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Eva
Paterson: Katrina keeps on taking
By
Eva Paterson
Published Friday, December 2, 2005
The Sacramento Bee
The
federal government may think nothing of casting people to the
streets as we enter the holidays and the coldest months of the
year, but Americans should not stand for it.
Public
outrage has already forced the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA) to move back its wildly unrealistic Dec. 1 cutoff of hurricane
victims' hotel stays. In some states, the deadline has been extended
to Dec. 15, while in others, it may be shifted to Jan. 7.
Either
way, FEMA is about to make 50,000 people homeless during the winter
-- and the vast majority of them are people of color.
The
federal government's botched relief effort -- from its willful
neglect in the days after Katrina to this most recent decision
to oust evacuees from hotels -- dramatizes one of the great racial
tragedies of our time.
FEMA's
latest antics are a powerful snapshot of 21st century racism.
Gone are the dogs and water hoses, but they are now replaced with
breached levees and broken promises. The message remains the same:
The federal government decides when to protect its citizens and
who will be worthy of protection.
FEMA's
very different responses to Hurricane Charley in 2004 and to the
Katrina disaster show these gross disparities. Days before Charley
reached Florida's shores, truckloads of water and supplies were
pre-positioned for rapid deployment. Two days after that hurricane,
President Bush and his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, were on the ground,
handing out ice to the primarily white survivors.
In
contrast, the world watched in horror and disbelief while the
richest and most powerful country on Earth struggled to mount
an adequate response to Katrina. Many of its victims were poor,
elderly or sick, and many were people of color. Yet FEMA was ill-prepared
and lackadaisical in its response.
The
federal government must make good on the lip service the president
gave on Sept. 15, admitting that the "deep, persistent poverty"
in the region "has roots in a history of racial discrimination.
We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action. So let
us rise above the legacy of inequality."
We
must continue to demand bold action from our leaders. The nation
needs more money for disaster relief, and our government must
restore funding to federal agencies responsible for fortifying
the nation and administering relief programs.
Congress
should also expand its hearings to examine how race and poverty
played into the disaster response.
And
we have to come up with a solution for housing hurricane victims
that does not force them to the streets during the coldest months
of the year. Kicking evacuees out of housing during the onset
of winter is staggering in its cruelty.
About
the writer:
*
Eva Paterson is founder and president of the Equal Justice Society
(www.equaljusticesociety.org), a San Francisco-based national
racial justice organization. She wrote this for Progressive Media
Project, 409 East Main St., Madison, WI 53703; e-mail: pmproj@progressive.org;
Web site: www.progressive.org. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune
Information Services.
Link
to article on sacbee.com:
http://sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/13924274p-14761156c.html
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