[NYTr] Katrina: Shouting Underwater

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Nation - Srep 10, 2007 issue
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20070910&s=mosley


Shouting Underwater

by WALTER MOSLEY

We are coming up on the two-year mark since the Katrina debacle in
Louisiana and Mississippi. I hesitate to call this date an anniversary
because the word implies, in some way, a celebration, a birth. What we
are scratching on the calendar is more like a notch on a raw
gravestone, a count of the days and years that have passed without a
reckoning for those who died, those who lost loved ones and for a city
that is still in critical condition.

Not only did our government fail to answer the call of its most
vulnerable citizens during that fateful period; it still fails each and
every day to rebuild, redeem and rescue those who are ignored because
of their poverty, their race, their passage into old age.

The disaster named after the hurricane is not confined to the areas
affected. Every emergency room, empty bank account and outsourced
life's work could be named. We live in a country rife with ignored and
condemned poverty. The rich, high on their great corporate steeds, ride
over us believing that they are out of the reach of global warming and
its symptoms, of terrorism and dwindling natural resources. When
government officials tell them to evacuate, they drive their cars,
board their corporate jets or simply climb to higher ground with ease.
At this very moment they are looking down on Baghdad and New Orleans,
Pakistan and Sudan, you and me. The feeling of invulnerability that
these people have is unfounded, but nonetheless it makes them reckless.
They take chances and cut corners believing that everything will come
out all right. Their delusions of grandeur and ultimate power put us in
ever more dire straits.

If we call ourselves Americans (and mean it), then we are all victims
of Katrina. If we breathe the air or eat fresh fruit, if we call on our
cellphones, drink water from a plastic bottle or just nibble on a
chocolate bar, then we are Katrina; we are the rising waters around the
ankles of this world.

When the day comes to mark off the two-year point since the deluge
descended on the Gulf of Mexico, we should take care not to make too
much noise. We shouldn't march in that shadow of time or even protest.
Rather, we should sit alone in a room with our imaginations open to
feel what they experienced on that day: the waters rising, rising and
us climbing stairs and ladders, chairs and fire escapes; sitting on
rooftops while bodies float by; calling out to passing boats and
helicopters that go by in mute witness; being pressed to the roof by
the rising tide and being engulfed shouting, shouting out for the ones
we love underwater, unheard; the darkness swirling around us as we die
with no one coming to save us, or themselves.

Two years have passed and Americans are still displaced, waters are
still rising. Wars are raging and we are waiting for a day to vote for
a man or a woman who works, not even in secret, for the rich. We wait
for this man or woman to lead us out from the disaster like chattel. We
feel sorry for the victims as so many felt sorry for Rodney King, not
realizing that his defeat was our loss; the blows that rained down on
him were also aimed at our freedom, our ability and feeling of
responsibility to fight back. Two years have passed and the dead are
still dead and the dying are still dying. The clouds gather like angry
anthropomorphic gods, and we stumble and fall unable to make a stand or
lend a hand or protest all the victims in ghettos, retirement homes,
prison wards and dark skins.

Two years have passed and we are still exporting democracy while we
continue living under the semibenevolent oligarchy of international
corporations and their candidates. This two-year point measures how far
we have sunk under the weight of the rich and their political
flunkies--while so many of us still celebrate them as if they were pop
stars. We experience the silence of drowning men and women. We call out
and are not heard. We believe in systems and people who have no faith
in us. We perpetuate the rising temperatures and waters and hatred and
feelings of hopelessness. New Orleans's defeat is also our defeat. Its
closed schools are a metaphor for our minds and our futures. We see the
storm's passage but we don't see it coming. But it is coming. And there
are no leaders, no corporations, no benevolent billionaires who are
going to save our grandmothers and our babies. We must unite outside of
the systems that lie like fast food heaped on golden platters at our
feet. We must organize at the ground level, where the water has already
begun to rise.