DATELINE: 3 September, 2005

Transmitted by ROD AMIS, USA

G21 WORLD HQ - It's Labor Day weekend in America. It's a time when people throw things on the barbecure, invite friends and loved ones over, and generally get ready for the return to work after their holidays, work and a new school year or semester. The last holiday before the serious Holy Days rush that comes as winter approaches. Labor Day, in American, has always been a time when the dignity of work was acknowleged. It is that time when the average person, the regular guys and gals jumping into their cars in the early morning, are seen as a definition of something everyone could believe made the nation whole.

But not this weekend. This weekend is the culmination of the five days that have defined the future of America and the presidency of George W. Bush.

The President of the United States did not do the traditional Saturday radio address on this Saturday of the Labor Day weekend. Instead, he appeared on live television to assert -- unequivocably -- that the city of New Orleans will be rebuilt. Then, having finished his prepared statement, he rushed toward the door back into the White House. A reporter yelled out, "Mr. President, why did it take so long?" Meaning for our government to respond to the crisis.

Mr. Bush looked grim. He threw a hand into the air and kept on walking.

Karl Rove, who is embattled himself, would have wanted the aftermath of 9/11 to be the defining moment of George W. Bush's presidency. Donald Rumsfeld, who stood beside Mr. Bush this morning during his statement to the nation, would most likely have wanted the "shock and awe" of invading Iraq to be the defining moment. Mr. Rumsfeld and his neo-conservative empire builders wanted the invasion to demonstrate to the world that it was time to march to the drumbeat of their new empire. But today, this Labor Day weekend, there is a growing sense that New Orleans, the disaster in New Orleans, is the defining moment of the presidency of George W. Bush.

Anyone looking at Mr. Bush's face as he returned to the Oval Office this morning knows that George W. Bush knows that this is the defining moment.

"Shame, shame on America," said Representative Diane Watson, Democrat of California. "We were put to the test, and we have failed."

There were two cities of wondrous, historical architectural beauty in the United States of America -- an ahistorical empire -- one was Savannah and the other was New Orleans. Today there is only one.

The old buildings from the Spanish and the successive French regimes in New Orleans might have survived. But as we watched the looting of Baghdad's historical treasures on CNN television after the American invasion, we have now -- during this five days that have changed the world -- watched the looting of New Orleans.

Fires rage in downtown New Orleans as I write this. The Central Business District (CBD) and the adjoining French Quarter are shrouded by smoke.

As we reported here yesterday, there is a toxic chemical fire downtown. Bodies still float in the streets.

The woman who Loyal Readers of the your World's Magazine know as the Love of My Life sent a rant out to the rest of the world after reading this series. She said this:

What I Understand

Consequent to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I now understand, that the time to doze in the fat September sun, is over, that the time has come to stop participating in the personal and public hallucination that the United States government will, or can, help us, should natural disaster or warmongering afflict us the way it has already afflicted the southern states impacted by Hurricane Katrina.

That the 'greatest nation on earth' is not capable of providing succour to its own people, is a stark fact. The time to understand why and how this is true, is gone past. The time has come to realize, that it is only the 'us' of the U.S. who will help each other as much as help is possible.

Now we must consider which 'us' we belong to, and it may help to know, that in the blink of an eye, the enfranchised can become disenfranchised; that geographic distance is an illusion as far as what is possible here and now, for you and me, whoever you are reading this; that it matters little whose immigrant or native son or daughter you are, when the wolf is at your door. Considering that the whole country is built on stolen land, the privacy and ownership of what we have to lose is in the end, a moot point ... .ownership is also an illusion. Just ask victims of eminent domain ... victims of Katrina, victims of decades of unscrupulous policy.

In the fat September sun, I already realize, I cannot really afford what winter will surely bring. I am 'buying time', on credit in some cases, just as our government has done. 'Buying time' is in itself, a concept that beggars reason; it is impossible, but we do it anyway. The bill will come due for us, en masse.

Now you may think regarding New Orleans, "Well, they should have never built that place like they did."..cold comfort I think; I don't feel I really have any control over, say, the development Route 12A in West Lebanon, or the traffic that backs up onto the Interstate at the Norwich exit., and I'm a reasonably intelligent person, with all my senses intact; how on earth would I demand that people born anywhere in the United States deserve to suffer and die because they cannot control the past or the policies of their government; I have no control over the smallest rudiments of the civic present. The present regime in Washington is proof of that.

We will buy oil or gas or electricity or wood to heat this winter, we will hope that our unborn children are vouchsafed a safe future, that the nursing homes which house our aging parents can afford to operate, that we can afford to drive to work every day, to a job that in some cases pays a living wage,

We will hope for the safe r eturn of those number of us who are fighting a war waged for (at best) ambiguous reasons far away,

And we will start to understand I hope, that we are just like the 'them' we read about, right now, all over the world.

Separated only by the illusion of geographic distance, the accidents of birth, and the slightest tipping of the unfathomable scale of fate in our favor, right now, in the fat September sun, we are all in this together.

But have no illusion; the government of the United States, cannot, or will not help us, whomever 'we' are, should the wolf finally come to our personal door. At least, that is my understanding.

I found it ironic and touching that the woman I have most loved in this life should suggest, as she did in her opening paragraph, that people needed to step up, get off their duffs and make a contribution to their brothers and sisters in this world. Dang! I've been making that argument myself for years.

It would be nice to think that governments support their people but history has proven that is not the truth. As I've said, quoting Dewey, elsewhere in this edition of the magazine, politics is "the shadow cast on society by big business." I wish it were otherwise but I am too old to be that naive.

When I travelled to the inaugural in the capital of the empire in 2001, I had the sense that there was something rotten in America.

Marjorie Cohn, a writer for Truthout.org (yeah, another lefty site like this one) compared the empire's response to this catastrophe to that in Cuba at another time -- that nation in this hemisphere we most villify and maintain a senseless embargo against. Well, I have relatives in Cuba. I worry about them every day, as I worry about my friends here.

Here's just a snippet of what Ms. Cohn said today:

Our federal and local governments had more than ample warning that hurricanes, which are growing in intensity thanks to global warming, could destroy New Orleans. Yet, instead of heeding those warnings, Bush set about to prevent states from controlling global warming, weaken FEMA, and cut the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for levee and flood wall construction in New Orleans by $71.2 million, a 44 percent reduction.

Meanwhile, about Cuba, earlier, she wrote this:

After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation. ISDR director Salvano Briceno said, "The Cuban way could easily be applied to other countries with similar economic conditions and even in countries with greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as well as Cuba does."

You can read Ms. Cohn's full article here.

A friend and former Time magazine correspondent in Rome wrote that I was exposing the reality of New Orleans, as opposed to the popular fantasy that most non-New Orleanians harbor in their minds when thinking of Carnaval season and JazzFest. I thought I had been doing that over the last four years. I guess, up until now, no one was really listening. You don't know what you've got until it's gone.

To be just, I must admit here that many New Orleanians, despite the evidence of their own eyes, also believed in and helped promulgate the fantasy. Bon temps roulez. While watching breathtaking poverty, an inequitable plantation system of employment still thriving, neighborhoods of destitution and devastation cheek-by-jowl with gentrified condos that were unspeakably over-priced, as long as the bars were open and the couriers for the drug dealers kept delivering the cocaine and smack on time, everyone pretended that things were just fine and the Hell with the rest of America.

Like I said, the 10,000 body bags the parish had stored for a disaster worse than Katrina -- if you can imagine that -- were a local joke.

I appreciate the fantasy of New Orleans as much as the next person. It was the closest thing to cosmopolitan outside of Europe in the United States. BUT it was also living in the shadow of the Jim Crow South. Racism was rampant, institutionalized and evident to anyone with the eyes to see. Mr. Bush carried that state because the Southern Baptist coterie that rules outside of Catholic New Orleans plays the fiddle and controls the purse strings.

It was not surprising to me that NOLA mayor Ray Nagin said there should be a moratorium on press conferences. He was subtly speaking to a governor who looked more shell-shocked herself on CNN than helpful. And her only help was to hold out a plea for a real leader to deal with the situation in Mr. Nagin's city.

In most New Orleans establishments, restaurants, tobacco shops, bars, you would see a sign, usually on carved wood, witht the emblem, "Be Nice or Leave." These were made by a local artist everyone knows as "Dr. Bob."

Dr. Bob was a former bar patron of mine when I was on the other side of the bar, a friend and one of my favorite raconteurs. He would often go off to Manhattan to visit a woman he loved and exhibit some of his serious artwork. Old Dr. Bob is a New Orleans fixture. If you lived anywhere near the French Quarter, you knew and had probablt sat beside him as he had a few of his habitual lite beers. If you owned an establishment, you sooner or later bought one of his "Be Nice" signs because it was an emblem of our city.

I read on the nola.com blog a few days ago that Dr. Bob had taken to sitting around with his piece (that is one of his weapons) and had produced a new sign:

"If you loot, I shoot."

That is emblematic of what has happened to that city.

As I continue writing, my friend in Rome sends me a copy of an Associated Press story listing what landmarks, particularly in and around the French Quarter, are still intact. I want to write back to her, dear woman, that I'm more concerned about people than businesses or buildings. Yes, the structures are essential to what was New Orleans, but I tend to put people first. It was the people that made that city for me more than the architecture.

In the Associated Press story they don't mention anything on Frenchmen Street, in the Marigny, so I can only imagine what happened to The Spotted Cat where I was once a day shift bar manager/bartender. That was the bar where I had the longest tenure in New Orleans. This was during a time when most people felt that Frenchmen, especially for the locals and music lovers, was the street that Bourbon Street should have been. It was my habit, on a Sunday night, at the end of my shift, to give big tips to Jerry Jumanville's band to play "Harlem Nocturne" for me.

Jerry, a sax man, would ham it up no end on that piece but I loved it anyway because I've always been a jazz lover. (For my money, Duke Ellington does the best version of "Nocturne.")

I remember when I lived in an apartment in the Tremé, the oldest Black neighborhood in the country, founded by free Black people during a time when slavery obtained in most of the South. It was a place right out of the "Tales of the City" television portrayal of Armisted Maupin's book. It was right off Esplanade Avenue, that street so suffused with the scent of jasmine during the spring and summer. Just walking down that street during those seasons made you feel good.

It was while I lived in that place, still bartending at the Cat, that I had my one and only day of not showing for work on time. I had gone out dancing with a woman I ran into at the back bar in Molly's at the Market on Decatur Street, at the end of my shift the night before. She was wonderful. We went to play ping-pong at a bar on Royal Street and then danced late into the night on Frenchmen. I must have finally gone to bed about five in the morning. I missed opening the bar that Sunday and everyone assumed that I must be in the hospital or jail.

Thinking about my time at the Cat brings back the faces of people who lived in and loved New Orleans and what that city meant to us, my patrons, my friends. I see JW in my mind's eye, Ian, Mary, Scott, Matt, Dr. Bob, Sally Mae, Trish and Ed, Larone, Dave, Cheryl, Valerie, Beth and Fergus, and on and on ... Faces of the habitues of the French Quarter who I've written about and for over the years and now must wonder if they survived this tragedy.

As I said, the President asserted that New Orleans will be re-built but it will not be that same New Orleans. It will never, ever be the New Orleans I once knew. That city is gone. Many of the people who lived there will never return. They are building new lives for themselves as I write this and you read it.

So this series, I suppose, besides being a call to action, to the national conscience, has also been my way of geting closure on this loss. It has been my way of getting the hurt and anger out of my system. What are the stages of accepting the death of something/someone you loved? Denial, Anger, Sadness, Acceptance? I have felt all of those while writing this.

All have washed through me except the anger. I am angry at my government.

It has been the agenda of the Republican party in the United States to dismantle the federal government for the last fifty-plus years. From Nixon to Reagan to Bush, the mantra has been, "get government off the backs of the people." The New Deal instituted by President Roosevelt was seen as the destruction of free trade and the market-driven economy. It had to go. On this Labor Day weekend, we can see in America that it has. We can see that there is no federal government to respond to the needs of the nation's people. New Orleans is like Haiti, Mississippi and Alabama are remnants of what they used to be, and Mr. Bush can only say this: "This is unacceptable."

G21 says, "You reap what you sow."

This "unacceptable" situation, the death of thousands in our country, the death of a great American city and a region, Mr. Bush, are the direct result of your policies. You needed the money that could have saved American families to prosecute your war and occupation in Iraq.

So let's ask the Ronald Reagan Question: Is American better off today than it was four years ago?

Answer: Hell no!

This Labor Day weekend in America, we have much more to consider than in many such holidays past.

When, in the course of human events, a people find that their government no longer can maintain the common good, provide for the general welfare, maintain order and secure a prosperous future, it is incumbent upon that people to take action and seek a redress of their grievances. When faced with a bankruptcy of leadership, a fundamental disconnect with the lives of the average famillies on the street, a people, a nation, must assume the civic responsibility to set things right. When such a moment arrives, it is a defining moment for a people, for a nation.

We have reached that defining moment.

For the sake of ourselves and that of future generations, from whom we have only borrowed this stewardship, we must act as the conscience of our nation and our times.

EPILOGUE

5 September, 2005: Commentary from Other Sources during the Weekend - My friend in Rome, prompted by this tragedy and perhaps even some of our small efforts in this report, seems to have been on a search for the "real" New Orleans this weekend. She continues to send me varioius commentary. Here are a few snippets:

In the Sunday, 4 September edition of the New York Daily News, Errol Louis had this to write ("Why We Couldn't Save the People of New Orleans"):

In far too many cities, including New Orleans, the marching orders on the front lines of American race relations are to control and contain the very poor in ghettos as cheaply as possible; ignore them completely if possible; and call in the troops if the brutes get out of line.

By almost every statistical measure, New Orleans is a bad place to be poor. Half the city's households make less than $28,000 a year, and 28% of the population lives in poverty.

In the late 1990s, the state's school systems ranked dead last in the nation in the number of computers per student (1 per 88), and Louisiana has the nation's second-highest percentage of adults who never finished high school. By the state's own measure, 47% of the public schools in New Orleans rank as "academically unacceptable."

And Louisiana is the only one of the 50 states where the state legislature doesn't allocate money to pay for the legal defense of indigent defendants. The Associated Press reported this year that it's not unusual for poor people charged with crimes to stay in jail for nine months before getting a lawyer appointed.

These government failures are not merely a matter of incompetence. Louisiana and New Orleans have a long, well-known reputation for corruption: as former congressman Billy Tauzin once put it, "half of Louisiana is under water and the other half is under indictment."

That's putting it mildly. Adjusted for population size, the state ranks third in the number of elected officials convicted of crimes (Mississippi is No. 1). Recent scandals include the conviction of 14 state judges and an FBI raid on the business and personal files of a Louisiana congressman ...

... The rot included the New Orleans Police Department, which in the 1990s had the dubious distinction of being the nation's most corrupt police force and the least effective: the city had the highest murder rate in America. More than 50 officers were eventually convicted of crimes including murder, rape and robbery; two are currently on Death Row.

The decision to subject an entire population to poverty, ignorance, injustice and government corruption as a way of life has its ugly moments, as the world is now seeing. New Orleans officials issued an almost cynical evacuation order in a city where they know full well that thousands have no car, no money for airfare or an interstate bus, no credit cards for hotels, and therefore no way to leave town before the deadly storm and flood arrived ...

New Orleanian Anne Rice, a beloved American novelist for over three decades, weighed in from La Jolla, California, with a history lesson about the city of New Orleans and its proud Black community, the Irish and German immigrants who came there in the nineteenth century. And then she said a couple more things.

Almost as soon as the cameras began panning over the rooftops, and the helicopters began chopping free those trapped in their attics, a chorus of voices rose. "Why didn't they leave?" people asked both on and off camera. "Why did they stay there when they knew a storm was coming?" One reporter even asked me, "Why do people live in such a place?"

Then as conditions became unbearable, the looters took to the streets. Windows were smashed, jewelry snatched, stores broken open, water and food and televisions carried out by fierce and uninhibited crowds.

Now the voices grew even louder. How could these thieves loot and pillage in a time of such crisis? How could people shoot one another? Because the faces of those drowning and the faces of those looting were largely black faces, race came into the picture. What kind of people are these, the people of New Orleans, who stay in a city about to be flooded, and then turn on one another?

Well, here's an answer. Thousands didn't leave New Orleans because they couldn't leave. They didn't have the money. They didn't have the vehicles. They didn't have any place to go. They are the poor, black and white, who dwell in any city in great numbers; and they did what they felt they could do - they huddled together in the strongest houses they could find. There was no way to up and leave and check into the nearest Ramada Inn.

What's m ore, thousands more who could have left stayed behind to help others. They went out in the helicopters and pulled the survivors off rooftops; they went through the flooded streets in their boats trying to gather those they could find. Meanwhile, city officials tried desperately to alleviate the worsening conditions in the Superdome, while makeshift shelters and hotels and hospitals struggled.

And where was everyone else during all this? Oh, help is coming, New Orleans was told. We are a rich country. Congress is acting. Someone will come to stop the looting and care for the refugees. ...

... But to my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us "Sin City," and turned your backs.

Well, we are a lot more than all that. And though we may seem the most exotic, the most atmospheric and, at times, the most downtrodden part of this land, we are still part of it. We are Americans. We are you.

By now many Americans have seen the video of tearful Jefferson Parish President Broussard describing the final days of the mother of one of his colleagues helping with crisis management, his description of this poor old lady calling for five days to be rescued ... promised for five days that help was the way ... she passed away Friday night. No one ever came.

No food, no electricity, NOW the help is beginning to come ... too late for what New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said on CBS television's "60 Minutes" on Sunday, 4 September, 2005, would be thousands upon thousands of dead.

And almost immediately upon the completion of this series more comments flowed in from YOU, our readers. My thanks to all of you.

READER COMMENTS TO THE SERIES:

FROM Robert P., Montclair, NJ, USA:

Rod:

I can't help but observe that with Katrina we see the full dimensions of Bush's understanding of "sacrifice" as it manifests in all of his policies: Sacrifice is not to be asked of others, or shared; it is something that must be endured by those who simply can't get out of the way.

-- Bob

FROM Ric. W., Austin, TX, USA:

he is the minority now
we all see the nakedness
of the incompetence now
we all see the lies of security

they had four years to prepare for this
four years & three days notice
& a bullet 120-miles wide
& they did nothing

terrorists
could have
blown those levees
& then what would it be

the white folks in there
looting with the other Bush zombies
created by an administration that treated
the citizenry like the dead, looting their treasury

destroying their image throughout the world
American zombies & now the flesh rotting
in the streets of the Republican
built Southern third world

& it was an act of god
how deliciously ironic
that ripped the mask off
these despicable bastards

who have the temerity
to call themselves
leaders born
of a Christ

yeah, we don't have to bash
Bush's face in for it seems
the fist of god just got rammed
up his smirking chimp ass

sept 2

FROM Ed C., (No City Provided,) MI, USA:

What are the stages of accepting the death of something/someone you loved? Denial, Anger, Sadness, Acceptance?

For my money brother, the final healthy stage is?rememberance.? Unvarnished, unaltered, proud, humiliating?and bittersweet.? Acceptance is too often synonymous with forgetting -- bad shit happens when people forget the past.

Don't let?us forget.Please.

Love,
Uncle Eddy

FROM Alison Weir, Sausalito, CA, USA:

Wonderful reports, Rod. Hang in there, stay safe, and keep up your important work.

Peace,
alison

FROM Ngozi R-Z., Lagos, NIGERIA:

Dear Rod,

I have been down with malaria (it's an epidemic here), and was only able to get to a cyber cafe today to access my mail.? While recuperating at home, I was horrified to watch on CNN the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans and Mississipi, and all I kept saying to myself was, "Thank God Rod got out of that place."? I know this might sound very selfish when you consider the terrible damage there and the loss of lives, but the truth is that you are the only person I know who ever lived there.? I'm so sorry this happened, but I'm glad you're alive and safe. Please re-assure me in your reply that where you live now isn't along the Gulf of Mexico.

Have a good week ahead. ?

Regards,
Ngozi.

---

I spoke to Matt, who is now in Kentucky, on Saturday afternoon. He told me that, like most cell phone users from the 504 area code, he can call out but no one can reach him. So many of these know less about what's going on at their homes than those of us outside. Matt commented that I managed to learn more about our friends from New Orleans than he. Meanwhile, the unremitting drumbeat of misery continues.

Reports seem to assert that there a more military personnel on the ground to maintain order than there are to rescue or relieve people. They have assault rifes, all right, but not water or ice in one of the hottest cities in the nation. As Mr. Louis asserts, "control and contain" the "brutes."

New Orleans continues to die for Iraq and America has reached a defining moment.