Nightmare for Katrina survivors, revisited

The images have been embedded in people’s consciousnesses forever: thousands of Katrina survivors — the vast majority African-American and indigent — languishing in front of the Convention Center in New Orleans waiting for food, clean water and other humanitarian needs to be met in devastating heat. Any help seemed like a lifetime to come due mainly to racist, governmental neglect on the part of the Bush administration after the hurricane initially hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005. Dead bodies inhabited the same space as the living.

Many of those survivors had once lived in the Lower Ninth Ward where compromised levees totally flooded the predominately African-American neighborhood during Katrina. As a result, more than 1,000 people lost their lives in that neighborhood alone.

One important image that the mainstream media played down during this tragic event occurred on Sept. 4, 2005. On that day, as hundreds of Katrina survivors were crossing east over the Danziger bridge seeking food and water, the New Orleans police, out of uniform and without any warning, jumped out of a rental truck and starting shooting nonstop at unarmed people.

Once the firing stopped, six people had been shot, two fatally. Those killed were Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally disabled man, and 19-year-old James Brissette. The police claimed to have been shot at first and then fired back in self-defense. One autopsy exposed the ugly truth that Madison was shot seven times — in the back. One victim, Susan Bartholomew, had her right arm completely shot off.

Madison’s brother, Romell, was arrested on eight counts of attempted murder. The charges were eventually dismissed, but only after he spent time in jail. More than a year later on Dec. 28, 2006, seven cops were indicted for murder and attempted murder charges, but the charges were eventually dismissed by a state court in 2008.

On Feb. 24, 2010, a retired New Orleans police lieutenant pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice in the Sept. 4 shootings. Lt. Michael Lohman had been appointed as supervisor of the investigation of the shootings and admitted before a federal court that he had known that the police attacked unarmed New Orleans residents. It is unclear if this admission of guilt will lead to the arrests of higher officials within the New Orleans police department.

While it is certainly understandable why relatives of the shooting victims will feel some semblance of justice with this admission of guilt, these shootings are only the tip of the iceberg regarding countless other acts of racist police atrocities during and especially before Katrina hit.

On Sept. 1, 2005, police prevented Black people from leaving New Orleans by shooting above their heads when they attempted to cross the Crescent City Connection Bridge to enter the mainly white parishes of Gretna and Jefferson to escape the flooding.

On Sept. 2, 2005, Henry Glover, another unarmed Black man, was shot to death by the New Orleans police. His corpse was placed in his car and torched by the police. Black people accused of “looting” after being displaced by Katrina were shot down by the police while it has been confirmed that the police were justified in stealing from stores.

All of these incidents point to the New Orleans police having a sordid history of state repression against the Black community. In a December 2007 United Nations study entitled “In the Shadows of the War on Terror: Persistent Police Brutality and Abuse of Peoples of Color in the United States,” NGOs describe New Orleans as “a police state encampment, occupied by an estimated 14,000 heavily armed government officers and their machine guns, patrolled by military trucks, armored Humvees, Black Hawks and Chinooks.” In the same study, Safe Streets/Strong Communities found that “72 percent of the predominantly (80 percent) African-American respondents who had been stopped by police reported being victimized, be it through verbal abuse, public strip searches, or physical abuse.”

New Orleans is no exception. In order for the police departments to protect the private property and profits of the capitalists, they must simultaneously repress and terrorize the workers and oppressed with guns, tasers, billy clubs and other military hardware to avert any righteous rebellions. What happened on the Danziger Bridge in 2005 and other related acts of police terror was meant to send a clear message to the displaced Black Katrina survivors: Don’t bother to come back, because New Orleans is being rebuilt for the white elite and tourists. Consider the fact that New Orleans, a predominantly Black city, elected a white mayor this past February, the first since the late 1970s.

For real justice to be served for the victims of the September 2005 police conspiracy, the tens of thousands of displaced Katrina survivors must be allowed to return to New Orleans to rebuilt homes and levees, union-wage jobs, decent public schools and health care, along with community control of the police.