{"id":74,"date":"2005-09-23T01:58:12","date_gmt":"2005-09-23T05:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/2005\/09\/23\/katrina-a-rack-of-lamb\/"},"modified":"2005-09-23T01:58:12","modified_gmt":"2005-09-23T05:58:12","slug":"katrina-a-rack-of-lamb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/2005\/09\/23\/katrina-a-rack-of-lamb\/","title":{"rendered":"Katrina: A Rack of Lamb"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

From Gerald L. Campbell: <\/span>Racism, class, indifference!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The talk about
\nlooting is a deliberate distraction. For God’s sake, look: The city has been destroyed!
\nAll this talk is only a cover to hide what is really going on. Let people loot.
\nIt simply doesn’t matter. Let’s focus on what does matter — the need to engage
\nthe tragedy directly.<\/span>
\n_____________________________________________________________________
\nBy Bill Van Auken, 2 September 2005, Various sources, New orleans, courtesy
\nAP<\/span><\/p>\n

New Orleans descended into abject social misery and chaos Thursday as
\nsurvivors of Hurricane Katrina, left abandoned to their fate for four days,
\nliterally began dying in the city’s sewage- and trash-filled
\nstreets.
\n…
\nMany of those waiting to
\nbe evacuated have no water and have not eaten for days. Crowds chanted as
\ntelevision cameras filmed the scene, “We want, we want help,” while others
\nbegged, “Don’t leave us here to die.” Many cursed local, state and federal
\nofficials for what has emerged as criminal neglect and incompetence from the
\nWhite House on down. CNN reporter Chris Lawrence reported seeing “many,
\nmany bodies” both inside and outside the convention center, where the elderly
\nand the sick have dropped dead in the intense heat.
…
\nThere were reports of deaths inside the crowded stadium,
\nincluding the suicide of one man who hurled himself from a balcony after
\nlearning that his home had been destroyed. Those who went into the
\nstadium were not allowed to leave. Many complained that they were being “treated
\nlike animals” and that the facility was “worse than a prison.” Little or no
\ninformation was provided to these storm refugees.<\/p>\n

Gordon Russell of the
\nNew Orleans Times-Picayune noted pointedly that these hellish conditions “stood
\nin stark contrast to those of people nearby in the restricted-access New Orleans
\nCentre and Hyatt Hotel, where those who could get in lounged in relative
\ncomfort.” A line of state police armed with assault rifles drove the crowds of
\nhomeless refugees back from the entrance to the facility.<\/p>\n

Russell continued, “A few blocks farther
\naway, guests were being fed ‘foie gras and rack of lamb’ for dinner, according
\nto a photographer who stayed there, while the masses, most of them poor, huddled
\nin the Dome.”<\/b>
\n…
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Gerald L. Campbell: Racism, class, indifference!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The talk about looting is a deliberate distraction. For God’s sake, look: The city has been destroyed! All this talk is only a cover to hide what is really going on. Let people loot. It simply doesn’t matter. Let’s focus on what does matter — the need to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":384,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[781],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/384"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/globalfund\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}