Katrina: Left to die in prison cells?

More shock and awe in the wake of Katrina ...

First the shock. In the days of Hurricane Katrina and the immediate aftermath, inmates in the Orleans Parish Prison compound were left locked in cells, with no food, water, or sanitation, for days.

Some were locked in ground level cells as water rose to chest level, or higher, while fellow inmates worked desperately against time to pry open locked cells and free them from drowning. Prison officials and guards had long since deserted.

This is according to a report issued by Human Rights Watch, based on interviews with dozens of inmates, some of whom were later evacuated to a bridge (where they waited for days, also without food or water) and then to elsewhere in the region.

Hundreds of inmates are still not accounted for, and many of the witnesses believe that inmates died during those days locked in cells. Human Rights Watch is calling for a Justice Department investigation. This jail is a holding facility for inmates accused of minor crimes, many of whom have not yet seen a judge or been convicted of anything.

If these accounts turn out to be true, and people died as a result, is there any reason authorities should not be charged with murder?

Why haven't you heard about this in the corporate press? If eyewitness stories by dozens of inmates isn't enough to suggest there is a story worth investigating, what does it take? Alternet picked up the Democracy Now! report on this report, and Progressive Review, had a story as did some British publications. But why the silence from the US "mainstream" media?

[UPDATE: A friend just alerted me that today's New York Times does indeed have an editorial calling for an investigation.]

In other post-Katrina news, Alternet has issued a timeline of what happened to lead up to Katrina.

And here's a story of awe -- the good kind. Bruce Dixon, associate editor of the Black Commentator reports that when ex-felons, church folks, and other southern activists realized that FEMA and the Red Cross were ignoring hard-hit, poor and predominantly African-American communities in the Gulf Coast region, they took matters into their own hands. They dug deep in their own pockets, borrowed vans, pleaded for donations, and began supplying hungry and displaced people with food, shelter, and in some cases, evacuation.

In another sign of grassroots action, Michael Kozart tells the story of the Common Ground clinic, founded by former Black Panther member and Green Party city council candidate Malik Rahim, who acted in response to the desperate need of those left behind in the neighborhood of Algiers. You can find Kozart's account of working for a week in the clinic on Alternet.

New Orleans: who decides?

The people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are facing yet another disaster. Instead of rebuilding areas devastated by the hurricane with local companies, local jobs, and with oversight of the people who will live in the rebuilt towns and cities, large corporations and big federal contactors are having their way with the region. And some in Washington are using the catastrophe to waive federal protections of all sorts.

Some of the issues are already clear. Who will get the jobs created by the clean up and rebuilding -- outsiders or local residents? Is there a good reason to pay below prevailing wages as the recent decision to waive the Davis-Bacon Act allows? Why not pay local people well, so they can use their wages to rebuild their own homes and lives, and jump-start a staggering local economy?

What about environmental clean up -- as the toxic stew recedes, how clean will the clean up be?

Who will the city of New Orleans be rebuilt for? Will it be a mecca for tourists who want to enjoy the booze, jazz and exotic night life. Will there be room for the poor people who had once called New Orleans their home (and out of whose neighborhoods came the rich culture that makes the city so famous)? There are already signs of a real estate boom in the region, and we know who gets left out when that happens.

There's also the question of how to rebuild safe and green.

The biggest question that may answer all the others is who decides? While many New Orleanians have been busy putting their families and their lives back together, decisions are being made that will determine the direction of the city for decades to come.

Fortunately, some grassroots groups have organized quickly to begin to make the voices of evacuees and the people of the Gulf Coast heard.

Katrina Information Network is a brand new clearinghouse for action and information on a "real action for real relief, a just recovery, and nothing less." This is a great place to get involved and find out what's going on.

The Community Labor United is convening groups, local and national, to make sure the people in the affected areas have a say about the rebuilding, whether they are temporarily displaced or still in their homes.

The New Orleans Network is helping evacuees get in touch with each others from their neighborhood, and with other evacuees currently living nearby. They are also highlighting questions and discussion about the future of New Orleans.

Kanye West, you may remember, was the hip hop artist who departed from his prepared script on NBC to say what many had been thinking: George Bush doesn't care about black people. Kayne was Right (also called the colorofchange) is asking 250,000 African Americans and their allies to sign a pledge that they will never again allow brothers and sisters to be abandoned.

Other groups working to support evacuees include Food Not Bombs, which is finding ways to get food and supplies into shelters and to evacuees -- despite FEMA.

Moveon has been linking up evacuees looking for housing with people offering housing.

The Tides Foundation has links to a number of social justice groups working to address the immediate needs and the long-term rebuilding in the region.

This could be a long struggle for the future of the region.

Those of us not in the region can support the people and organizations who will have the long, hard work of rebuilding the Gulf Coast, making sure they have justice, a say in what happens, and the resources they need.

End the occupation

The big mobilization against the war is scheduled for this weekend. United for Peace and Justice is adding a call for justice for the people of the Gulf Coast to their call for an end to the occupation of Iraq.

If you can't get to Washington, D.C., cities and towns from St. Augustine, Florida to Amartillo, Texas, to Anchorage, Alaska are holding rallies. See the calendar at United for Peace and Justice for a listing of some of them. If you don't want to go to a rally, write a letter to the newspaper. Or gather a few friends and hold a sign by the highway. Or call in to a radio talk show. And talk to your representative.

We may not be able to stop hurricanes, but we can stop the disastrous occupation of Iraq taking place in our names with our tax dollars.

Not sure how we can extract ourself from the mess our invasion created in Iraq? Here's a six-part plan published in the Fall 2005 issue of YES!

A community-based "no regrets" strategy for survival

The following is a talk I gave at the Sustainable Ballard street fair in Seattle on Sunday. I promised to post it along with links, so here it is -- for folks in Ballard or anyone interested in making their community more sustainable.

This is a good time to be having this community gathering. It is a time when we need to come together while so much is falling apart. If there is one thing we should now understand in this post-Katrina world, it is that there is no security except the security we offer to each other.

We can be sure that there will be more disasters, big and small. What we don’t know is if the suffering will fall to certain families and communities while business as usual continues, or whether there be system-wide breakdowns.

Whatever happens, there is nothing else that can take the place of community when things get really bad. Not money, which can turn worthless. Not possessions which are easily lost or stolen. Only other people, working together, can get us through. But by the time things get really bad, it is late to start building community and harder to find the resources. The time to start is now.

So how do you do that? How do you build meaningful relationships and start implementing the great innovations that could form into a sustainable community? Especially, how do you find time and resources when everyone is so busy, and so many are stretched financially?

What I’ve found as a community activist and an observer of successful community activism is that most people get involved in something because it meets a need, whether for housing, food, or child care or a sense of belonging.

A second principle is that everyone has something to offer and giving is as important to well-being as taking – perhaps more so.

A third is we should begin at a scale at which there can be some immediate successes or accomplishments.

So let me offer some examples of innovations that meet people’s needs, give everyone an opportunity to contribute, and can be accomplished immediately. Many of these examples are found in stories in YES! magazine (links are included below).

You can start pea patches or community gardens, to give people fresh, safe food, an opportunity to be outside with friends and neighbors, a cut in food expenses. This also raises awareness about the difference between fresh and corporate food, and begins building a survival infrastructure.

Canning or drying food together in a church kitchen or someone’s home. Extend the harvest season. Celebrate the harvest together.

Lots of parents with young kids struggling to make it? How about a baby sitting co-op. Maybe a clothes/toy exchange for hand-me-downs. Form a parents group to take kids into natural settings where they can learn to love nature, and support each other in taking our kids out of the over-scheduled treadmill.

A tool bank cuts expenses and encourages people to learn self-reliance skills. Lending tools naturally morphs into helping each other with household or neighborhood improvement projects, like Portland City Repair.

Are you fired up about the great projects you’ve seen here at the Sustainable Ballard street fair, but don’t have the money to install a solar panel or weatherize your home? Some communities have formed revolving loan or joint savings systems. Each person contributes a certain amount each month, and then they take turns drawing out funds for sustainability projects. It’s extra fun to install rainwater harvesting system or retrofit for passive solar when you can share your accomplishment with your friends and when you can help them finance their next innovation.

Hold a monthly pot luck so people can share information about the new innovations.

A neighborhood website can list community events, and people can post things they’d like to offer or things they need.

Those are relatively easy places to begin. What if you’re ready to take the next step?

How about a free clinic for people without health insurance – a regular time when doctors, nurses, dentists, complementary health practitioners volunteer their time.

How about local currencies or Time Dollars, a system in which your contributions to a neighbor are counted, by the hour, and you can then later “spend” those hours by calling on another neighbor. Perhaps the medical professionals who volunteer at the free clinic could be paid in time dollars. Everyone has something to offer, whether it is delivering groceries to a home-bound elder or reading to a child after school. Time dollars helps to unleash this hidden wealth.

In addition to the pea patches, you can begin urban farms, organized as community supported agriculture, so each person who joins “subscribes” to a share of the farm’s produce. Or form such a relationship with outlying farms. And start a farmers market if you don’t already have one, with art, hand-crafted soaps, foods, and gifts. Maybe you can pay part of the cost with Time Dollars.

How about a senior center that also houses a day care center, and a youth center. How about developing internships and mentoring for youth. Get donations of slightly used computers and other electronics from businesses who are upgrading, and let young people use Time Dollars to pay for them.

Begin radio programs for the community, either through a low-power FM station or by streaming on your website.

Okay, it’s getting greener! Ready for the advanced list?

Start your own bank or credit union. A bank is better. Loan money to local living economy business ventures, to help people burdened by excessive high-interest debt, and for purchasing homes.

Start a local land trust so land can be taken out of the speculative market and be permanently affordable.

Develop cohousing for families, seniors, multi-generations.

Launch an integrated food system, like the one in Burlington, Vermont, where the waste heat from a power plant warms greenhouses that produce food year-round. The food is processed by one of a number of businesses that make use of a business incubator facility – that is a facility with health-department approved kitchens where would-be business owners can try out their salsa recipe or their favorite soups.

Start a restaurant owned by local people that features great, local food, conversation cafes, music events, study trips, speakers.

Did you notice -- none of these require a change in the power structure in Washington, DC. All of these are things we have the power to do, in our own communities, to meet our needs.

We’ve allowed the cash economy – the corporate economy – to take over too much of our lives. When we are dependent on a corporate employer, a corporate chain store, the corporate media, we lose our independence. Everything is oriented around the short-term bottom line, and pretty soon, we can’t even imagine that there is anything more to life than working and consuming. We lose the creative space in which we can make a life that is sustainable, filled with joy, and meets our needs as individuals and as a community. We need to move more and more of our lives out from under the corporate banner and into liberated spaces that we create ourselves.

We need these liberated places to find out what we’re made of and what is possible. And we need community and the infrastructure of community to get us through hard times and to fully relish the good times.

Is there anything more satisfying than offering our gifts to others in our communities who appreciate them? And is there any form of security more meaningful than knowing that your friends and neighbors have your back?

In a time of unraveling, we also need to understand the big picture. Things are unraveling because they are not sustainable. We are reaching the limits of the Empire Era of human history. We can no longer base our economies on over-exploitation of the natural world, the use of military force to enforce our access to other people’s resources, the use of our society’s considerable clout to further concentrate wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands. These things, and the values of materialism and selfishness that go with them, cannot continue.

The kind of transition we’re in creates tremendous stress. Those who can’t see that there is another way, fall into a nihilist trap and believe the world is ending. The enormous popularity of the apocalyptic Left Behind novels is a sign of this obsession with end times.

But a new era is being born, and all that you’ve seen today at the Sustainable Ballard Fair is part of its struggle to be born. With that, I’d like to thank you all for being here. No one is going to do this work for us. All of us are among the millions of mid-wives of a new era.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Chavez offers cheap oil to America's poor

Maybe he is taking a page from the New Testament and wants to help the poor. Maybe he just wants to show up a certain Christian minister who called for his assassination. Or perhaps he can't stomach the high profits US oil companies are making in the wake of post-Katrina gas hikes.

For whatever reason, Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela and thorn-in-the-side of the Bush administration, is planning to sell gas and heating oil at below market prices to poor people in the United States.

In an interview with Juan Gonzalez of the New York Daily News and Democracy Now, Chavez said he will begin by offering cut-price oil in a Mexican-American community in Chicago next month. Then expand the program to the South Bronx and Boston.

Citgo Petroleum Corp. is a subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., so Chavez has the infrastructure in place to make good on his promise. And the need will be great this winter with high prices for heating oil.

But he also had advice for Americans about our oil consumption. "Americans must reorder their style of life" because "this planet cannot sustain" our "irrational" consumption, especially when it comes to oil, Gonzalez quotes Chavez as saying.

The Center for American Progress is also calling for action to deal with this oil crisis, and last week issued a proposal to address wasteful patterns of energy use. See also last year's YES! issue: Can We Live Without Oil?

What you can do in the wake of Katrina

If there is any silver lining to this tragedy it will be if it reawakens the spirit that, at times, makes this a great country.

Help will be needed for weeks and months to come. Here are some ideas for how you can get involved. We'll be adding links and updates as we find them. Please add your own as comments.

1) Adopt a sister-faith group. Have your church/synagogue/meditation group/mosque adopt a sister faith group in the stricken area. Help with rebuilding, hosting hurricane victims, sending clothes, supplies as requested. Invite those displaced or needing respite from your sister faith group to visit or stay.

2) Adopt a sister school in the stricken area. Listen to the stories of the kids who survived the hurricane, form pen pal relationships among students, help supply your sister school with needed materials and funds. Open school enrollment to kids who need to leave the area, or already have.

3) Form a local welcome group to help evacuees in your community meet their immediate needs and feel at home. By inviting these guests to community events and into homes, churches, schools, civic events, you can prevent the displaced from becoming isolated and help them regain a normal life.

4) Hold a community fundraiser; you could even feature New Orleans jazz and cuisine (invite bands displaced by Katrina to perform!).

5) Pledge a portion of your income or your business profits for the year to Katrina victims. Those businesses making unusual profits as a result of the hurricane could allocate their entire windfall profit to hurricane relief.

6) Support grassroots organizations who can do the long-term rebuilding and are controlled by the people affected at a time when they badly need to re-take control of their lives. Community Labor United, a coalition of progressive organizations from New Orleans, is setting up a New Orleans People's Committee, to be made up of representatives from all the shelters. The Committee is calling for a voice for evacuees in immediate assistance efforts and in the long-term rebuilding.

7) Offer your time and skills in data entry, in computer systems, medicine, auto mechanics, grief and trauma counseling, carpentry, job training to people in recovery – either in stricken areas or among the evacuees who may be in your community. If you were in the Peace Corps, you can re-enter for 3-6 months as part of the Crisis Corps.

8) Get off oil. Sell your SUV; drive less; weatherize your home; switch to green electricity. You can save money, and every pound of carbon you save is a one less pound contributing to climate disruption and future monster storms.

9) Give blood.

10) Demand a full independent investigation into why federal preparation and response failed so miserably, and why law enforcement turned on victims of the storm instead of protecting them. And tell President Bush and the right-wing message machine to stop blaming the victims!

11) Bring home the troops. Americans are coming together around the understanding that we need to end the war in Iraq and we need our national guard and our resources to rebuild the Gulf Coast.

11) Celebrate the ordinary people and government officials who acted heroically during and after the storm to save lives.

The hurricane and its aftermath lifted the veil on US society. All the world could see the results of policies and decisions that allowed ordinary people, especially the poor, black, disabled, and elderly, to be abandoned to the fury of the storm, the flood waters, and law enforcement bent on protecting goods at the expense of human lives.

But there are many stories also of ordinary people who, despite dangers or inconvenience, helped each other. Many of these stories are still unfolding -- you may already be part of one ...


Please post your ideas for what people can do and links to useful websites below as comments.

Can you hate government and still protect Americans?

I am outraged and deeply shamed that so many of our fellow citizens were allowed to suffer and die in the extended aftermath of Katrina.

As I listen to the news, I hear story after story of heroic efforts among leaders of local government, school principals, and state government, many of whom were and still are utterly overwhelmed by the disaster. And the question that keeps coming up is where is the federal government? Where is FEMA?

When the head of a government runs on a platform of hating government, some of the outcomes are predictable, in kind if not in specifics.

If you hate government, you use government to reward your friends and cronies through tax breaks and padded contracts, and you use political appointments to reward supporters.

If you hate government, you can't distinguish between competence and incompetence, between providing real services to citizens and building a media facade.

FEMA used to get the job done. The federal government used to be there when major disasters struck. That is one of the reasons it is so shocking to see its complete incompetence in the wake of Katrina. Can any community feel safe now?

One other group, besides government, that the Bush administration shows disdain for -- scientists. Scientists have been telling us: hurricanes of this magnitude are an expected result of climate change. Warnings about eliminating barrier wetlands have been falling on deaf ears for years. Specific warnings about the threat to New Orleans are well reported.

The Bush administration strategy of creating their own reality, is being shown for what it is -- criminal neglect of the security of Americans. Even our allies around the world, who already had serious doubts about current U.S. leadership, are stunned by news out of the Gulf Coast.

The following is a chronology of how government-hating ideology corrupted the ability of the federal government to respond to a disaster by Kevin Drum from his blog in the Washington Monthly. (I added a few links) (Note, this piece has been mistakenly attributed to Professor Henry Breitrose, of Stanford University, by several people, including me.)

CHRONOLOGY: Here's a timeline that outlines the fate of both FEMA and flood control projects in New Orleans under the Bush administration. Read it and weep:

• January 2001: Bush appoints Joe Allbaugh, a crony from Texas, as head of FEMA. Allbaugh has no previous experience in disaster management.

• April 2001: Budget Director Mitch Daniels announces the Bush administration's goal of privatizing much of FEMA's work. In May, Allbaugh confirms that FEMA will be downsized: "Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program...." he said. "Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level."

• 2001: FEMA designates a major hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of the three "likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country."

• December 2002: After less than two years at FEMA, Allbaugh announces he is leaving to start up a consulting firm that advises companies seeking to do business in Iraq. He is succeeded by his deputy, Michael Brown, who, like Allbaugh, has no previous experience in disaster management.

• March 2003: FEMA is downgraded from a cabinet level position and folded into the Department of Homeland Security. Its mission is refocused on fighting acts of terrorism.

• 2003: Under its new organization chart within DHS, FEMA's preparation and planning functions are reassigned to a new Office of Preparedness and Response. FEMA will henceforth focus only on response and recovery.

• Summer 2004: FEMA denies Louisiana's pre-disaster mitigation funding requests. Says Jefferson Parish flood zone manager Tom Rodrigue: "You would think we would get maximum consideration....This is what the grant program called for. We were more than qualified for it."

• June 2004: The Army Corps of Engineers budget for levee construction in New Orleans is slashed. Jefferson Parish emergency management chiefs Walter Maestri comments: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay."

• June 2005: Funding for the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is cut by a record $71.2 million. One of the hardest-hit areas is the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which was created after the May 1995 flood to improve drainage in Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany parishes.

• August 2005: While New Orleans is undergoing a slow motion catastrophe, Bush mugs for the cameras, cuts a cake for John McCain, plays the guitar for Mark Wills, delivers an address about V-J day, and continues with his vacation. When he finally gets around to acknowledging the scope of the unfolding disaster, he delivers only a photo op on Air Force One and a flat, defensive, laundry list speech in the Rose Garden.

Kevin Drum sums it up: A crony with no relevant experience was installed as head of FEMA. Mitigation budgets for New Orleans were slashed even though it was known to be one of the top three risks in the country. FEMA was deliberately downsized as part of the Bush administration's conservative agenda to reduce the role of government. After DHS was created, FEMA's preparation and planning functions were taken away.

Actions have consequences. No one could predict that a hurricane the size of Katrina would hit this year, but the slow federal response when it did happen was no accident. It was the result of four years of deliberate Republican policy and budget choices that favor ideology and partisan loyalty at the expense of operational competence. It's the Bush administration in a nutshell.

Support for Gulf Coast African Americans

A YES! board member forwarded me news that the 21st Century Foundation, a national fund with a 35-year track record of work by and for the African American community, has set up a special Hurricane Katrina Recovery Fund.

Many of the destitute people in the region are black, and many of them would have left New Orleans if they had had the resources -- or if someone had thought to provide emergency evacuation buses, vouchers for gas, or shelters out of harms way.

You've seen the images and the unspoken message that the victims, especially the black victims, of this disaster are somehow to blame. Yahoo News captions labeled a black youth wading through chest-high water with food a "looter," while two white youth, also wading through chest-high water with food, had simply managed to "find" food.

Supporting a fund that puts African Americans in charge of their own rebuilding could help with another dimension of the healing that will be needed after the waters recede and the debris is cleared away.

P.S. Some people have been adding other great suggestions for funds to support as comments to my previous post. Check them out and feel free to add your own.