On the Ground in the Hurricane Zone
Revolution #015, September 25, 2005, posted at revcom.us
A Revolution correspondent submitted this report based on interviews and observations made in Louisiana.
One late evening in Baton Rouge I sat, as the sun set over the broad Mississippi, talking to BHD, a woman who had escaped from New Orleans.
BHD was telling me that I needed to get right with Yahweh. And I was sharing the DVD sampler of a talk by Bob Avakian that makes the atheist argument in a deep way.
An outdoor church service was going on nearby. In fact it was going on more-or-less continuously outside the main center for evacuees. And I realized that, despite her personal belief in god, she was thinking about the local preachers with a lot of anger and bitterness.
She told me how she and her boyfriend had been staying in a nearby temporary shelter at a local church run by some conservative Baptists.
"I was riding the bus the other day and this lady said, ’You from New Orleans?’ And I said ’Yes,’ but before I knew what was happening I had tears in my eyes. I’m just trying to get through this reality. And it’s sinking in to me that there’s no more New Orleans.
"My daddy said to me a long time ago that ’New Orleans is a swamp, and if they don’t do something about it we’re going to have trouble like we never seen.’ I think about my mother, who I buried just a year ago, her casket floating down Airline. I’m feeling a lot of things now. People think I’m depressed, and maybe I am. But I’m mad now.
"I’d like to ask Mr. Bush, what is wrong with Baton Rouge? And what is supposed to be wrong with the people from New Orleans? Why are we not getting the assistance we need? Why were people left to die? What the hell is going on? Why are we an hour away from where this storm hit, being ate up every night, wearing somebody else’s clothes, living like hobos. It’s not my fault, it’s not our fault. I may not know how to read or write that well, but I’d gotten my life together. And now it’s gone.
"I’m speaking from my heart. You know how long this has been in my heart?
"Me and my boyfriend were watching the news the other day here in Baton Rouge. And I got mad. My boyfriend said, ’You see how that cop’s looking at you?’ But you know what, we’re not scared. OK?
"Everybody wants to blame Bush, but why can’t nobody just get the job done? Why can’t he get the job done? Why can’t we get back on our feet again? This is all just going to keep getting worse around here, people with all these children and these families. I’d say to Bush, you just don’t care? Or what?!
“These people around this church here got a nasty attitude. They look at you, know you’re from New Orleans and they think you’re dirt. I don’t like it. None of us like it.”
*****
Baton Rouge is only 50 miles north of New Orleans — but it is a conservative town, deeply marked by the racist history of the plantation South, and a place where some people are deeply suspicious of New Orleans, and especially its Black people.
After the flood, Baton Rouge doubled in size overnight. Thousands of evacuees poured in. There were many people from the town who opened their homes and communities to those fleeing the flood.
But at the same time, the air was crackling with racist rumors about robberies and crime. Local gun stores sold out.
And there has been hostile talk that the evacuees are not welcome. That their kids should not be allowed into local schools. That they should not be allowed to stay and settle in. That the presence of all these Black, poor, desperate, broke, uprooted people might change Baton Rouge forever.
And these tensions have escalated as reports have emerged that the poor districts of New Orleans might be bulldozed forever—that when this city is finally rebuilt it may not have a place for many of those at the bottom.
There is already a sense among the people in the shelters that no matter where they go they will now be made unwelcome—and that they are being demonized as dangerous, a problem, and as even sinners who were targetted and punished by god.
*****
BHD told me:
"I’m from Carrollton, and the canal there flooded real bad. And now I’m here, and don’t know when I’m going back. I’ll tell you one thing, if that had been a city full of half a million white people, they wouldn’t have let it drown. Hell no!
"Let’s get this together. Let’s get the water out of New Orleans. Let’s get people jobs and a roof over their head. Just get us all so we can start living again and start doing the things that people do.
"My boyfriend was saying—maybe you think it sounds crazy, but with what’s going on in the world today you never know— he said they’re trying to get all the Black people out of New Orleans.
"This man in the church wants to relocate us away from New Orleans. We said we want to go back and he got mad. My boyfriend is finding out about work in New Orleans. He’s a carpenter, and that’s our home.
"This man in the church says they’re going to get all the Black people out—he used another word for us! When they do decide to build New Orleans back up, we’re not going to be able to get back in there.
"I know it sounds crazy, but you never know what they’ll do. Look at slave times, what they did then. It ain’t that much different, really, what they’re doing to Black people now.
"I can’t believe that these people in Baton Rouge still have so much prejudice in their hearts. I’m not talking about everybody, but about these people who say they’re looking after us. It’s a church! They ignore us when we speak, and ignore what we’re going through. They laugh in your face! They think I’m a foolish woman and I should ’be grateful.’
"I get mad and humiliated—and all the time them acting like they’re such ’good Christians’! They doing it for themselves, not for us. Some of them are no different than the cops and soldiers they got all over here, except they want you to pray with them too.
"I don’t need to be praying with them.
"I’m scared I’m gonna get put on the street, but I’m tired of being treated like I’m some dog. I don’t need them praying over me.
“The governor told us all to pray, and I do pray. But we need a hell of a lot more than that now.”