Remembering
Katrina And
The Need For Climate Justice
By William Hughes
28 August, 2006
Countercurrents.org
“The lie was that we were ready and that everything was working
as a team." - Michael Brown, ex-Director of FEMA
Silver Springs, MD - On Saturday
afternoon, August 26, 2006, a rally was held at the site of the main
headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
(NOAA), a federal agency, at 1305 East-West Highway with its intersection
with Colesville Ave, just north of the District of Columbia line. The
event was cosponsored by the U.S. Climate Emergency Council (USCEC)
(1) and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN). (2) The activist
groups are demanding "climate justice and truth telling" before
another Hurricane Katrina-like disaster strikes the U.S. The CCAN, in
its press release, wrote: "We join together to remember and mourn
those who died last year...and to call for jobs, housing, health care
and justice for Katrina survivors...We demand that our government get
serious about cutting down the global warming pollution that is generating
strong and more frequent Category 4 and 5 hurricanes like Katrina."
(3)
Mike Tidwell, author of "The
Ravaging Tide" and head of USCEC, opened up the spirited program
of remembrance. He said: "Eighteen hundred of our fellow Americans
are dead. Scores are still missing; a half million Americans displaced
and $200 billion in losses. The greatest natural disaster in U.S. history
and still a year later our national government has not yet learned the
biggest lesson of all from Hurricane Katrina and that is this: Because
we are warming our global atmosphere, Katrina is rapidly coming to all
our coastal cities and it is coming very soon...We will see three feet
of sea level rise in the coming decade...Miami, a city below sea level,
will be behind levees...lower Manhattan...the National Mall...Baltimore...Charleston...Savannah
behind levees, unless we address the issue of global warming...Our only
defense is clean energy."
A sprawling urban area, Silver
Spring, is located in Montgomery County, Maryland. It has the second
largest population in the state, around 80,000, next to Baltimore City’s
and the highest per capita income. Its history is intertwined with the
fortunes of the distinguished Blair and Lee families, whose ancestral
roots precede the American Revolution.
Getting back to the rally.
A native of Louisiana, the Rev. Lennox Yearwood, ripped into the Bush-Cheney
Gang for its gross indifference to human life with respect to Katrina.
He said: "When I was in New Orleans on Nov. 7, 2005, I crossed
that 'bridge,' where the people were stopped. Can you imagine when the
World Trade Center came down and people were trying to evacuate that
building, and getting to the Brooklyn Bridge, and being stopped and
turned around and told to go back to the World Trade Center? This is
what this government did with dogs and policemen on the 'bridge' to
the people who hadn't eaten for a week...They called them refugees,
looters. They were survivors and all they wanted to do was to get to
the high ground."
Another speaker at the affair
was Kevin Zeese, an Independent candidate for the U.S. Senate in Maryland.
He told the crowd of about 200 protesters: "We need a new generation
of leaders to make this the 'environmental century.' We need to do it
for numerous reasons: first, the in-our-face war for oil. It's called
the 'war on terrorism,' but instead of taking on terrorists, we're taking
on the oil-producing nations. These are really oil wars. We have to
break our addiction to fossil fuels...Our system has been corrupted.
What are you going to do about it? It is time for us to challenge that
corrupt system and take America back."
With respect to Katrina,
a shocking report, dated, Aug. 24, 2006, was issued by House of Representatives
Democrats. It indicated that about 70 percent of Katrina's relief contracts
were given out by FEMA without any competitive bidding. It found that
of the $10.6 billion in contracts awarded, about $7.4 billion, were
dispensed without any or very limited competitive bidding. Billions
of dollars in waste of taxpayers' money were also documented by the
report. FEMA is part of the Homeland Security Department, which is headed
by Michael Chertoff. The report also revealed that contractors, some
with close ties to the Bush-Cheney Gang, like Bechtel, were dealt in
on the lucrative contracts. (4)
The audience also heard from
three survivors of Katrina. Forest Bradley-Wright was the first, he
said: For our country not to now have a national global warming and
action plan is "insanely dangerous...Let me tell you how surreal
it is to pack up two bags...step out of your kitchen into a canoe."
Karen Wimpleberg of "Alliance for Affordable Energy" said
that people in her city have been "warning about global warming
since 1995. I evacuated and had to live away for four months. I have
been back since January, 2006...We lost our barrier islands that were
there to protect us. [Also] the oil companies dig canals to get their
ships out and that has cause subsidence." She labeled the responses
to New Orleans' perilous situation from the national government as "wrong-headed
policies. Solutions do exist." Melissa Amos, now a student at Howard
U. in D.C., shared her Katrina ordeal, too, with the crowd. She related
how she could have very easily been "one of the victims."
Amos said she was traumatized by the storm, but is "getting over
it." She emphasized how she wanted "to thank everyone who
did anything for the Katrina survivors." Each speaker at the protest
action to honor the victims of Katrina, read off a list of a few of
the names of those who died as a result of the horrific storm. Four
huge posters containing the names of most of the known dead from the
hurricane disaster were displayed near the podium used by the presenters.
Melody Drnach, Action V.P.
of N.O.W., also spoke at the event. She said, "The environment
is a women's issue." Drnach underscored how, "our government
under this administration has chosen ideology over scientific knowledge.
And, we are paying an ever-increasing price for it." I talked with
one of the speakers, Ms. George Friday, a co-chair of the United for
Peace & Justice, an antiwar organization, before the rally began.
She's from Baltimore, Maryland. Friday told me: "The war in Iraq
has been a huge mistake. We have to take that disillusionment, that
rage, that anxiety into action; action for change, clean environment,
Green jobs and justice." I also had a chance to chat with one of
the organizers of the very lively affair, Ted Click. He charged that
the Bush administration had inadequately funded the projects that were
needed to defend the Gulf Coast from Katrina. Other speakers at the
remembrance ceremony were: Jared Duval, Jenice View and Allison Fisher.
First rate musical entertainment
was provided at the demonstration by Luci Murphy, an enchanting singer;
a talented guitarist/balladeer/song writer from Boston, David Rovics;
the dynamic hip hop duo of W.E.S. and Straightforward; and by Chris
Chandler. He read his powerful imagery-filled poetry, while accompanied
on the keyboard by a passionate David Roe. The latter's singing voice
had a lot of soulful character in it. One of the popular activist groups,
which was present at the rally to lend its moral support for the cause,
was "The World Can't Wait. Drive Out the Bush Regime." (5)
I leave the final thoughts
to this consciousness-raising protest action, near the one year anniversary
of the Katrina disaster, which struck the Gulf coast a lethal blow,
on Aug. 29, 2005, to a recent authoritative scientific report found
at the "EcoBridge" web site. It states: "Global warming
is melting ice to the tune of 50 billion tons of water a year from the
Greenland ice sheet. A NASA high-tech aerial survey shows that more
than 11 cubic miles of ice is disappearing from the ice sheet annually.
'We see a significant trend (in loss of ice mass),' said William B.
Krabill, NASA scientist and lead author of a study on Greenland ice
melting. 'When we can go back after five years and see 10 meters of
glacier gone, there is something happening.' This is increasing the
likelihood of coastal flooding around the world, if this meltdown trend
continues. The rising sea level has led to salt water encroachment producing
the 'Ghost forests' of South Florida and Louisiana. Since about 1970,
the invading salt water has killed hundreds of acres of southern bald
cypress trees in Louisiana coastal parishes and sabal palm in Florida."
(6)
Notes:
1. http://www.climateemergency.org/joomla/
2. http://www.chesapeakeclimate.org/
3. http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/lectures/448
and http://www.reconstructionwatch.org/
Also see, "Storm Warnings," by J. Madeleine Nash, "Smithsonian,"
09/ 2006.
4. AP Report, "Democrats Fault FEMA for Waste," 08/25/06.
5. http://worldcantwait.org
6. http://www.ecobridge.org/content/g_dgr.htm#Flooding
William Hughes is the author of “Saying ‘No’ to the
War Party” (IUniverse, Inc.). He can be reached at [email protected].
© William Hughes 2006.