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Hurricane Katrina was exacerbated by bonkers priorities on the part of the US Government. Having the national guard protecting property in the middle of a disas
by komali2 7y ago
Hurricane Katrina was exacerbated by bonkers priorities on the part of the US Government. Having the national guard protecting property in the middle of a disaster where people were dying from the elements was the peak of capitalist insanity. They were threatening to shoot looters. Madness. As if a life is worth less than some business owner's television set.
Not to mention locking everyone in a stadium and threatening to shoot anybody that tried to walk across the bridge. I tried to find a video I saw once of a newscaster live at the superdome begging for the government to let people evacuate, about how conditions at the superdome were fucked.
People generally help eachother during disasters - then the national guard comes in, treats everyone like they're animals, and make everything horrible. A great book that's documented this happening again and again throughout history is "A Paradise Built in Hell" by Rebecca Solnit.
- vajrabum 7y agoThe national guard is not the US gov't. That's the state of Louisiana. Those troops report to the governor.
- selimthegrim 7y agoWho incidentally just passed away, bless her ‘locked and loaded’, ‘shoot to kill’, “Wake up Louisiana before it ‘s too late (to elect a ‘n_____’ like Bobby Jindal)” heart
- selimthegrim 7y agoWhoever flagged me should know those were all real quotes from Blanco. (Just watch that campaign ad or footage of her immediately after the storm)
- selimthegrim 7y agoThe people blocking the bridge were the (ur-fascist) Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office and the (fascist) Gretna Police Department. It should be mentioned that the nearby Oakwood Mall was in the process of burning down due to fires set by looters (that still being no excuse)
- munificent 7y ago> Having the national guard protecting property in the middle of a disaster where people were dying from the elements was the peak of capitalist insanity. Calling it like it is: this was mostly about white people protecting their personal interests at the expense of black people. Many of the people making those decisions cared more about their property than they did poor black folks. After all, only a couple of generations ago, many of those people owned black people as property. Note: > Fifty-three percent of deaths 51% were black; and 42% were white. In Orleans Parish, the mortality rate among blacks was 1.7 to 4 times higher than that among whites for all people 18 years old and older. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18756175 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18756175