anniversary of the Gulf Coast hurricanes

We're listening to voices on the radio talk about class warfare erasing the working poor from New Orleans today, bleaching Bourbon Street into a souless tourist trap with new knick-knacks ready to be swept away in the next storms...

One year ago, I sat at this computer and transcribed the following passage from This American Life. This is the kind of poetic moment that makes me freeze and focus on absorbing it completely.



New Orleans Convention Center, Row H
In the aftermath of Katrina


Then the story became, “They left us here to die. The National Guard is here to kill us.”

Talk about - there were men, just kind of like, roaming with guns, packs of men …

They were securing the area. Criminals, these guys were criminals, they were.
But somehow they got together, figured out who had guns, and decided they were going to make sure that no women were getting raped,
because we did hear about the women getting raped in the Superdome, that no one was hurting babies, and nobody was hurting these old people.

They were the ones getting juice for the babies.

They were the ones getting clothes for people who had walked through that water.

They were the ones fanning the old people.

Because that’s what moved the gangster guys the most, the plight of the old people. That’s what haunted me the most, seeing those old people sitting in them chairs and not being able to get up and walk around or nothing.

They started looting on St. Charles and there was a Rite Aid there,
and you know, you would think that they’d be stealing fun stuff or whatever because it’s a free city or whatever according to them, right?

But they were taking Juice for the babies,
Water,
Beer for the older people,
Food,
Raincoats, so that so they could all be seen, you know, by each other and stuff.

I thought it was very cool and very well organized.

… exactly like Robin Hood. And that’s why I got so mad, because they’re calling these guys animals. These guys. That’s what got to me. Because I know what they did.

I saw what they did.

You know, I never had a real high opinion of thugs myself, but I tell you one thing: I’ll never look at them the same way again.


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Denise Moore being interviewed by Ira Glass for This American Life, WBEZ Chicago, distributed by PRI Public Radio International. Aired 9-11-05
image from gov site