Detained, Not Rescued: Katrina Survivors Testimony to Congress

[Marleyb]

On Dec 6, 2005 several Katrina Survivors testified before Congress- their testimony should have been headline news across America… You can still watch the testimony at C-span (12/6/05)(http://www.c-span.org/Search/basic.asp?BasicQueryText=katrina&SortBy=date)
, but if you don’t have 4 hours, these four mp3s contain some of the best clips of the hearing.

These are just a few of the Katrina stories that BushCo doesn’t want America to know.

Katrina Survivors 1 - Why all the M-16s?
http://www.archive.org/download/katrina_survivors2congress/katrina1-k154.mp3

Leah Hodges: We got to the evacuation point and the military was nice to us at first, but we were wondering, “Why all the M16s?” It looked like we just stepped into a war.

Mama D: Please let whoever these people are know that New Orleans is not for sale! … We need y’all to take FEMA and Red Cross… and just get ‘em outta my neighborhood.

Leah Hodges written testimony submitted to Congress:
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:5iYPG0AsILMJ:katrina.house.gov/hearings/12_06_05/hodges_120605.rtf+leah+hodges&hl=en

We were dropped off at a site where we were fenced in, and penned in with military vehicles, The armed military personnel brought in dogs. There we were subjected to conditions only comparable to a concentration camp…. As a hurricane survivor, I and my family were detained, not rescued.

This sounds so crazy, some CongressCritters wouldn’t believe it, ‘I just don’t frankly believe it’ said Rep Shays. In other words, to get away with murder, all the evildoers have to do is keep pulling shit that’s so absurd, nobody will believe it when it’s reported.

Katrina Survivors 2 - Concentration Camps
http://www.archive.org/download/katrina_survivors2congress/katrina2-k145d.mp3

Rep McKinney: ~ I don’t think the 2nd Amendment was lifted just because of the catastrophic situation, there should not have been weapons confiscation.

Leah Hodges: We we’re 3 minutes from the airport… they could have taken us to any dry city in America. Instead they took us to a dumping ground, sealed us in there and backed up with all their authority with military M-16s. They hand picked the white people to leave first.

Rep Miller: ~ Please don’t call it a concentration camp.

Leah Hodges: I’m going to call it what it is. If I put a dress on a pig it’s still a pig… That is the only thing I can compare what we went through to.

Mama D: Why were people in Public Housing surrounded and forced to leave by gunpoint? That happened, we’ve got proof…. I said this in September- nobody is going to believe us because this is an unbelieveable story.

Rep McKinney: Do you have confidence in the number of dead that is being reported by the authorities?
Survivors: (unanimous) No!

Katrina Survivors 4 - Show Us The Levee
http://www.archive.org/download/katrina_survivors2congress/katrina4-battle.mp3
Harry Alford: ~ Historically speaking, they blew the levee in 1927 on purpose.

I’m not a conspiracy freak, but there’s a coupla things I know. John Kennedy wasn’t killed by one person, and one bumbling idiot didn’t kill Martin Luther King by himself.



My friend, a Stanford educated engineer, cannot find a reason why the levees broke… If we came up with the funding for the National Association of Black Engineers to study the levees, would we be granted access?

Congressional Response: silence

Barbara Arnwine: It’s clear that the people in the 9th ward did in fact hear some kind of loud noise that night. What was that loud noise?

? Critter: … hundreds of thousands of gallons of water…

Barbara Arnwine: That would sound like, “boom, boom”?

more
http://benfrank.net/blog/2006/01/09/katrina_survivors/#comments

[cantstandbush]

1. To me, this is more important to Americans than the stories of suicide

bombers in the ME. Our nation is shameful in the way it has treated Katrina victims of all colors but especially the African-Americans who werevictimized by Katrina, the NO police, and the US government at the state and Federal levels. But our whoring MSM knows that taking up the cause of the African-Americans among us and the plight of the poor and elderly is not sensational news and politicians of all stripes know it gets few votes.

[MountainLaurel]

2. Thank you for pulling these together.

It'll make for interesting reading.

[nofurylike]

3. devastating. thank you for this, Marleyb!

:cry:


:cry: !!!

:rage:



peace and solidarity...

[nofurylike]

4. K & R eom

[Tsiyu]

5. Why did the MSM ignore these people and their stories?

Rhetorical question, of course.

Thanks for these links.

K&R

[FreedomAngel82]

27. They're too busy protecting the GOP

[AspenRose]

31. Or covering the missing white woman du jour

eom

[nofurylike]

6. kick

[nofurylike]

7. kick!

[nofurylike]

8. kick!

[Greyhound]

9. K&R, Should be on the front page.

[nofurylike]

10. kick!

[texpatriot2004]

11. BushCo sure knows how to take advantage of a disaster nm

[AnneD]

12. I have heard other stories similar to these...

and some from the 'white' survivors that were just as harrowing. While I think blacks got the worst and the whole response was genocide - it won't make that much more of a difference what your colour is in Bush's Amerika. It is the money and party affiliation that matters.
Here is the interesting thing though....Katrina victims are spread all over the US. They need to speak out and tell their stories. Not all news comes over the tube.

[fooj]

13. K&R!

Peace

[Nothing Without Hope]

14. K & R - Katrina was just an enabling excuse for grabbing power

and land - these people were unwanted and it could not be more obvious. There have been stories and a news video about the possible secret blowing of the levees, and I find it quite plausible because, like the 9/11 attacks, it served a purpose for the Bush cabal:

http://www.halturnershow.com/DiversFindExplosiveResidueOnRupturedLevy.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1778478

[SoCalDem]

15. Poor people share one thing with each other..

LACK OF MONEY!!!

That's IT.. No matter what color they are or how old they are or what language they speak!

The money that was spent through FEMA and ALL NGOs would be more helpful if just GIVEN to the people afflicted with poverty. I would bet any amount of money that whatever the ultimate cost of Katrina is, if that money was divided up between the people affected, they could figure out a way to fix their homes, relocate, reopen businesses..whatever...

The funneling(laundering) of public funds through the alphabet organzations is the problem...not the solution..

I read somewhere that the COST of administering aid to a poor family (through WIC,AFCD,welfare,job training, etc) runs about $40K a year.. Now I may be STOOOOOPID, but if that family HAD $40K, they would not be poor..would they??


:grr:

[EFerrari]

18. Bingo!

:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

[Nothing Without Hope]

16. And now Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama have gotten their first FEMA

bills for millions of dollars they should not have to pay:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x45541
thread title (1/4/06 GD): Louisiana gets its first FEMA bills, totaling $156 million

All those fatcat Bush cabal cronies are still at the trough, and they want every crumb.

[EFerrari]

17. Kick

[Nothing Without Hope]

19. ***Three more related points of importance:

The Black Hawk helicopter that was promised to plug the major levee break never arrived:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4523783
thread title (8/31/05 GD): CNN/New Orleans:"Mayor blasts failure to patch levee breeches" and that's {only the beginning}
And why were those levees not only not reiniforced, but unprotected and unguarded? Why weren't there piles of sandbags already in place? After all, it was known that the hurricane was coming. Why did no one report the breach officially for so many hours? Why did FEMA not respond despite promises? Yes, I believe that the drowning of New Orleans need never have happened, and I also believe it was deliberate.

A NY Times study recently concluded that most of the "official" fatalities (I believe there are thousands more) from Katrina occurred AFTER the storm - NOT from the hurricane itself. They are the fault of mishandling, and their blood is on the Bush Administration:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5632930
thread title (12/19/05 GD): NYT reports study of Katrina dead - MOST DIED AFTER THE STORM

The American Red Cross leadership is heavily GOP and there are many questions about just what the huge donations of the American people really bought for those affected by the hurricane. Certainly what went into the American Red Cross did not get translated to the effective aid that it could have. The smell of a major scandal, suppressed by the GOP, surrounds this largely ignored situation:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4878601
thread title (9/25/05 GD): LA Times: "The Red Cross Money Pit" - The shocking, sorry TRUTH at last!!!
Think: Most Americans thought they were helping the hurricane victims when they donated to the American Red Cross, and they might have donated somewhere else if the politicians and media had not constantly reinforced this idea. Was it a scam? I believe it was. The Red Cross VOLUNTEERS did important work, but the leadership and the handling of the donated millions - that's another story, and one that needs to be told.

[SPKrazy]

20. Just a Question (and don't flame me please)

Do we know that these people who testified weren't exaggerating?

I just wonder because I worked with Katrina survivors being "processed" into Arkansas, and none were talking about things like this that I heard.

And I recently talked to a lady who evacuated the day before Katrina hit (she lived on the West Bank) and she said that the looting was terrible in her neighborhood when she went back to see it.

I just am not sure I believe these women.

[CottonBear]

22. You're a Christian social worker. If you'd watched the testimony on CSPAN

you would not have to ask if they were lying. :(

These were native NOLA people and community leaders, several of whom never left the city after the flood. They had no reason to lie.
edit: You may be able to find the video online on CSPAN.

[liberal43110]

25. Maybe not lying, but...

It doesn't mean some exaggeration or ex-post revisionism didn't take place. They don't have to have a reason to lie; they are human and their stories are subject to the things that affect our narratives as we repeat them.

[rman]

42. Doesn't mean certain elements don't want to downplay any atrocities

that have taken place during the aftermath of Katrina.

[sproutster]

44. You mean it's the NOLA conspiracy?

OMG did you follow any of the stories after NOLA? Nope, conspiracy.

[SPKrazy]

29. I'm a Christian, and I am a Social Worker

I don't call myself a "Christian Social Worker", that implies that I practice social work from a Christian perspective, like a "Christian Counselor".

I don't push my religious views on anyone.

Now to your statement. I said exaggerate, not lying. I look at all the stories that came out of NOLA immediately afterwards, and yet no one has been able to provide evidence of things like all the bodies in the convention center, etc.

I have no doubt that things were hell in NOLA.

But to say it was like a "concentration camp" is to minimize concentration camps. Were people gassed in showers? Were people used for medical experiments. Were people forced into labor?

I don't think that our government dealt with NOLA well at all. And I believe that people were mistreated, and are still getting screwed by FEMA and *.

I just don't know that it does their cause any good to testify before congress in what sounds like exaggerations.

Thanks

[Catrina]

34. I watched American citizens die on television for five days and saw

their bodies floating in filthy water, lying on the street, old people dead in wheelchairs, in unbearable heat, with many begging for help, for five, long days with NO help and their plight would never have been known had the press not, for once, found their consciences and joined the victims finally in demanding help from their government which came only after they were shamed before the entire world.

Had we not seen those bodies floating on US streets, and some of those women had testified to it before Congress, they would definitely have been accused of lying or exaggerating. Who would have believed such a horror could have happened in this country?

I don't need to hear or read the testimony of those women. I remember what I saw, and nothing they could have said in those hearings could tell me anything that could horrify me more than what I know, what millions around the world know, about this government's criminal neglect of its own people.

How many died in that hurricane? We are told approximately 1,300, but over 6000 are still missing, including over 1000 children.

If they did exagerate, maybe the horrors they witnessed might account for a certain amount of trauma, or maybe they were telling the truth. Other people have reported on the being treated like detainees. I find it very believable, to be honest.

[SPKrazy]

35. I saw the horror on TV too

I volunteered to help evacuees coming into Ft. Chaffee Arkansas for several days.

I heard horror stories from them too.

Nothing about concentration camps.

My point is that comparing it to concentration camps where the captors are responsible for the horrors and the deaths in a malicious and intentional way. (Which I don't believe the government is. After volunteering and seeing the clusterfuck they had just processing and dealing with people, I don't think anyone in charge knew what they were doing, rather than anyone in charge was malevolantly orchestrating terror)

I don't doubt there are 6000 people dead.

I don't doubt that there was more the local, state, and feds could have done to evacuate the people before the hurricane.

I think the whole thing is atrocious, an example of how poorly managed DHS is and FEMA, and how unprepared we are for disasters, much less terror attacks.

[Catrina]

41. Well, not all concentration camps resulted in people being

killed by their captors. Many were used to confine people who were considered to be possible threats.

I read a long report written by a journalist who spent days in NO after the hurricane. I believe it was in Rolling Stone magazine. His description of how people were treated is very similar to that of the people who appeared before Congress.

I also do not believe that what happened was 'mismanagement', I believe it was deliberate. They had days to prepare for this. A category 4 or 5 hurricane headed towards NO was regarded as one of the top three major threats to this country, ahead of a terrorist attack because of the potential disastrous effects it would have. So, there is simply no excuse for the refusal of this administration to take action for five days after the hurricane hit.

What Bush did have time to do was to authorize the handing out of no-bid contracts to his friends. Then, to make sure of maximum profits for them, he had time to rescind the Davis Bacon Act. How on earth did he have time to take care of this when people were dying?

It was criminal negligence, and it resulted in probably thousands of deaths. This is why they will not deal with the thousands who are still missing. Bodies are still being found, left there to rot for months now. What kind of government treats their citizens this way?

Then there are those who blame the local government. If the local government was negligent, that is all the more reason why the Federal government should have taken action.

There are two ways to judge this administration. Either they were incompetent beyond belief, or their non-action was deliberate. If it was the former, they all should have been fired immediately. If it was the latter, they should be prosecuted. And if the American people tolerate either, then we deserve the kind of government we have.

It certainly demonstrated that this administration can not be trusted with the security of the American people. But then, they proved that when they ignored all warnings before 9/11.

But regarding the claims of the witnesses before Congress? If they were confined anywhere, at the point of guns, in a concentrated area, I think the comparison to Concentration Camps is understandable. They were victims, not the enemy. Although I have noticed a tendency in this president and his supporters to view the American people as the enemy, especially those who may disagree with them.

Btw, I do admire you for the work you do ~ those poor people must have felt very relieved when they finally met people who were there to help them and who showed them kindness, after what they had been through.

Last week I read of a family of evacuees who were found dead. It was a murder-suicide, the report said. They were facing eviction with nowhere to go. This is not the way a civilized country treats its citizens. But thank god there are people like you, and all the others who volunteered to help, otherwise many of us would lose faith in human beings. :-)

[SPKrazy]

46. I agree with most of what you say

I think the "mismanagement" is a combination of criminal negligence and good ol' boy cronyism incompetence.

The problem is how to separate the two, when they seem to run parallel to each other, and are often indistinguishable from the other.

I didn't vote for these jokers in the * administration, and I don't believe that a majority of Americans did EITHER time (00 or 04)

However, we live in a country with a moderate to conservative "mainstream" corporate controlled media, and the truth is rarely, if ever told to us.

I still don't believe that the comparisons of NOLA to a "concentration camp" are accurate, and that to describe them that way creates a characature in the minds of the sleeping masses of NOLA victims.
I'm sure than many people there were treated horribly. They were ignored for 5 days as you say.
They were scared, threatened by their own citizens, as well as law enforcement, and eventually the military there. The military is never really a good match to deal with American citizens in the aftermath of a disaster. They are a large and mobile group that can do certain things, but their job is that of being soldiers, and not social workers, or Red Cross/Salvation Army volunteers, and I think it is a bad mission match to use them in that capacity as they are so often used these days.

I am certainly not an apologist for the major clusterfuck that was the aftermath of NOLA Katrina done by "you're doing a heckuva job Brownie". There may have been deliberate delays. Certainly the crap about getting water to the people in trucks that never made it to NOLA because they were ordered to go other places; or the firemen who volunteered only to spend 2 days in FEMA training; or any other insane things that happened. I think the way people were scattered all over the country afterwards was deliberate. A way to eliminate a Democratic stronghold, NOLA in Louisiana. (Right now the inhabiting population I read is only about 100 K people) I think that the threats to bulldoze the homes and neighborhoods where people don't return to is terrible, and criminal, but probably legal in this corporate owned country of America.

So I don't think we disagree on principle, we both seem to agree that this was/is a terrible catastrophe that isn't over yet. That there was/is criminal negligence. I believe a great deal of incompetence as well. And that people were mistreated at every step of the way. (An example of how evacuees were treated here is that they were told as they disembarked at Ft. Chaffee, Arkansas, that they were at "their new home". Then the next day they went through with bull horns telling everybody they were being moved out of there. The end result was that they were moved into more manageable groups, and eventually moved into their own places and out of temporary camps. They were mislead, which I think added to their trauma.)

The scary thing about NOLA to me is how quickly civil order broke down. Police left their posts and the remaining police were overwhelmed and freaked out. The national guard that was at the superdome apparently were too freaked out by the crowds to deal with them. Communication broke down immediately (cell phones are not a good choice when all your towers and lines are damaged)

It is obvious that we have no leadership on the disaster recovery issue. It is also true that NOLA evacuation is the largest single evacuation of US citizens ever attempted. The fact that 80% were evacuated prior to the hurricane is evidence that they had some plan. The fact that 20% were abandoned is evidence that they had no plan for those who didn't have the money or means to get out.

thanks

[CottonBear]

38. I apologize for labeling you incorrectly. I'm Sorry.

I do, however, disagree that the witnesses were exaggerating. I watched the whole hearing twice. During the hurricane and the aftermath, I kept up with all of the blogs and the Interdictor website and talked to my in-laws (once we could contact them) and I believe them and those women regarding what happened and what went down.

My husband is a NOLA native and his family went through the hurricane in NOLA, St. Tammany and in MS. His sister still doesn't have her home repaired. His cousin's house was flooded. Others were rescued from rooftops on the MS Gulf Coast. It is really bad there. His sister is a Republican and she said they had little to no help.

We are going down in February. We have to wait to go until her house is repaired. They can't stay in the bedrooms yet.

You are to be admired for your work w/ the NOLA evacuees. :)

Peace. CB

[SPKrazy]

47. Thanks, and I hope that your family is able to get things together

again soon.

Terrible tragedy.

[babsbunny]

21. Thank You For Your Post!

I love the Martin Luther King Quote!

[Trish1168]

23. They blew the levees....denied aid...forced martial law...

sent them to prison camps.

We know we are fascist, but how many times over do they need to prove it? It seems like the ONLY people who don't get it are those in congress.

The president (thru the signing order) just told them he's going to ignore their laws, and yet they still have their heads up their asses.

Or maybe they do get it, and approve. But I prefer to think they're the minority.

[liberal43110]

28. The levees were not blown up

The levees and canals breached in three places: 2 areas were majority black neighborhoods and 1 was white. What happened was EVERYONE's worst-case scenario. There was no one behind the scenes secretly plotting to bomb the levees. Almost the entire city flooded, and geology does not favor white people.

[SPKrazy]

33. Besides, the danger of the levees breaching was not new news

It was years of blowing off fixing them in favor of spending the money elsewhere (including Iraq on the federal level, and crooked politicians on the local level)

New Orleans was just waiting for the right circumstances to destroy it.

Actually I remember reading that a tropical storm could have flooded the city without breaching the levees if it sat over the area and rained buckets, the pump system would have overloaded and they would have had flooding on a mass scale.

It lies below sea level, in what used to be wetlands. Whoever thought that was a good idea, to drain the wetlands and build a city surrounded by river, lake, and the gulf on the southeast end was insane to begin with.

[SPKrazy]

30. Blew the levees? I don't know about that.

They didn't get assistance to the people in a timely fashion.

They have been denied aid, even those that paid for flood insurance through FEMA are getting screwed.

They weren't sent to prison camps. Most of the people were taken into communities like the one I live in after they were processed through processing points so that they could be given some assistance.

I've seen community agencies in my community bend over backwards to assist Katrina and Rita evacuees.

I don't know whether martial law was actually declared, but in effect it probably was used, just as it is to some extent after any natural disaster, in the disaster area. Mainly to keep out the "looky loos", etc. Try getting into an area after a tornado if you don't have business there, there will usually be armed national guardsmen there.

[chalky]

24. kicking.

n/t

[FreedomAngel82]

26. She kicked ass!

[samhsarah]

32. thanks n/t

[nicknameless]

36. Kick

Thank god these people at least got a hearing. They have been so clearly plotted against.
Un-effing-believable.

(Recommended earlier)

[Digit]

37. Kicked and recommended!

[frustrated_lefty]

39. Regarding the dogs.....

The conditions at the San Antonio shelters were a far cry from those in "concentration camps." When we initially arrived at the shelter for processing, all personal belongings had to be examined by dogs for drugs before we were allowed into the shelter.

We were told guns and drugs were not going to be allowed in the shelter. Evacuees would have the opportunity to discard any of these items prior to being examined. It was as simple as that. Several people chose to leave anyway, and were provided with directions to the nearest bus stops.

The shelters were a godsend and the people of San Antonio were generous and caring beyond belief. Perhaps conditions at other shelters were actually horrible. Many of the complaints along these lines, though, I suspect come from people picking an easy target for releasing pent up outrage and frustration.

I'm going to shut up now. Thinking about Katrina at any length makes me numb and detached to the point of staring at blank walls for hours on end.

fl

"Find me a dead cloud and a sharp piece of science
I want to see the skeleton of weather
And let me map all maps we have mistaken for the world
And learn by heart the timetable of dice
And in our clutching, self-invented steps see
An accidental grace... A choreography"

--Alan Moore

[Swamp Rat]

40. kick!

:cry:

[babydollhead]

43. kick

[Marie26]

45. Kick! nt