[News] The Two Americas

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  The Two Americas
     By Marjorie Cohn
     t r u t h o u t | Perspective

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090305Y.shtml

     Saturday 03 September 2005

     Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of 
Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were 
evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane 
destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.

     What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson 
Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and 
specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in the 
community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go."

     "Cuba's leaders go on TV and take charge," said Valdes. Contrast this 
with George W. Bush's reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina 
hit the Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a 
TV appearance and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a 
scathing editorial on Thursday, the New York Times said, "nothing about the 
president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of 
carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis."

     "Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable" in Cuba, Valdes 
said. "Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They 
have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, 
and already know, for example, who needs insulin."

     They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and 
refrigerators, "so that people aren't reluctant to leave because people 
might steal their stuff," Valdes observed.

     After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations International Secretariat for 
Disaster Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation. ISDR 
director Salvano Briceno said, "The Cuban way could easily be applied to 
other countries with similar economic conditions and even in countries with 
greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as well as 
Cuba does."

     Our federal and local governments had more than ample warning that 
hurricanes, which are growing in intensity thanks to global warming, could 
destroy New Orleans. Yet, instead of heeding those warnings, Bush set about 
to prevent states from controlling global warming, weaken FEMA, and cut the 
Army Corps of Engineers' budget for levee construction in New Orleans by 
$71.2 million, a 44 percent reduction.

     Bush sent nearly half our National Guard troops and high-water Humvees 
to fight in an unnecessary war in Iraq. Walter Maestri, emergency 
management chief for Jefferson Paris in New Orleans, noted a year ago, "It 
appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle 
homeland security and the war in Iraq."

     An Editor and Publisher article Wednesday said the Army Corps of 
Engineers "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the 
war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as 
federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain," which caused a slowdown 
of work on flood control and sinking levees.

     "This storm was much greater than protection we were authorized to 
provide," said Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager in the New Orleans 
district of the corps.

     Unlike in Cuba, where homeland security means keeping the country 
secure from deadly natural disasters as well as foreign invasions, Bush has 
failed to keep our people safe. "On a fundamental level," Paul Krugman 
wrote in yesterday's New York Times, "our current leaders just aren't 
serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like 
waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need 
or spending on prevention measures. And they never, ever ask for shared 
sacrifice."

     During the 2004 election campaign, vice presidential candidate John 
Edwards spoke of "the two Americas." It seems unfathomable how people can 
shoot at rescue workers. Yet, after the beating of Rodney King aired on 
televisions across the country, poor, desperate, hungry people in Watts 
took over their neighborhoods, burning and looting. Their anger, which had 
seethed below the surface for so long, erupted. That's what's happening now 
in New Orleans. And we, mostly white, people of privilege, rarely catch a 
glimpse of this other America.

     "I think a lot of it has to do with race and class," said Rev. Calvin 
O. Butts III, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. "The 
people affected were largely poor people. Poor, black people."

     New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reached a breaking point Thursday night. 
"You mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of 
people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we 
can't figure out a way to authorize the resources we need? Come on, man!"

     Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had boasted earlier in 
the day that FEMA and other federal agencies have done a "magnificent job" 
under the circumstances.

     But, said, Nagin, "They're feeding the people a line of bull, and they 
are spinning and people are dying. Get off your asses and let's do something!"

     When asked about the looting, the mayor said that except for a few 
"knuckleheads," it is the result of desperate people trying to find food 
and water to survive.

     Nagin blamed the outbreak of violence and crime on drug addicts who 
have been cut off from their drug supplies, wandering the city, "looking to 
take the edge off their jones."

     When Hurricane Ivan hit Cuba, no curfew was imposed; yet, no looting 
or violence took place. Everyone was in the same boat.

     Fidel Castro, who has compared his government's preparations for 
Hurricane Ivan to the island's long-standing preparations for an invasion 
by the United States, said, "We've been preparing for this for 45 years."

     On Thursday, Cuba's National Assembly sent a message of solidarity to 
the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It says the Cuban people have followed 
closely the news of the hurricane damage in Louisiana, Mississippi and 
Alabama, and the news has caused pain and sadness. The message notes that 
the hardest hit are African-Americans, Latino workers, and the poor, who 
still wait to be rescued and taken to secure places, and who have suffered 
the most fatalities and homelessness. The message concludes by saying that 
the entire world must feel this tragedy as its own.


----------
     <http://truthout.org/contactmc.php>Marjorie Cohn, a contributing 
editor to t r u t h o u t, is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of 
Law, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US 
representative to the executive committee of the American Association of 
Jurists.



The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20050904/be274532/attachment.htm>