When the levee breaks
September 2005

by Eric Bond, publisher

“If it keeps on raining, the levee’s gonna break,” sang Memphis Minnie in a heartbreaking blues song later made popular by Led Zeppelin in the 1970s.
“I work on the levee, mama, both night and day. I work on the levee, mama, both night and day. I work so hard to keep the water away.”
That song has been a chilling refrain in my mind throughout the final days of production on this issue of the Voice.
The television has been running nonstop all week in our office as we watched Hurricane Katrina spiral into disaster, and then catastrophe. As the death and psychological toll in New Orleans rose higher each day among those trapped by the flood, even the usually well-controlled news reporters became rattled. News anchors, hurricane survivors, former bureaucrats, and the mayor of New Orleans all repeated the same thing: “How can this be happening?”
The only people who seemed to think that the relief efforts were going well were the directors of that endeavor: Michael Chertoff, director of Homeland Security; Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency; and George W. Bush, President of the United States. Their apparent obliviousness to the plight of fellow Americans signaled what many of us have long felt: This administration is dangerously solipsistic. These are not public servants.
Early on, Brown, the director of FEMA, blamed those stranded in New Orlean for their plight—even as they drowned. Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff argued that the facts that Americans saw on their TV screens were “rumors.” And Bush did not seem to think that the disaster was a priority—when it should have been his highest.
The Bush administration failed New Orleans and the United States in at least four ways.
  1. Bush has diverted National Guard resources that are designated specifically for disasters. Precious time was wasted; people died while National Guard units from around the country assembled and waited to be coordinated into the relief effort. Instead of providing defense and support at home Gulf Coast Guardsmen were in Iraq, along with all manner of equipment necessary to relief. Emergency crews—the people who know the community best and can jump into relief most readily—are working at diminished capacity around the country because of the War in Iraq. Many of their ranks have been called into service in a foreign land.
  2. As has been mentioned repeatedly over the past week, Bush ignored and underfunded levee reconstruction, in clear disregard for the opinions of disaster experts—FEMA experts!—that the weakness of the New Orleans levees posed one of the three greatest dangers to citizens of the United States. In order to pay for his war and his tax cuts, funding for levees was reduced and the poor of New Orleans have paid, many with their lives.
  3. George W. Bush is not, alone, responsible for climate change. We all are. But Bush does deny that it is a real phenomenon. It is commonly held among climatologists that the power and frequency of hurricanes has increased as a result of warming oceans. The gulf temperature was two degrees higher than usual, which turned Katrina into a hurricane on steroids as it approached the gulf coast. Bush is failing to lead on this issue. And as we now see, climate change is already claiming lives.
  4. Bush does not take seriously the basic matters of government. He treats our government like he’s picking players for a neighborhood basketball game. He rewards his buddies instead of choosing the best experts to head up such important positions as the director of FEMA or Homeland Security. Chertoff and Brown do not have backgrounds in coordinating emergency situations, and they showed it.
Watching New Orleans drown has been a horrific experience. It is an outrage. Congress should call for the resignation of Chertoff, Brown, and Bush.