Reflecting on Hurricane Katrina

A year after the levees collapsed, it still hurts to remember how our government failed the people of Louisiana and Mississippi. More painful is seeing how little has been done to repair the damage and bring the victims of Hurricane Katrina back home. According to an article in today’s Washington Post, “thousands of displaced people continue to live in trailers, and federal money is only beginning to trickle down to individuals and businesses” in Biloxi, Mississippi. Despite the allocation of more than $110 billion of federal money for Gulf Coast reconstruction, “less than half of that has actually been spent…and local officials in Mississippi and Louisiana have been complaining about red tape slowing the flow of funds for housing and small businesses.” Given that the official doctrine of the Bush administration has been to “leave no crony behind,” maybe it would make more sense to give that money directly to Katrina’s victims, and let them take control over rebuilding their homes and communities.

The article notes that President Bush’s “carefully scripted” visit to Biloxi “left little possibility of the president encountering much anger over the federal reconstruction efforts.” This latest spectacle echoed his visit a year ago to New Orleans, when he vowed to address the underlying issues of poverty that led to so many being left to fend for themselves in desperate circumstances. As Naomi Klein wrote for The Nation, "One year ago, New Orleans's working-class and poor citizens were stranded on their rooftops waiting for help that never came, while those who could pay their way escaped to safety....Unless a radical change of course is demanded, New Orleans will prove to be a glimpse of a dystopic future, a future of disaster apartheid in which the wealthy are saved and everyone else is left behind."

Like the promised reconstruction of the Gulf Region, President Bush's commitment to confront the economic inequality that contributed to this disaster also appears to have lost momentum. Data from the Census Bureau indicate the income gap between the rich and poor has widened, and a higher percentage of poor people are living in "deep poverty" (that's an income of $7,800 for a family of 3) now than at any point in the last 30 years.

To learn more about issues of race and class, both in the context of Hurricane Katrina and the US in general, see the summary prepared by the Leadership Council on Civic Rights Education Fund.