Lose New Orleans

Annie Rice wrote in NYT Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans? - What do people really know about New Orleans? Do they take away with them an awareness that it has always been not only a great white metropolis but also a great black city, a city where African-Americans have come together again and again to form the strongest African-American culture in the land?

A culture in which blacks with cars followed the manditory evacuation orders and left the city, but did not take less affluent blacks lacking transportation with them. And in which a Black mayor had 364 buses owned by the New Orleans public transit or the 205 buses owned by the New Orleans school system at his disposal with which he could have evacuated those without transportation, and instead he just sat in his new offices in a hotel that was not flooded, sent the tourists staying in that hotel to the front of the line at the Superdome to get out of town on buses provided by the Federal Government, and just sat by crying and complaining the Federal Government was not doing enough, quickly enough.

Why did the people of New Orleans elect him? Was it not his job to do all he could to protect his citizens?

.... Now nature has done what the Civil War couldn't do. Nature has done what the labor riots of the 1920's couldn't do. Nature had done what "modern life" with its relentless pursuit of efficiency couldn't do. It has done what racism couldn't do, and what segregation couldn't do either. Nature has laid the city waste - with a scope that brings to mind the end of Pompeii

A city which was not rebuilt after it's disaster, and New Orleans should not either, at least not in the same place

..... I share this history for a reason - and to answer questions that have arisen these last few days. 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.

Water and food is understandable. Televisions, jewelry, and guns were just taken by thieves.

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.

And they had a Black mayor with had 364 buses owned by the New Orleans public transit or the 205 buses owned by the New Orleans school system at his disposal who did NOTHING with them.

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 more, thousands more who could have left stayed behind to help others. They went out in the helicopters and pulled the survivors off rooftops;

So they had helicopters, but not 569 buses?

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

How did they try to help? Did they send the people out on the 569 buses? Did they bring PortaPotties in so the place would not turn into the disaster it did?

, 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. And it's true: eventually, help did come. But how many times did Gov. Kathleen Blanco have to say that the situation was desperate?

How many times did she call for aid? Her letter of 8/28 asked for a declaration which was issued the next day, and help with debris removal. She then asked on 9/2 for troops, that arrived the same day.

How many times did Mayor Ray Nagin have to call for aid?

Did he do all he could with the resources he had at his disposal, or did he just expect the Federal government to come in when State and Local governments did little or nothing to help themselves?

Why did America ask a city cherished by millions and excoriated by some, but ignored by no one, to fight for its own life for so long? That's my question.

Natasha @PacificViews blogged Anne Rice writes in the New York Times about what it means to lose New Orleans.

Arthur Silber blogged Given the prominence of New Orleans as the setting for many of her novels, I assumed Anne Rice would have a few things to say about this week’s events. And so she does