Two Years After Katrina: Race, Political Relavence, and Survival in America

This diary was originally written once the lessons of Hurricane Katrina had sunk in a bit. This week is the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Two years ag...I remember watching on the weather channel as a category 5 hurricane was bearing down on the Gulf Coast and thinking, "THAT is going to be really bad."

But no one in the Bush Administration seemed to think that. They thought about celebrating John McCain's birthday, buying shoes in NYC, vacationing...while one hell of a hurricane was bearing down on America's Gulf Coast.

The people of America's Gulf coast didn't matter to the Bush Administration. Those people we watched die of neglect in New Orleans died because Republican America considered them insignificant...worthless...useless.

I think the political strength of any group comes down to three things: money, votes and volunteerism. These three things win elections, so they get the attention of both political parties. The low voter turnout among blacks is a problem, and I think this low voter turnout hurts the community. Neither party puts that large a premium on the black community because of this low voter turnout. Of course it is more complicated than that--there are vested interests that don't want a change in the status quo. But imagine the effect it would have if there was a nearly 100% voter turnout in the black community. In some areas like NYC and Virginia, for example, this would make the black community very important in elections and their needs would become higher priorities for both political parties.

Political participation leads to political relevance. What I didn't quite realize until hurricane Katrina drove it home for all of America was that political relevance is required for outright survival in Bush America. If you aren't relevant, your life means nothing. You may be left to die in a hurricane, or sent to die in Iraq or allowed to die of AIDS or executed in a justice system that remains flawed when it comes to providing equal protection to all races and classes. In short, the groups in America who lack adequate political relevance face outright death because of their political irrelevance. This was illustrated even more explicitly when a former cabinet member and current radio show host, Republican Bill Bennett, publicly declared that, "if you wanted to reduce crime, you could - if that were your sole purpose - abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." (see Congressman John Conyer's diary on this). This is the Republican view of Americans who are not relevant to them.

The direct result of this attitude was that while New Orleans drowned:




George Bush and John McCain were partying:



There can be no clearer manifestation of the Republican attitude towards poor and minority Americans than that!

A related manifestation of this is the Republican attitude towards immigration. This attitude was illustrated by some graffiti I saw on the wall in a bathroom in NYC sometime back. One person had written:

"I hate white people."

Charming enough, but to me even more disturbing was someone else's response:

"Then go back to your own country."

The fundamental assumption of the respondent was that anyone who wasn't white wasn't American. THAT, in a brief bathroom wall exchange, is the nature of race relations in America under Bush. The Bush Republicans have a basic assumption that there is a correct American race, religion and belief system and that anyone who does not conform to that correct ideal is somehow less than a true American. That Republican ideal is white and Christian. In Bush America, if you are not white and Christian, you are suspect. You are racially profiled, you are told by Bill O'Reilly to "move to Israel" if you don't like public Christmas displays, you don't get faith based funding, and you are left to die when the levees break.

This Republican ideal of what it means to be an American ignores, of course, that whites are all immigrants to America and that for many white families who came in the 19th and 20th centuries, there were many native American, Hispanic and black families here LONG before their asses immigrated to the US.

The biggest lesson of 2005 may have been this: If you aren't important to the Bush administration you are expendable and are possibly even suspect of being un-American. It is thus of considerable importance for ALL Americans to exert their political relevance.

How do we address the rising racism, anti-Semitism and hatred in America? There is no easy answer. It took this nation nearly 100 years and a Civil War to decide that slavery was unacceptable. In a nation based on the concept of "all men are created equal," that SHOULD have been a no-brainer. So people had to create stupid ideas of what it mean to be a "man" so that they could make entire races less equal than others. The early concepts of evolution even went so far as to hypothesize that whites, blacks and asians were descended from different apes. That is how far people even in America went to justify slavery and racism.

It took another 100 years and the martyrdom of several wonderful people, including Martin Luther King, jr., to get America to admit that every American has the right to vote. Yet we still haven't fully realized that admission that every American has the right to vote as we realize that systematic voter fraud and intimidation affected the outcomes of the National elections in 2000 and 2004 as well as the Georgia elections in 2002. And we are faced with the implementation of election "reform" where we might vote on machines where reliability and fairness are sacrificed for convenience. Will that take another 100 years before the hard earned work of Martin Luther King, jr. goes from legal reality to actual reality?

I am a big fan of empowerment. Again, in American politics there are three things that matter most: money, votes and activism. Money and votes get respect. I firmly believe that the higher the voter turnout of a neighborhood, the more respect and more benefits they get from their government. Poverty and being the constant target of racism seems to inspire apathy. But the people who need to vote the most are those very people who have been abandoned by their government. Poor and minority communities need to vote. Why? Because unless they suddenly get enough money to get noticed by politicians, then votes are the only bargaining chip they have short of rioting. Any neighborhood that has high voter turnout gets noticed. Any community that has high voter turnout gets noticed. Any group, be it racial, religious or ideological, that delivers votes (like the NRA and so-called "moral majority") gets noticed.

I add a third layer to empowerment. Money, votes and...activism. Groups that are known to deliver petitions, write letters, participate in boycotts, shout the loudest also get noticed. The squeaky wheel gets the grease and the right wing have turned being the squeaky wheel into an art form. They can, with a straight face, complain of being persecuted even when they control all national media, all levels of the Federal government, and most state governments. They can sound like the squeaky wheel even when they dominate every aspect of American society. They have become so squeaky they are positively whiny these days. The left can barely make a coherent squeak even when people are dying in New Orleans because they are seen as unimportant by the Bush Administration. This has to change. We have to be the activists who shout louder, volunteer more, vote more, petition more, write more letters, make more phone calls and have more boycotts.

If you don't have the money to get noticed, get the activism and votes in your neighborhood to get noticed.

So, what do I recommend people do? It doesn't matter where you live, who you are or how red your area is. Your survival depends on your political relevance and your political relevance depends on the affluence, the level of activism and the voter turnout in your area. It isn't easy to affect the affluence of your neighborhood. But you are a community member with friends and family around you. You are a potential catalyst for activating your community, which in turn, over years, can be a catalyst for raising your community's relevance within your city, state and nation. In some ways that is what my newsletter is all about--helping people be that catalyst for their community. Katrina and the Iraq show us that political irrelevance can mean death. The poor blacks died in New Orleans because they were irrelevant to our government. The poor of America and Iraq die in the Iraq War because they are irrelevant to our government. In Bush America, if you are not politically relevant, your life may be threatened.

So, reach out to your community and give them the message that they better make themselves relevant to the government or they may be the next hurricane victims left to die. Start a local Democracy for America group. Get your neighbors joining you running for Democratic County Committee or any other local positions. Saturate your neighborhood with voter registration drives. But don't do voter registration just because you want Dems to win. Get your entire community to register and vote because that is the path to empowerment and political relevance.

Finally, this year I want to add another aspect of empowerment: insurance. The insurance industry has hit the victims of Katrina almost as hard as the original hurricane. People are being forced out of what was left of their homes, forced to sell to rich developers who want to build casinos and luxury hotels, because insurance companies are refusing to cover people. In Mississippi the State Insurance Commissioner has been helping the insurance companies rather than the citizens of the state. This has led to a grassroots effort, led by Democracy for America, to elect a grassroots progressive, Gary Anderson, as Inusrance Commissioner of Mississippi. This might be the last chance for Mississippi victims of Katrina to get justice. And so far Gary Anderson has won the Democratic Primary! Next is the general election in Novemeber 2007. Help Gary Anderson give justice to Mississippi.