Home > Programs
> Democracy
Now! > Wed., Sept. 7, 2005
Democracy Now!
ATTN: ALL STATIONS
From: Democracy Now!
Re: Rundown 9-7-05
PRSS Channel: A67.7
Three Displaced New Orleans Residents Discuss Race and Hurricane
Katrina
Radio Astrodome: Independent Media to Provide Critical Info
for Displaced New Orleans Residents
Three Displaced New Orleans Residents Discuss Race
and Hurricane Katrina
We speak with three residents of New Orleans who were forced
to flee - David Gladstone, Beverly Wright and Curtis Muhammad
- about who gets saved and who doesn't and even the question:
will New Orleans be rebuilt?
Well there are is still no official toll of the numbers left
dead by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. But as the Army
Corps of Engineers began pumping the water out of the city
earlier this week, officials estimated that the death the
toll could be as many as 10,000 making it one of the worst
natural disasters in the history of the country. More than
500,000 evacuees from Hurricane Katrina are being relocated
to other states all across the country. It is a historic exodus
and it is unclear what will happen to them and what support
they will receive to try and rebuild their lives. An Associated
Press analysis of Census data shows that the people living
in the path of the hurricane's worst devastation were twice
as likely as most Americans to be lower income and without
a car. The dead and the displaced are largely the ones who
had no where to go, and no means to get there. They were the
ones who waited for days at the New Orleans Convention Center
and at other places throughout the city, without adequate
food, medicine, housing and security. And they were mostly
black and largely poor.
New Orleans is a city that is almost 70 percent black with
nearly 23 percent of its residents living in poverty. Many
African Americans are asking if this calamity would have been
allowed to happen if the demographics of the city were different.
And they are asking if the response would have been quicker
if New Orleans had been a predominately white, wealthy city.
On his way to Louisiana a few days ago, Reverend Jesse Jackson
said that racial discrimination and indifference to black
suffering was at the root of the disaster response. He went
on to say, "In this same city of New Orleans where slave
ships landed, where the legacy of 246 years of slavery and
100 years of Jim Crow discrimination, that legacy is unbroken
today."
The Reverend Al Sharpton spoke in Houston on Saturday and
noted the difference between the government's rapid response
to the hurricane in Florida last year that hit mostly white
upper-middle class areas and to Hurricane Katrina that hit
the mostly black New Orleans and Mississippi.
- Rev. AL Sharpton, speaking in Houston, September 3, 2005.
Many in the hip-hop community have spoken out as well. On
Friday night, hip-hop superstar, Kanye West appeared on a
live NBC telethon and had this to say about the Bush administration's
treatment of the mostly black victims of Hurricane Katrina.
- Kanye West, speaking on NBC News, "A Concert for
Hurricane Relief."
After the program, fellow hip-hop star P. Diddy told the
program Access Hollywood, "I think he spoke from his
heart. He spoke what a lot of people feel." And on his
Sunday program on radio network, Air America, hip-hop luminary
Chuck D, formerly of the seminal rap group Public Enemy, read
the lyrics to a new song about the Hurricane entitled, "Hell
no, we ain't alright."
Administration officials have been busy denying that the
race of the victims of hurricane Katrina had anything to do
with the slow government response. Bush appeared earlier this
week with African-American conservative televangelist T.D.
Jakes of Dallas and other local black leaders in an effort
to counter this criticism. Last weekend the highest-ranking
African-American in the Bush administration, Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice dismissed claims of racism. On the
plane trip from Washington to her hometown of Mobile Alabama
on Sunday, Rice said, "Nobody, especially the President,
would have left people unattended on the basis of race."
Later that day she had this to say.
- Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State, speaking in Bayou
la Batre, LA.
Well when Democracy Now producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and
John Hamilton reported from New Orleans this weekend they
encountered some of the white locals attitudes about race.
- Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Democracy Now! producer who went
to New Orleans over the weekend to cover the disaster.
We turn to three residents of New Orleans who were forced
to flee about who gets saved and who doesn't, and even the
question: Will New Orleans be rebuilt?
- David Gladstone, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning
at University of New Orleans. He has recently completed
a multi-year study of tourism and housing in the city of
New Orleans, focusing on the neighborhoods closest to the
French Quarter.
- Beverly Wright, founder and Director of the Deep South
Center for Environmental Justice at Dillard University in
New Orleans, LA.
- Curtis Muhammad, a veteran Student Non-Violent Cooordinating
Committee organizer and co-founder of Community Labor United.
Radio Astrodome: Independent Media to Provide Critical
Info for Displaced New Orleans Residents
Independent media activists are setting up a low-power radio
station at the Houston Astrodome to provide critical information
to hurricane Katrina evacuees. We speak with those working
on launching the station and the challenges involved.
Tens of thousands of internally displaced New Orleans residents
have been living in the Houston Astrodome for the past few
days. Most of them do not know what the future holds for them
or even the latest news and updates on their situation. To
combat this, relief volunteers and Independent Media organizers
such as the Prometheus Radio Project have gotten permission
from the Federal Communications Commission and the City of
Houston to build a low-power, 30-watt radio station to provide
critical information to people displaced in the area. They
are waiting for final permission from officials at the Astrodome
to go on the air and are looking to bring equipment - radios
for all the potential listeners and batteries - to make it
possible. Democracy Now! is helping to make possible the thousands
of radios that people will need to get this communication.
- Tish Stringer, Indymedia activist and teacher at Rice
University.
- Renee Feltz, News Director at Pacifica station in KPFT
in Houston.
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
|
Listen
to the show
Help
whole
show
