Reply #320: Sept 8: New Orleans Population has the Right of Return

[mom cat]

http://www.blackcommentator.com/radio_bc/090805/090805_radio_bc_text.html
Text of Radio BC audio commentary

September 8 2005

New Orleans Population has the Right of Return

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The people of New Orleans have a right to return. It is not too early to say so. In fact, it is imperative that we demand the Right of Return now, before the circumstances of the displacement of this population create facts on the ground that cannot be reversed. We have seen, elsewhere in the world, how those who have been displaced are effectively shut out from returning to their origins, and how quickly the public says, well, that’s just water under the bridge – or over the levee. Others, newcomers, will benefit from the tragedy of the previous population’s displacement. This cannot be allowed to occur in New Orleans.

Not only does the Black two-thirds of the city have the right to return, but the federal government has an obligation to direct every resource to making it possible and practical for them to return, and to live productive lives in the city from which they were driven.

The circumstances of displacement are clear. The Bush regime set New Orleans up for a fall, cutting back on funding for the levees in every year of George Bush’s administration. The scenario for precisely the catastrophe that Hurricane Katrina wrought was played out in a regional and federal computerized hurricane war game, just last year, involving a hypothetical Hurricane called “Pam.” The Bush men chose to ignore the data. In legal terms, they showed a depraved indifference to human life – or worse.



After the deluge, this official depravity was compounded by the Bush men’s indifference – or worse – to the plight of those who had no choice but to stay in New Orleans. The facts of federal depravity are so manifest, there is no need to elaborate in this commentary. But the New Orleans diaspora is spreading, uncharted, with no paper trail, and only an ad hoc, improvised charitable money trail. The displaced persons of New Orleans, like the Blanche DuBois character in the Tennessee Williams play, “Streetcar Named Desire,” are now largely dependent on “the kindness of strangers.” That is nothing to celebrate about.