. And that another set of vultures, in the shape of Halliburton, Blackwater, and the quaintly named Service Corporation International, are already hopping around the outskirts, tearing at the bags of money that Congress is flinging their way and flapping off with talons filled with loot to feed their hungry shareholders.
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