Oh, Orleans Parish Prison - They Left Us Here to Die

"Well have you seen my green eyed son
He shot a man down with a sort of gun
And they found him down by the ponchartrain
Where they cuffed his hands with a big iron chain
Orleans Parish Prison won't you free my green eyed son
I heard him say as they led him away sorry for what he's done
Orleans Parish Prison won't you free my green eyed son."

ORLEANS PARISH PRISON (Dick Feller), sung by Johnny Cash

ACLU Seeks Information on the Fate of 6,500 New Orleans Prisoners

Locked Prisoners Were Abandoned by Guards When Katrina Struck; More Than 500 Missing

"According to the ACLU, the Orleans Parish Prison fell into chaos in the five days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans on August 29. As the water rose in the prison buildings, deputies deserted en masse, leaving behind prisoners in locked cells. Prisoners broke windows and either leapt out or set fire to pieces of clothing and held them outside the windows to signal to rescuers. The prisoners spent days without power, food or water, some standing in sewage-tainted water up to their chests or necks. " (from ACLU press release, NY - Oct 6, 2005)
http://www.aclu.org/Prisons/Prisons.cfm?ID=19225&c=121

According to inmates interviewed by Human Rights Watch, they had no food or water from the inmate’s last meal over the weekend of August 27-28 until they were evacuated on Thursday, September 1. By Monday, August 29, the generators had died, leaving them without lights and sealed in without air circulation. The toilets backed up, creating an unbearable stench.

“They left us to die there,” Dan Bright, an Orleans Parish Prison inmate told Human Rights Watch at Rapides Parish Prison, where he was sent after the evacuation.

As the water began rising on the first floor, prisoners became anxious and then desperate. Some of the inmates were able to force open their cell doors, helped by inmates held in the common area. All of them, however, remained trapped in the locked facility.

“The water started rising, it was getting to here,” said Earrand Kelly, an inmate from Templeman III, as he pointed at his neck. “We was calling down to the guys in the cells under us, talking to them every couple of minutes. They were crying, they were scared. The one that I was cool with, he was saying ‘I'm scared. I feel like I'm about to drown.' He was crying.”

The ACLU of Louisiana joined the ACLU National Prison Project in filing official requests last month to determine if prisoners were abandoned to die in the Orleans Parish Prison during and after Hurricane Katrina, and for further details on the prisoner evacuation plan. (from http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0923-01.htm)

Orleans Parish Prison is the ninth largest in the country, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Under the terms of a longstanding class action lawsuit over prison conditions, the ACLU has acted as counsel for the more than 6,500 OPP prisoners since 1989. In that capacity, the ACLU has sought to enforce court orders regarding the medical and mental health and environmental conditions of the prisoners.
(from http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0928-14.htm)

More on this story: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/27/1433256

Marty ignored. Did he forget to make a reservation?

photo from http://hsgac.senate.gov/_files/102005HrgExhibits.pdf

Marty Bahamonde is a FEMA official from Boston who was caught in New Orleans when Katrina hit. The NY Times just printed a record of the emails exchanged between Bahamonde and various other FEMA officials.

They can be read at http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/20051022_FEMA2.pdf
and are also posted at the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's website at: http://hsgac.senate.gov/_files/102005HrgExhibits.pdf

The specific exchange that is making the most noise right now is this one:

From: Bahamonde, Marty
To: 'michael.d.brown~dhs.gav'
Sent: Aug. 31, 11:20 am [Katrina hit New Orleans on 8/29 at 7am]
Subject: New orleans

Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical. Here some things you might not know.
Hotels are kicking people out, thousands gathering in the streets with no food or water. Hundreds still being rescued from homes.

The dying patients at the DMAT tent being medivac. Estimates are many will die within hours. Evacuation in process. Plans developing for dome evacuation but hotel situation adding to problem. We are out of food and running out of water at the dome, plans in works to address the critical need.

FEMA staff is OK and holding own. DMAT staff working in deplorable conditions. The sooner we can get the medical patients out, the sooner we can get them out.
Phone connectivity impossible.

More later
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld
-------------
[Note: DMAT=Disaster Medical Assistance Team]

No response from Brown is recorded. The next email is from Cindy Taylor, another FEMA official who has been communicating with Bahamonde and sharing his frustration, and who sarcastically comments on the email she forwards from Sharon Worthy who is Michael Brown's press secretary.

From: Taylor, Cindy
TO: Bahamonde, Marly; Widomski, Michael
Sent: Wednesday, August 31,2005 227 PM
Subject: FW: Scarborough

Let me preface by saying I know he needs downtime, but ummm... how much time do each of you need for dinner, including travel time to the restaurants of your choice?

From: Sharon Worthy (Brown's press secretary)
Cc: Cindy Taylor (FEMA deputy director of public affairs)
Sent: Aug. 31, 2:00 p.m.
Subject: FW: Scarborough

To: 'Valerie.Smith@DHS.GOV'
Cc :'natalie.rule@dhs.gov';Andrews, Nicol D - Public Affairs;'cindy.taylor@dhs.gov'
Subject: Scarborough

Please schedule Joe Scarborough this eveninq for 9pmCST period. Spoke with his producer and told him to call you. Mr. Brown wants to do this one.

Also, it is very important that time is allowed for Mr. Brown to eat dinner.
Gievn that Baton Rouge is back to normal, restaurants are getting busy. He needs much more that 20 or 30 minutes. We now have traffic to encounter to get to and from a location of his choise, followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc. Thank you.

Sharon Worthy
Press Secretary
----------------------------
[Note: Joe Scarborough is a former right-wing Florida Congressman forced to resign, now turned arch right-wing radio talk show host and MSNBC commentator -- who has preached for years for huge cuts in Federal programs and services. But that incongruity hasn't stopped him from lately criticizing the White House and FEMA as incompetent.]

To which Bahamonde responds to Taylor:

From: Bahamonde, Marty
To: Taylor, Cindy; Widomski,Michael
Sent: Aug. 31, 2:44 p.m.
Subject: Re: Scarborough

"OH MY GOD!!!!!!!! No won't go any further, too easy of a target. Just tell her that I just ate an MRE and crapped in the hallway of the Superdome along with 30,000 other close friends so I understand her concern about busy restaurants. Maybe tonight I will have time to move my pebbles on the parking garage floor so they don't stab me in the back while I try to sleep, but instaed I will hope her wait at Ruth Christ is short. But I know she is stressed so I won't make a big deal about it and you shouldn't either.
----------------------------
[Notes: MRE=Made Ready to Eat, an emergency ration, Ruth's Chris is a steakhouse chain]

In Congo Square, New Orleans circa 1810

"All that New Orleans is - is a result of Congo Square" -- Tommye Myrick, Assistant Director of the Center for African and African American Studies at Southern University at New Orleans

In 1804, Fort St. Ferdinand, one of the forts that protected the city, was demolished. This left open space and most of the land was incorporated into the City Commons. In this area, there was also a square of land referred to as Circus Place, also known as Congo Square. It was popular even before 1800 as a place where slaves gathered on Sunday. There was a law stating that "slaves must be free to enjoy Sundays, or they were to be paid fifty cents a day if they worked." By 1817, a city ordinance allowed slaves to assemble only for the purpose of games and dances, funerals, or worship. This was only tolerated on Sundays and only in open public places appointed by the mayor. The use of the area declined in the 1840s. (from http://www.bestofneworleans.com/article))

Below from a historical article and engraving published in 1886:

"The booming of African drums and blast of huge wooden horns called to the gathering.....and brought their owners, male and female, trooping from all quarters. The drums were very long, hollowed, often from a single piece of wood, open at one end and having a sheep or goat skin stretched across the other. One was large, the other much smaller. The tight skin heads were not held up to be struck; the drums were laid along on the turf and the drummers bestrode them, and beat them on the head madly with fingers, fists, and feet, with slow vehemence on the great drum, and fiercely and rapidly on the small one......

One important instrument was a gourd partly filled with pebbles or grains of corn, flourished violently at the end of a stout staff with one hand and beaten upon the palm of the other. Other performers rang triangles, and others twanged from jews-harps an astonishing amount of sound. Another instrument was the jawbone of some ox, horse, or mule, and a key rattled rhythmically along....But the grand instrument at last, the first violin, as one might say, was the banjo. It had but four strings, not six ....It is not the favorite musical instrument of the negroes of the Southern States of America. ... that is the fiddle; but for the true African dance, a dance not so much of legs and feet as of the upper half of the body, a sensual, devilish thing tolerated only by Latin-American masters, there was wanted the dark inspiration of African drums and the banjos thrump and strum...

And yet there was entertaining variety. Where? In the dance! There was constant, exhilarating novelty endless invention in the turning, bowing, arm-swinging, posturing and leaping of the dancers. Moreover, the music of Congo Plains was not tamed to mere monotone. Monotone became subordinate to many striking qualities. The strain was wild. Its contact with French taste gave it often great tenderness of sentiment. It grew in fervor, and rose and sank, and rose again, with the play of emotion in the singers and dancers...

Among these bossals that is, native Africans there was, of course, an ever-growing number of negroes who proudly called themselves Creole negro, that is, born in America ..."

Photos of Congo Square in 1900 and recent (pre-Katrina ):
http://www.nps.gov/jazz/article

Bush: "Terrorists wish they caused Katrina"

Bush Takes Cover from Katrina under 9/11
By Matthew Rothschild September 22, 2005
progressive.org/?q=mag_wx092205

I suppose it was bound to happen. Whenever Bush is in trouble, he conjures up 9/11.

And so, after his disastrous performance on Katrina, he has now managed to take shelter under the overstretched awning of 9/11.

At a speech before the Republican Jewish Coalition, which ought to have been a very small crowd, Bush made the link: “I've been thinking a lot about how America has responded [to Katrina], and it's clear to me that Americans value human life, and value every person as important. And that stands in stark contrast, by the way, to the terrorists we have to deal with. You see, we look at the destruction caused by Katrina, and our hearts break. They're the kind of people who look at Katrina and wish they had caused it. We're in a war against these people. It's a war on terror. These are evil men who target the suffering. They killed 3,000 people on September the 11th, 2001. And they’ve continued to kill." ...

[Needless to say, no acknowlegement was made by Bush on Cuba's and Iran's offers to send help to New Orleans following the disaster.]

Which more so? Incompetent, Malfeasant, Dishonest, Immoral

from www.aflcio.org/aboutus/ns09142005a.cfm

Bush Buddies Get No-Bid Contracts While Workers Get the Shaft
Sept. 14—Some of the first large-scale Hurricane Katrina relief and recovery contracts awarded by the Bush administration were awarded on a no-bid basis to corporations with strong ties to the administration and the Republican Party, according to news stories in The Wall Street Journal and other media. At the same time, the administration is using the catastrophe to push a reactionary anti-worker agenda, gutting federal regulations that protect worker safety and ensure quality work and living wages.

The no-bid deals include $100 million contracts to the Fluor Corp., a major donor to the GOP, and the Shaw Group, which is client of Joe M. Allbaugh, President George W. Bush’s campaign manager in 2000 and the former director the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Meanwhile Halliburton Co., subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root Services received a $29.8 million clean-up contract, while Halliburton, formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney, is doing repair work at three Navy facilities in Mississippi under an existing contract. The company also has been awarded billions of dollars of federal contracts for work in Iraq and that work and the Bush administration’s Iraq procurement policies have been heavily criticized in recent years.

Bush Cuts Workers’ Wages, Suspends Safety Regulations
The Bush administration also is using the disaster to attack federal standards ensuring quality work and worker safety. Last week, the administration announced it was eliminating the high-quality work standards set by the federal Davis-Bacon law for hurricane reconstruction contracts work, allowing contractors to pay substandard wages to construction workers in the affected areas, and the administration also is lifting many affirmative action rules for reconstruction contracts.

Bush now wants to suspend wage supports for service workers in the hurricane zone as it did for construction workers on federal contracts last week, according to The Washington Post.

The administration also has suspended regulations limiting the number of hours truckers can drive when transporting fuel. In addition, Bush has weakened restrictions giving contracting preferences to small and minority-owned businesses and has suspended the Jones Act, which requires transport of petroleum, gasoline and other petroleum products on U.S.-flagged ships while operating in U.S. coastal waters.

The no-bid contracts “guarantee profits regardless of how much those companies spend or waste,” says AFT President Edward J. McElroy. “This is happening at the same time that the local hires of these firms will, in many cases, not earn a living wage. It is unconscionable that our national government would act to hurt those most in need while delivering a windfall to wealthy contractors. These decisions must be reversed.”

Bush Handling of Federal Contracts ‘Costly Mismanagement’
House Democratic leaders have requested that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigate the hurricane reconstruction deals.

In a letter to the GAO, Democrats wrote: “The history of this administration’s handling of federal contracts is one of persistent and costly mismanagement. Oversight of federal contracts has been turned over to private companies with blatant conflicts of interest. In Iraq, billions have been appropriated for the reconstruction effort, yet oil and electricity production remain below prewar levels.…” “he contracting strategy adopted by the administration suppressed competition on thousands of reconstruction projects, while favored companies like Halliburton received special treatment and lucrative monopoly contracts.”

During a tour of hurricane-ravaged Mississippi, the Rev. Jesse Jackson slammed the no-bid deals.

“We still got families that don’t know if people are dead or missing. While the disconnected and the needy are running from shelter to shelter, the connected and greedy are getting FEMA contracts.…”

“It’s almost like white-collar looting,” he said. [My comment: Why say "almost"?]

New Orleans Rich to poor: Take your soul and shove it

(photo: Andrew H. Hochheimer, andrew@softwareartist.com)

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported that Rep. Richard Baker (R-La) was overheard telling lobbyists, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

Later, Baker backpedaled, saying he was misquoted. He claims what he really said, or meant, was, "We have been trying for decades to clean up New Orleans public housing to provide decent housing for residents, and now it looks like God is finally making us do it."

But Baker's revisionism is exceedingly hard to swallow. It would be far less surprising if the initial report were correct - and Baker is, in fact, among the substantial number of wealthy white New Orleans residents who have openly suggested that this tragedy presents a perfect opportunity to "rebuild" New Orleans as a richer, whiter city.

Can Black people's homes and land be taken in the service of this "rebuilding"? The worrisome answer, after the Supreme Court's recent Takings Clause decision, Kelo v.New London, is yes.

There, the Court held that a transfer of private land, to private developers, for "economic development," had a "public purpose" sufficient to satisfy the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment. ...
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20050920_bernier.html)

A Ludicrous Story of Shotguns, Camelbacks and Property Tax

Before the Civil War New Orleans was the second largest city in the United States by population, over 100,000. Only New York was bigger. At that time, the federal government was funded by import & export duties and the states and local governments were funded by property taxes.

New Orleans was sensitive to property taxes. To make the job of the assessors easier, the assessors adopted a rule that said that property taxes were proportional to the front footage of the lot, that is, the length of the lot along its street. The depth of lots was pretty consistent because the streets were pretty consistently laid out. That rule was relatively accurate because land, not the building, was the valuable thing.

To minimize property tax, lots were narrow but deep. As a result of that, houses were similarly narrow but deep. Compare that concept with more modern development patterns - the ranch style house, wide but only one or two rooms deep. The New Orleans house of that time became known as a shotgun house because it was said that you could stand in the front door and shoot a shotgun all the way through to the rear wall without hitting anything within. Hallways were avoided because they took up valuable room width inside the house.

The shotgun double became popular then. A shotgun double was two residences under one roof and the building was two rooms wide, instead of the shotgun’s single room width. The double has two front doors and the two residences share a common set of center chimneys. Each room had a fireplace for heat. This style saved the narrow alleys between each house that lead to the back yard as well as the construction cost of the multiple chimneys.

Citizens of New Orleans complained that their neighbor with a two story house paid the same property tax as that paid by the owner of a one story house. The assessors changed their rule to one that determined property taxes under a formula: the front footage times the number of stories the house had.

As a result of that rule change, the camel back house was born. A camel back house has a hump at the back; it was two stories tall in the back but only one story in the front. The assessors made a new rule that determined how far back the hump began before the house was determined to be a two story house.

Nevertheless, the property owners complained that the much grander camel back down the street paid the same tax as the single story house. In exasperation, the assessors made an entirely new rule: the tax would be based on the number of rooms within the house.

To the extent that anyone considered it previously, closets became totally unrealistic. A closet was counted as a room because a closet is an enclosed space with a door. So instead of closets, home owners used furniture to store clothes - the chiffarobe was born.

So, the New Orleans house is narrow and deep. It has no closets or hallways but every room has a fire place. City water and sewerage was added later so all the rooms that require this are at the back of the house at the site of the back porch.

from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax

"This great city will rise again" said Mr. Bush

(photo: Ted Jackson/Times-Picayune)

We're coming to save you New Orleans
M. Russo 9/10/05

We're coming to save you New Orleans
We're coming with Caterpillars
to kill all your home-infected disease
to plow under your maladjusted debris
and all your wheezing poverty

We're coming to save you New Orleans
We're coming with our Six Flags waving
to pave more ground for Wal-Mart savings
And lay new track for Olive Trees and Outbacks (decorated, of course, with a creole twist)

We're coming to save you, Syncopated Sporulater
of Ragtime, Jazz and Boogie-Woogie
to cook up your crawfish and rice 'n red beans
as novelties
on sale at Dis-Neyleans

We're coming to save you people, you po' sodden souls
but y'all need to co-operate
so we can relocate
this messy problem of dead weight residue
reproportionate this crazy French-Spanish-African stew --
It's high time to chlorinate this city's funky mold
so we're burying your waterlogged ramshackle blues
and rolling you into the surplus labor fold, in the nearby states...

oh...except for those of you employed at Harrah's
where we'd still like tourists to be able to celebrate
fresh clean reproductions of the New Orleans of old.

see: http://neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2005/09/4842.php

Louisiana 1927

Louisiana 1927 - Randy Newman (Good Old Boys album - 1974)

What has happened down here is the winds have changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain
Rained real hard and it rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The president say, ''Little fat man isn't it a shame
What the river has done to this poor crackers land."

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

see: http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=453

Late Summer 1927: Thousands of African Americans pack up their belongings and leave Washington County, Louisiana. Most head north and within a year, fifty percent of the Delta's African American population will have migrated from the region. Once "the Queen of the South," Greenville will never recover the prosperity it once enjoyed before the flood.

I'm goin' down to Mardi Gras / I'm gonna get me a Mardi Gras queen...

George: You know, this used to be a helluva good country. I can't understand what's gone wrong with it.

Billy: Huh. Man, everybody got chicken, that's what happened, man. Hey, we can't even get into like, uh, second-rate hotel, I mean, a second-rate motel. You dig? They think we're gonna cut their throat or something, man. They're scared, man.

George: Oh, they're not scared of you. They're scared of what you represent to 'em.

Billy: Hey man. All we represent to them, man, is somebody needs a haircut.

George: Oh no. What you represent to them is freedom.

Billy: What the hell's wrong with freedom, man? That's what it's all about.

George: Oh yeah, that's right, that's what it's all about, all right. But talkin' about it and bein' it - that's two different things. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. 'Course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are. Oh yeah, they're gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom, but they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em.

Billy: Mmmm, well, that don't make 'em runnin' scared.

George: No, it makes 'em dangerous.

-----
The river flows, it flows to the sea
Wherever that river goes, that's where I want to be
Flow river flow, let your waters wash down
Take me from this road to some other town

All I wanted was to be free
And that's the way it turned out to be...
- Roger McGuinn, Ballad of Easy Rider (final credits of film)

"They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at Elysian Fields."

A new dust bowl?

Who is going to build homes for the poor of New Orleans? If the city is rebuilt, isn't it more likely to be glitzy resorts and condos and corporate headquarters, with some middle class housing mixed in? Since when, since the highly questionable urban renewal projects of the 1960's, are developers at all interested in large scale construction of low-income housing?

So where will the poor go? Will many stay in Texas because the people are so very welcoming there, as the first mother says, and because there's some opportunities for work? Might these New Orleanians, with their discernably different accents and manners, become the Okies of our time, uprooted and downcast, attached to but forever separated from their desolated homeland and culture?

Barbara Bush: "It's all good"

September 7, 2005
Barbara Bush Calls Evacuees Better Off

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6 - As President Bush battled criticism over the response to Hurricane Katrina, his mother declared it a success for evacuees who "were underprivileged anyway," saying on Monday that many of the poor people she had seen while touring a Houston relocation site were faring better than before the storm hit.

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas," Barbara Bush said in an interview on Monday with the radio program "Marketplace." "Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality."

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway," she said, "so this is working very well for them."

Mrs. Bush toured the Astrodome complex with her husband, former President George Bush, as part of an administration campaign throughout the Gulf Coast region to counter criticism of the response to the storm. Former President Bush and former President Bill Clinton are helping raise money for the rebuilding effort.

White House officials did not respond on Tuesday to calls for comment on Mrs. Bush's remarks.