Green Party of Louisiana
www.LaGreens.org
Monday, September 5, 2005
Contact:
Leenie Halbert, Coordinating Committee, Green Party of Louisiana,
504-343-1273, leenie@leenie.com
Malik Rahim, 504-368-6897, maliknogreenparty@yahoo.com
War, Racism, Coastal Mismanagement Exacerbate
Devastation
As the devastation in New Orleans from hurricane
Katrina grows more and more deadly, disgraceful, and surreal-we find
ourselves in a state of 'shock and awe' at the appalling carelessness
to the rescue effort, the racist neglect of New Orleans' most
vulnerable people, and the devastating mismanagement of our regional
ecosystem which hastened and exacerbated the devastation.
Greens are committed to rebuilding Louisiana
sustainably and equitably!
THE REAL COSTS OF WAR
Fully one-third of the Louisiana National Guard,
whose mission is to assist in rescue and relief operations during
peacetime, have instead been sent to Iraq to fight for George Bush's
war, based on lies and deception. This includes many troops who were
trained specifically for high-water rescue operations. Yet four days
after the hurricane hit, there's no National Guard in sight. Tens of
thousands of New Orleanians-most poor and African-American-have been
without food, water and medicines for almost a week while the
president cobbles together a hodgepodge of disaster relief teams from
under-staffed and under-funded local authorities.
Here's what stranded New Orleanians are saying
about the rescue efforts:
"It's unbelievable but its for real. That man
[Bush] can spend all that money and send all those troops to Iraq but
he can't do nothing for us right here!"
"You mean to tell me they couldn't just drop
some water and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from all those
helicopters?" (responding to the reasoning that no relief could
be delivered because of the high waters)
Damage estimates for New Orleans and the Gulf
South are already reaching the tens of billions. The
Republican-Democrat consensus on appropriating hundreds of billions of
dollars to fight the illegal and immoral war in Iraq have taken funds
which could have been rightly used to address domestic needs such as
health care, education, and local projects such as improving levee and
drainage systems in New Orleans and other American cities.
As Greens living in a city whose destruction has
been exacerbated by the outrageous negligence and outright madness of
the Bush Administration and it's pliant Democratic
"opposition," we reiterate our demand that all US troops are
brought home now, that the costly war budget be transformed into a
prosperous peacetime budget, and that the Bush Administration
apologize in full for its role in intensifying this absolute
catastrophe.
INEQUITIES IN RACE AND CLASS
One of the most striking images from the ongoing
hurricane disaster is the ubiquitous poverty of the mostly-black
victims, which underscore the existing race and class inequalities in
our city-a microcosm of the national inequalities that confront people
of color and the working poor.
Disaster planning officials know that 112,000
people in New Orleans have no access to a car-the only way to get out
of the city. And a staggering 61% of single-mom families in New
Orleans are living in poverty.
The working-class Plaquemines and St. Bernard
parishes-home to factory workers, commercial fishermen and shrimpers-were
also hit very hard, particularly St. Bernard. The awesome reality of
the hurricane is that it starkly sharpened the existing class and race
inequalities.
Greens have been working to address these
disparities in New Orleans, and we reiterate our calls for social
justice: raise the poverty-level 'minimum' wage to a living wage;
restore all funding to the Charity Hospital system; investing in
education-not incarceration-for our young people.
As New Orleanians committed to systematic change
in our economic and political systems for social justice and
environmental sustainability, we are both angered by the culmination
of a century of irresponsible planning, yet heartened by the
resilience and determination of our brothers and sisters who are
battling through the challenges of this disaster with the same dignity
and resolve that they have battled the ongoing challenges of the daily
lives under a system which has been designed to disregard them.
COASTAL DESTRUCTION AND GLOBAL WARMING
If you had asked anyone in Louisiana just two
weeks ago what was the biggest environmental crisis-nearly every
person would have said "costal erosion." Losing our coastal
areas-at a rate of a football fields every 20 minutes-has destroyed
not only a rich source of wildlife but also crippled our natural
defenses against storms and flooding. In fact, until the canals and
levees were built, the coastline was actually growing-strengthening
our regions defenses against storms and hurricane.
The truth is that the environmental planning in
our region has systematically wiped out our precious and protective
coastal wetlands which, if not weakened to their current state, could
have provided defense against the deadly storm surges which broke the
levees and caused the most damage. Shortsighted and
politically-connected oil and gas companies wrecked coastal areas with
impunity with an elaborate and destructive system of canals to
facilitate the extraction of 'resources.'
Our system of irresponsibly-built canals and
levees-as well as the laissez-faire complicity in allowing oil and gas
industry to build destructive canals through the wetlands- act as
giant straws, sucking saltwater from the Gulf inland and destroying
the freshwater wetland habitats.
In addition to the mismanaged regional ecosystem,
global environmental issues such as rising ocean levels from global
warming are adding fuel to the fire. In fact, since FEMA was founded
in 1979, New Orleans has been consistently at the top of the list of
most disaster-prone areas in the country. And in 1995, the
International Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations identified
New Orleans as the most vulnerable North American city to global
climate change, because sea-level rise and elevating temperatures of
the Gulf of Mexico intensify the frequency and power of hurricanes.
As Greens committed to environmental
sustainability and proper management of our regional ecosystems for
the benefit of recreation, human habitat, and natural disaster
protection, we reiterate our call to reduce emissions which are
causing global warming, as well as for a sustainable system of
drainage and storm prevention in Southeast Louisiana.
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For information about the Green Party of
Louisiana, visit http://www.LaGreens.org
Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org
RELIEF EFFORTS:
Green Party web page with information on aid for
victims of the hurricane http://www.gp.org/katrina2005/
Web page with information on relief efforts, set
up by New Orleans Greens Andrea Garland and Jeffrey Holmes http://www.getyouracton.com/
Discussion list set up by Green Party member Bart
Everson from New Orleans, for exchange of information (advice,
requests for help and offers of direct material, other assistance) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/katrina-refugees/
