Ellington

Last week, the House released "A Failure of Initiative," a report on the government's failures in Katrina. The report details the "organizational paralysis" that bottled up critical information for hours, even days, as information awaited "confirmation" by one agency after another.

As useful as the report may be, its conclusions are distorted by the ongoing political struggle over what Katrina means. The report twists itself into knots arguing that the Democrats boycotting the committee did not matter, because the Republicans tried really, really hard to be fair.

Nevertheless, politics distort the report, especially through what we at the JFP like to call the "Mississippi Myth." This is the notion that Mississippi's response to Katrina was a success while Louisiana's was a failure. The report, which focuses at great length on failures in Louisiana, passes lightly over Mississippi.

Gov. Barbour has endlessly retold the story of how his National Guardsmen cleared Highway 49 from Hattiesburg to the Coast in seven hours of hard labor the day of the storm. He does not talk about the fact that, like Louisiana, Mississippi had no plan to evacuate people without cars from the Coast. He does not say it took more than a week for significant government assistance to reach Waveland, Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian, to say nothing of more remote areas. He praises churches for the Christian generosity they've shown in providing food and supplies, but he does not say that the churches stepped up because his government fell down.

There are, from what I can tell, two causes for the Mississippi Myth. One is that New Orleans offered an accessible stage for the mainstream media to dramatize the story, complete with rescue footage. It is not that assistance came more quickly to the storm's victims in Mississippi, but rather that they suffered in unrecorded obscurity.

The other cause is that Mississippi has become the success to Louisiana's failure, the self-reliance to Louisiana's dependence, the light to Louisiana's dark. That last code is part of why Mississippi has been celebrated, petty political advantage aside. The desperate, violent black horde that white America saw in New Orleans cries out (to white people) for someone else to sit on the other end of the racial see-saw.

For those looking for some way, any way, to blame the victims in New Orleans, Barbour volunteers the people of Mississippi, who are too busy taking care of business to "whine or mope around; they're not into victimhood," as the governor puts it. When Barbour talks about the country boy who got out there with his own chainsaw and cleared the road, he's not talking about a black man, and we all know it.

Never mind that most of the Katrina victims I've talked to in Mississippi are African American, or that white victims were every bit as helpless as the African Americans in the face of such devastation. Katrina didn't care about race, but we certainly do. It makes all the difference in the world in how we respond to Katrina. African Americans have no cataract in how they see Katrina's aftermath, which is why Bush's approval ratings among blacks have fallen to an astonishing 2 percent.

Now, the same "organizational paralysis" threatens the recovery effort. The governor's recovery commission deserves credit for embracing the New Urbanist plans produced by the Mississippi Renewal Forum. These plans call for reducing sprawl, making the beaches friendlier to pedestrians by providing public transportation and moving U.S. 90 north, and protecting the natural beauty of the Coast.

As impressive as these plans are, they have thus far had little influence over developments on the Coast. They are not binding on private developers, who have their own ideas for rebuilding.

In Biloxi, real estate prices have surged to four times their pre-Katrina level as casinos rebuild and expand on 19 new acres of Katrina-flattened land. This is a blessing for home owners, who can sell their property and rebuild elsewhere. It does nothing for lower-income residents but raise their rents. Now vulnerable communities on the Gulf Coast face a second storm, the frenzy of private development.

The plans are not even binding on the government. Ocean Springs Mayor Connie Moran was an early, enthusiastic supporter of the Renewal Forum's plans, particularly their vision of moving U.S. 90 north to free the beach of auto traffic. However, the Mississippi Department of Transportation insisted on building a new bridge for U.S. 90 in the exact same spot where the old bridge collapsed.

In fact, they insisted on making the bridge higher and wider, with exit ramps sweeping out over the beach. About the only concession MDOT made to the mayor was agreeing to decorate the bridge with fleur-de-lis. As the House report on Katrina makes clear, good plans are good for nothing if they are not implemented.

But the best way to understand what has gone wrong with the recovery effort is to talk to women like Bandaka Soule and Marissa Jones (see "Confusion Reigns,"). To MEMA and FEMA officials, the system works well. They have their organizational charts, so it's clear that FEMA's responsibility runs right up to this line and no further. To the women, no one will give them a straight answer, and both now fear that they may be made homeless a second time, not by an act of nature but by inaction, inter-agency squabbling and the appalling incompetence of government.

We are approaching a staggering sadness, one that will become a familiar scar if the recovery effort continues to falter, and that is the Katrina homeless. I fear that two years from now, we will be used to seeing the Katrina homeless panhandling. We will be accustomed, by then, to the dilapidated trailer parks that were never replaced by houses. As with Vietnam vets and the mentally ill, we will come to take our failure for granted. Let it not be so.

Previous Comments

ID

71461

Comment

Jesus Christ. That was good.

Author

Lori G

Date

2006-02-22T18:04:56-06:00

ID

71462

Comment

Yeah, we've got a new Editor's Note writer in da house. World, meet Brian Johnson.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2006-02-23T15:12:14-06:00

ID

71463

Comment

That was one of the best that I've seen on this topic- this guy is a keeper...

Author

Rico

Date

2006-02-25T11:54:05-06:00

ID

71464

Comment

Well, here's the no-shitter headline of the week after the Katrina aftermath, from the Ledge today: Half a year later, rebuilding efforts encountering snags Snags? Could they downplay the problems more right from the top of their big six-month package?

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2006-02-26T11:05:07-06:00

ID

71466

Comment

Baquan, you may well be hitting on the most censored story of last year. I believe strongly that Mr. Barbour got a pass due to his political party, and for no other reason.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2006-02-26T11:16:23-06:00

ID

71467

Comment

We are approaching a staggering sadness, one that will become a familiar scar if the recovery effort continues to falter, and that is the Katrina homeless. I fear that two years from now, we will be used to seeing the Katrina homeless panhandling. We will be accustomed, by then, to the dilapidated trailer parks that were never replaced by houses. As with Vietnam vets and the mentally ill, we will come to take our failure for granted. Let it not be so.(emphasis mine) I can't stand the thought of hurricane victims becoming another overlooked demographic. After America moves on to the next impending disaster, who will stand in the gap for them? There must be a way to do something.

Author

LatashaWillis

Date

2006-02-26T23:03:08-06:00