Jim Crow And Katrina

[AK74]

Violence (especially rape) is usually about unchecked power--from the Nazi's to your schoolyard bully or even school teacher whoever has had the power to do as they pleases with others has tended to take advantage of it in an immoral manner.


Let the 'Big One' hit L.A and you'll see how savage even folks from Bel Air and B-Hills can get.

[fish-e]

Baton Rouge, LA:
Tulane hospital - fully evac'd by day 3.
Charity hospital, across the street - full of bodies still today.
Wanna guess which is the low-income medicine show?

[seektravelinfo]

“How can a city under sea level not have an evacuation strategy?”

-Hugo Chavez.

He has a point.
Sure, there is a strategy, on paper somewhere, but there was not sufficient time nor necessary logistical support from FEMA/DHS to get things in motion. The mayor was hung out to dry, that was obvious from the doomed look on his face even before Katrina hit.
I saw a creepy photo on-line earlier of acres of school buses underwater. These buses could have been put to use to get people out of town with the Super-Dome as the launching point. But where would they have gone? Folks don't want busloads of poor people showing up. Especially poor black people. Puts me in mind of the German escaping Jews (dramatized in the film "Ship of Fools") who were denied entry to the USA and left adrift.

[Prodigal Son]

Well, I'm not sure Prodigal. Certainly Mississippi blacks have been historically oppressed as much as (and more) than Louisiana blacks and are just as poor. But they also tend to be more rural, and maybe as a consequence, more self-reliant. And all the rich houses are up in Jackson rather than 3/4 of a mile away.

Rural/Suburban areas definitely seem to be correlated with "cooperative" behavior, but why?

Economic inequality only important when it's rubbed in your face? More rural communities are usually, so goes the argument, closer knit so people trust each other more and are less likely to revert to the Hobbessian endgame when the threat of punishment is removed. More trust in smaller communities? Fewer outsiders threatening the group? As a result do you have stronger community norms?

But, rural areas are different in other ways too. Firearms aren't really a problem the way they are in big cities. Same reason?

Probabaly the best explanation is that it is a result of all these things being important.

[Pam]

Mississippi IS the poorest state in the union, and a good part of the coastal area was hit harder by Katrina than New Orleans and you don't see the anarchy going down there that's happening in New Orleans. Mississippi is also heavily black too.

I have a friend who was caught up in the mess in Mississippi. It definitely shows the difference between NO and Mississippi. This was one of her comments.

There are so many horrible stories from both areas, but to be honest and this may sound ugly of me, but Im getting a bit tired of the media focusing so hard on New Orleans. Yes, I know the city is underwater and thats horrible. I know there are so many dead there, so many waiting to be rescued, and so many with their homes under water.
It breaks my heart to see so many people still there waiting to be evacuated and not recieving the food and water needed while they wait to be moved.
But the Mississippi coast has NO city left.
It is gone.
Houses, businesses, recreation places, gone, flattened.
The people that are left there have been great about helping each other out. They have formed lines in order to find what they can for supplies. They havent recieved any state or federal relief either, but so many of the local towns have come in with food/water for them.
Ive been watching the news here at the home that we are staying at, and they show a sceen or two of the casino that was a mile away on top of what once was another hotel, and thats about it.
There is nothing left down there. Even their main bridges and highways were completely demolished.
In hattiesburg MS, which is between us and the coast, their hospital generators went out yesterday. There are no other close hospitals so they have been struggling to get those people to other hospitals. At last count they had 2 refridgerated trucks outside one had 30 bodies in it the other 35...and if they dont get help soon those numbers are gonna be rising.
This is just insane.

[citygirl]

I'll tell you what they did. They fed them enough welfare money to keep them at starvation levels and bought their votes. It's a dirty little inner city secret that goes on in major cities around the country. [/quote]

Don't underestimate the "have nots" of the inner city, they live by their own terms - seriously. It requires effort to starve in a major city in America.

The Feds made the mistake of thinking that the NO city government was remotely competent. Very foolish considering there has never been any evidence of competence in their 300 year history.[/quote]

By what standard are you measuring competence if there is no precedent?

Once people get involved everything goes to hell - staggering what we have accomplished in spite of ourselves in the past 300 years you must admit. However, progress requires that the majority disagree...

[redfax]

What's the insurance rate around there?