Class and Race Issues Played Major Role in Hurricane Survival

Interview with Darryl Malek-Wiley, Sierra Club's environmental justice staffer, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina's destruction of cities and towns along the Gulf coast, some media outlets have pointed out that the poor and mostly African American residents of New Orleans suffered disproportionately -- with fewer resources to call upon to flee the approaching killer storm. Other outlets have focused attention on looting and violence, painting the whole black community of New Orleans, comprising almost 70 percent of the city's population, of being responsible for their own plight.

The regions hit by the hurricane, including New Orleans, are made up of some of the poorest communities in the U.S. People living in the worst hit areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama had incomes $10,000 below the national average, owned fewer cars and had significantly less health insurance coverage than other Americans.

Derrick Malek-Jones is the Sierra Club's environmental justice staffer in Louisiana. He's lived in New Orleans for 20 years, and worked with the city's poor and minority residents to oppose the concentration of pollution-generating industries in their neighborhoods. After being evacuated to Texas, he spoke with Between The Lines' Melinda Tuhus about the issues of race and poverty effecting problems with evacuation and the task ahead of rebuilding New Orleans.



For more information call (415) 977-5500 or visit the group's website at www.sierraclub.org

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The seasonal flooding caused the people with money to move away, to more expensive areas that didn't flood so deep.

The implications of this are interesting. Suppose you were a real estate investor. You could regularly burn down the Hollywood Hills, dropping their property value. Then, you buy up the land, and stop burning the hills, and turn a nice profit.

As we've heard ad nauseam the past couple of weeks, the Katrina disaster raises serious questions about race in America. Just how serious became clear Saturday afternoon, when the interviewer Alicia Acuna conducted a live interview with a frustrated, foul-mouthed New Orleans evacuee in Houston. Blogger Ian Schwartz has the unexpurgated video, and here is the expurgated transcript:

Acuna: [There's] a lot of frustration, and a lot of it stems from the confusion over what a lot of the evacuees have been told is going to happen with regard to their federal assistance coming in. And I have a gentleman standing here with me who helps illustrate that picture. He has chosen not to give his name, he is from New Orleans, and he only says he is for the people.

So if you can explain to me, what has happened with your debit card? You're having a lot of problems, right?

Man: Well, for one thing, you know, they're not activating. You know, they're giving us these cards, and they're not activating these cards, and they're giving us a runaround. Then when we call, you know, for the, you know, to find out if the card is activated, they're giving us the runaround. And they send us back to Red Cross, and we go to Red Cross--nobody knows anything, you know.

I mean, c'mon now, f---, you know, excuse my French, you know, but anyway, you know, we're out here, we're stranded, you know, we don't have any goddamn thing, nobody's not [sic] trying to help us. FEMA is a fake and a fraud. Red Cross is a fake and a fraud, you know. Where do we go from here? I mean, who should we depend on? If we can't depend on our own federal government, who can we depend on?

Acuna: The FEMA cards were supposed to be $2,000 apiece--

Man: Two thousand dollars.

Acuna: --and you received a FEMA card?

Man: I only received $700. Seven hundred dollars, and they cut my card off.

Acuna: And when you asked them why that was, what were you told?

Man: They don't know. Nobody knows.

Acuna: OK, thank you very much.

Man: Do you know?

Acuna: I do not know, no.

Man: Well, find out for me, and you tell me.

Acuna: OK, thank you. And actually, Bob [Sellers, the anchorman], one thing I can tell you--we talk about this confusion, and there are quite a few reporters who have been kind of confused during those news conferences. And we actually have direct access to a lot of these officials. And FEMA, in all fairness, has said there are going to be glitches. They understand that there are problems. They have said that everyone is going to get assistance that qualifies; however, they're still working it out. They keep reiterating to us that this is a work in progress. Back to you.

Sellers: Alicia, is that gentleman still there by any chance?

Acuna: He is still here.

Sellers: Could you ask him what he wants? What is he looking for?

Acuna: Sure, hold on one second.

The anchor in New York would like to know--his name is Bob--he would like to know what it is that you would like to happen. What do you want?

Man: What I would like to happen? I would like for them to give us at least $20,000 apiece so we can, you know, get our life together. You know, we didn't ask to come on that bus, slave. It's like a slave ship. It's just like, you know, back in history, you know, they put us on a slave ship. They separated us from our family. They did it--you know, just modern-day slavery, you know? Just give us what the f--- we deserve.

Sellers: Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Whoa! Hold on! Hold on! That's, that's, that's enough. I mean, you've made your point, sir. We thank you very much for being with us. But Alicia--

Man: It's like a slave ship.

Sellers: --we know there's frustration there, and a lot of these folks have gone through so much, and we don't want to, you know, minimize or trivialize that. But we still have certain responsibility here in terms of what we're doing as far as broadcasting.

The interviewer seems to have missed the first obscenity, which the man uttered under his breath. Anyway, a picture is worth a thousand words, even when two of them are the F-word, so take a look at the accompanying photograph. Looks just like a slave ship, doesn't it? Well, except that on a slave ship, he probably wouldn't have his arm around a white woman.