<p>I was emailed this by a friend. I do not know where he got it but I thought it was interesting. It appeared to be cut off at the end:</p>
<p>Note: Bradshaw and Slonsky are paramedics from California that
were attending the EMS conference in New Orleans. (SEIU Local
790.)</p>
<p>Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the
Walgreen’s store at the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained
locked. The dairy display case was clearly visible through the windows. It
was now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk,
yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree
heat. The owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside Walgreen’s windows,
residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry.</p>
<p>The much-promised federal, state and local aid never
materialized and the windows at Walgreen’s gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and
distributed the nuts, fruit juices, and bottle water in an
organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they spent hours
playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.</p>
<p>We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived
home yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or
look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were novideo
images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists
looting the Walgreen’s in the French Quarter.</p>
<p>We also suspect the media will have been inundated with “hero”
images of the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to
help the “victims” of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we
witnessed, were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane
relief effort: the working class of New Orleans.</p>
<p>The maintenance workers who used a fork lift to carry the sick
and disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured and kept the
generators running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords
stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in
order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over
for mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end manually
forcing air into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive.
Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators. Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, “stealing” boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to
their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that
could be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service
workers who scoured the commercial kitchens improvising communal meals
for hundreds of those stranded.</p>
<p>Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard
from members of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only
infrastructure for the 20% of New Orleans that was not under
water.
On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels
in the French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference
attendees like ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels
for safety and shelter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone
contact with family and friends outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources including the National Guard and scores of buses were pouring in to the City. The buses and the other resources must
have been invisible because none of us had seen them.</p>
<p>We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and
came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of
the City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were
subsidized by those who did have extra money. We waited for 48
hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside,
sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We created a
priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born babies.
We waited late into the night for the “imminent” arrival of the
buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute
the arrived to the City limits, they were commandeered by the
military.</p>
<p>By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation
was dangerously abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased,
street crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us
out and locked their doors, telling us that the “officials” told us
to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we
entered the center of the City, we finally encountered the National
Guard. The Guards told us we would not be allowed into the Superdome as the City’s primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health
hellhole. The guards further told us that the City’s only other shelter,
the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and
that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we
asked, “If we can’t go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our
alternative?” The guards told us that that was our problem, and
no they did not have extra water to give to us. This would be the start
of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile “law enforcement”.</p>
<p>We walked to the police command center at Harrah’s on Canal
Street
and were told the same thing, that we were on our own, and no
they did not have water to give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a mass meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police command post. We would be plainly visible to the media and would constitute a highly visible embarrassment to the City officials.
The police told us that we could not stay. Regardless, we began
to settle in and set up camp. In short order, the police
commander came across the street to address our group. He told us
he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway
and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the police had
buses lined up to take us out of the City. The crowed cheered and
began to move. We called everyone back and explained to the
commander that there had been lots of misinformation and wrong
information and was he sure that there were buses waiting for us.
The commander turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, “I
swear to you that the buses are there.”</p>
<p>We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge
with great excitement and hope. As we marched pasted the convention
center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic group and asked
where we were headed. We told them about the great news. Families
immediately grabbed their few belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, people using
crutches, elderly clasping walkers and others people in
wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to the Bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our enthusiasm.</p>
<p>As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a
line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to
speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the
crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and
dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the
sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police
commander and of the commander’s assurances. The sheriffs
informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.</p>
<p>We questioned why we couldn’t cross the bridge anyway,
especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded
that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are
poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were
not getting out of New Orleans.</p>
<p>Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter
from the rain under an overpass. We debated our options and in the end
decided to build an encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain
Expressway on the center divide, between the O’Keefe and Tchoupitoulas
exits. We reasoned we would be visible to everyone, we would have
some security being on an elevated freeway and we could wait and watch
for the arrival of the yet to be seen buses.</p>
<p>All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups
make the same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only
to be turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told
no, others to be verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New
Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the
City on foot. Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank further into
squalor and disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by
vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks
and any car that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to
escape the misery New Orleans had become.</p>
<p>Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water
delivery truck and brought it up to us. Let’s hear it for looting! A mile or so
down the freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of
C-rations on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping
carts. Now secure with the two necessities, food and water;
cooperation, community, and creativity flowered. We organized a
clean up and hung garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made beds
from wood pallets and cardboard. We designated a storm drain as
the bathroom and the kids built an elaborate enclosure for
privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas, and other scraps. We
even organized a food recycling system where individuals could
swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for babies and candies
for kids!)"</p>