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Katrina's Double Penalty    [

    Aftermath
    By G rard Dupuy
    Lib ration

    Tuesday 29 August 2006

    Hurricane Katrina held out a mirror to America in which it does not like to see itself. Apart from Bush's deficient reaction, the catastrophe showed the reverse side of the fa ade of American prosperity. Suddenly, its rejects, numerous and black, floated up to the surface of the muddy torrents. Then the storm moved away. Bush has been permanently destabilized, but Katrinagate has not carried him off. For its part and in spite of alarmist forecasts, the economy stood up well to the shock of Katrina and the 2004-2005 flurry of hurricanes. On the ground, however, many wounds remain open.

    First of all, half the inhabitants have taken off, many forever, especially among those who had the means to live elsewhere (and above sea level). That poses the challenge for the New Orleans authorities - who are black and Democratic - of rebuilding a whole city, while leaving half uninhabited and knowing that the city is deprived of an important part of its talents (even the musical ones!). Washington has mobilized significant capital, but the "billions for reconstruction" have provoked virulent controversy.

    In spite of its prodigious digestion capacities, the American machine will therefore continue to have problems overcoming the hurricane's aftermath. Afro-American filmmaker and activist Spike Lee has entitled his documentary on Katrina "When the Levee Broke." A question of looking earthward (the levees were poorly maintained) rather than toward the heavens. A question also of reminding us of another levee, a social levee, by which one part of America keeps another part out of the way and prefers not to see it.

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    Katrina's Double Penalty
    By Corine Lesnes
    Le Monde

    Monday 28 August 2006

    While Hurricane Katrina was approaching New Orleans, the Society for the Protection of Animals prepared for the evacuation. Each of 263 dogs and cats was photographed. A tracking system allowed their identification even if their files disappeared. Saturday, August 27, 2005, the animals were placed in air conditioned vehicles. During the night, they arrived safe and sound in Houston, 24 hours ahead of the catastrophe.

    The 6,500 detainees in the municipal prison did not fare so well. Eric Balaban and Tom Jawetz, two ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) lawyers who just published an account of how the catastrophe unfolded at the prison - which is based on the testimony of 1,300 detainees and guards - don't hesitate to make the comparison: unlike the dogs and cats, the prisoners were abandoned. Their files were destroyed. Months later, detainees who should have been freed were still in prison.

    Before Katrina, New Orleans' incarceration rate was twice the national average. The Orleans Parish Prison occupied 12 center city buildings less than 2 kilometers away from the Superdome. Overcrowded, for the most part it sheltered petty offenders awaiting judgment as well as the authors of driving infractions, minors, and murderers sent there by the State Penitentiary. 90% black.

    On August 28, 2005, when Mayor Ray Nagin ordered residents to leave the city, the detainees were exempted from the municipal order. Confronted with a Category 5 hurricane, Sheriff Marlin Gusman did not deem it necessary to evacuate the prison. "We have emergency generators. We have personnel. We'll guard the prisoners where they're supposed to be," he explained to CNN. Instead of evacuating, the police continued to fill up the prison.

    On Saturday, August 27, 23-year-old Raphael Schwarz, a cook, was at the "Midsummer Parade," the celebration that reminds New Orleans residents only six months remain before Carnival. He was counting on leaving the city that night with some friends. The police arrested him for drunkenness. "I wasn't even drunk," he asserts today on the phone. "I asked them whether they didn't have anything better to do when everyone was trying to leave the city. They told me they would have preferred being elsewhere too, taking care of their families. They were nervous." For having disputed the fifty dollar fine, Raphael Schwarz found himself in custody, then at Unit B III of Building Templeman III.

    Behind the walls, the prisoners were also nervous. The telephones that allowed them to communicate with their families had been cut for several days. Monday morning, right after the hurricane had passed, the water began to rise. The guards distributed buckets and mop cloths. They announced that breakfast could not be served. A revolt was declared. The guards used incapacitating gas to return prisoners to their cells.

    The water rose over 6 feet, clear at first, then ever murkier as it carried along garbage and excrement. The locks on certain cells unlocked automatically. The detainees who got out first helped the others. On the lower level, some already had water up to their neck. Some of the guards - and notably the women, fearing for their security - deserted. In Raphael Schwarz's cell, the door could not be opened. The eight prisoners saw the remaining guards transfer other detainees to the basketball court. Then there was silence. No one came to look for them. Monday night, the generators, flooded in their turn, stopped working. The eight men spent three days watching the water level, stabilized at 25 inches at the bottom of their cell. Nothing to eat or drink. By tearing it away, they succeeded in removing a bar of metal from a bed frame with the intention of removing the window bars, but the work was exhausting and they just barely succeeded in waving bits of orange uniform in an attempt to draw the attention of helicopter patrols.

    The prisoners had concluded a pact, Raphael Schwarz relates: not to harm one another. There was no battle, but there were nervous breakdowns. And moments of despair when one of them "told us to sit in a circle and take one another's hands."

    "They Tried to Drown Me."

    Thursday night, the men remarked on waves in the water. Someone must have entered the building. It was an assistant to the Sheriff. She tried to rescue a detainee who was on the roof with a broken leg after jumping from another unit. She believed that B III had been long empty. Raphael Schwarz was evacuated to the Hunt House of Correction. The prisoners were piled up in a football field; many had knives, but at least the air was free. It took the police another ten days to take fingerprints. He wasn't released until October 1.

    One year later, the cook has become an electrician to "help with reconstruction." He considers that he "was done a serious injustice" and finds himself talking about that time as "when they tried to drown me." The prison reopened in October. Only four buildings out of twelve are operational, but they already hold 1,600 detainees. Sheriff Gusman was re-elected in the spring. "People are very worried about the present crime rate," says Tulane University Law Professor Katherine Mattes. When we questioned her, Mrs. Mattes was drafting a petition demanding that the court require the Sheriff to publish a census list of the detainees in his custody. Law students at Tulane are still finding prisoners who were "mislaid" after being evacuated. The first was 50-year-old Greg Davis, identified in March in a prison in Shreveport, eight months after the hurricane, although he was supposed to be released the week before.

    There could be a hundred of these prisoners. They haven't seen a judge or a lawyer, since, with their identities lost, the system does not know who they are. They don't know exactly what prison term they are doing nor why they are still in prison. New Orleans has given a name to these extra prison terms: "Katrina time."