Monday August 29 2005 Black America got her own 9-11. She was hit with an act of terrorism in New Orleans that was just as devastating if not more than what took place when those Twin Towers were felled by planes… Yes, you read that correctly.. Most people mistakenly believe that the city of New Orleans was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Lets make sure folks understand this once and for all.. Much of neighboring Mississippi was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina which hit the state with its full level 5 impact.
New Orleans which was initially in the path of Hurricane Katrina was spared at the last moment… What hit New Orleans were winds that were around level 3.. The devastation that took place in New Orleans was the city’s levees broke and the entire 9th Ward and other parts of New Orleans was flooded. Did the winds break those levees? Was it the surge of rushing water? Thats what’s been suggested. That’s what then President George Bush told us.. Well here’s the deal.. New Orleans was hit by several acts of terrorism. It started on Monday August 29th 2009 when those levees burst open.
When Kanye West spoke his mind…”George Bush doesn’t care about Black people.”
We attended the International Tribunal for Hurricane Katrina and Ritain 2007 and heard 4 days worth of testimony from residents who were still displaced from their homes. This tribunal was one that was convened by former Congress woman Cynthia McKinney and a number of organizations in New Orleans. There were a panel of judges who came from all over the world who listened in shock as horror story after horror story was told of what went down in the aftermath of Katrina. The most telling testimonies came from resident after resident who talked about hearing a number of large explosions near where the levees were breached. Talk to the residents of the Lower 9th and they will tell you emphatically those levees were blown up. After hearing so many speak and documentaries made, where its been emphatically suggested that 9-11 was an inside job, why wouldn’t the blowing up of the levee fall under the same cloud?
But if that’s hard to swallow, lets look at the testimonies that came from engineers who did independent studies. Professor Robert Bea who headed up the engineering team from UC Berkeley spoke at the Tribunal and spoke for a couple of hours where he painstakenly showed how the levees were designed in such a way that they were ‘destined to fail’. So negligent were the designs that one could only conclude that it was deliberate-hence an act of domestic terrorism.
We heard the horric accounts of police shootings, and vigilante killings of Blacks by roving mobs of whites. Former Black Panther Malik Raheem put together a documentary where he captured white residents bragging how they had gone on pheasant hunts to shoot Blacks seeking refuge in one of the unflooded parts of the city. He estimated there were more than 200 killings. He showed bodies of Blacks who were shot in Algiers in his documentary ‘Welcome to New Orleans.’
Again, the terrorism experienced came in the aftermath of Katrina here entire communities mainly poor Blacks were run out of the city with most never to return. I recall when San Francisco and the Bay Area was devastated by the 1989 earthquake. The entire Marina district in San Francisco home top the wealthy was destroyed. Within a year those houses were fixed. The Bay Bridge that collapsed was fixed. The 880 highway that collapsed was leveled and eventually replaced.. But the homes in West Oakland where the poor lived still had visible damage 5 years after the quake. In New Orleans 5 years after Katrina we still have the Lower 9th is disrepair and many of the folks still scattered around the country. If thats not terrorism what is?Something to ponder…
Mos Def – “Katrina Klap (Dollar Day)”
