THE TWO AMERICAS
By Marjorie Cohn
TruthOut
Spetember 3, 2005
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090305Y.shtmlLast September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of
Cuba
with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were
evacuated to
higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed
20,000
houses, no one died.
What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson
Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and
specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in
the
community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to
go."
"Cuba's leaders go on TV and take charge," said Valdes. Contrast this
with
George W. Bush's reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina
hit
the Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a
TV
appearance and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a
scathing
editorial on Thursday, the New York Times said, "nothing about the
president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of
carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current
crisis."
"Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable" in Cuba, Valdes
said.
"Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have
family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood,
and
already know, for example, who needs insulin."
They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and
refrigerators, "so
that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their
stuff," Valdes observed.
After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations International Secretariat for
Disaster Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation.
ISDR
director Salvano Briceno said, "The Cuban way could easily be applied
to
other countries with similar economic conditions and even in countries
with
greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as
well as
Cuba does."
Our federal and local governments had more than ample warning that
hurricanes, which are growing in intensity thanks to global warming,
could
destroy New Orleans. Yet, instead of heeding those warnings, Bush set
about
to prevent states from controlling global warming, weaken FEMA, and cut
the
Army Corps of Engineers' budget for levee construction in New Orleans
by
$71.2 million, a 44 percent reduction.
Bush sent nearly half our National Guard troops and high-water Humvees
to
fight in an unnecessary war in Iraq. Walter Maestri, emergency
management
chief for Jefferson Paris in New Orleans, noted a year ago, "It appears
that
the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland
security and the war in Iraq."
An Editor and Publisher article Wednesday said the Army Corps of
Engineers
"never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in
Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal
tax
cuts - was the reason for the strain," which caused a slowdown of work
on
flood control and sinking levees.
"This storm was much greater than protection we were authorized to
provide,"
said Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager in the New Orleans
district
of the corps.
Unlike in Cuba, where homeland security means keeping the country
secure
from deadly natural disasters as well as foreign invasions, Bush has
failed
to keep our people safe. "On a fundamental level," Paul Krugman wrote
in
yesterday's New York Times, "our current leaders just aren't serious
about
some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war,
but
they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending
on
prevention measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice."
During the 2004 election campaign, vice presidential candidate John
Edwards
spoke of "the two Americas." It seems unfathomable how people can shoot
at
rescue workers. Yet, after the beating of Rodney King aired on
televisions
across the country, poor, desperate, hungry people in Watts took over
their
neighborhoods, burning and looting. Their anger, which had seethed
below the
surface for so long, erupted. That's what's happening now in New
Orleans.
And we, mostly white, people of privilege, rarely catch a glimpse of
this
other America.
"I think a lot of it has to do with race and class," said Rev. Calvin
O.
Butts III, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. "The
people
affected were largely poor people. Poor, black people."
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reached a breaking point Thursday night.
"You
mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of
people
that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we
can't
figure out a way to authorize the resources we need? Come on, man!"
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had boasted earlier in the
day
that FEMA and other federal agencies have done a "magnificent job"
under the
circumstances.
But, said, Nagin, "They're feeding the people a line of bull, and they
are
spinning and people are dying. Get off your asses and let's do
something!"
When asked about the looting, the mayor said that except for a few
"knuckleheads," it is the result of desperate people trying to find
food and
water to survive.
Nagin blamed the outbreak of violence and crime on drug addicts who
have
been cut off from their drug supplies, wandering the city, "looking to
take
the edge off their jones."
When Hurricane Ivan hit Cuba, no curfew was imposed; yet, no looting or
violence took place. Everyone was in the same boat.
Fidel Castro, who has compared his government's preparations for
Hurricane
Ivan to the island's long-standing preparations for an invasion by the
United States, said, "We've been preparing for this for 45 years."
On Thursday, Cuba's National Assembly sent a message of solidarity to
the
victims of Hurricane Katrina. It says the Cuban people have followed
closely
the news of the hurricane damage in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama,
and
the news has caused pain and sadness. The message notes that the
hardest hit
are African-Americans, Latino workers, and the poor, who still wait to
be
rescued and taken to secure places, and who have suffered the most
fatalities and homelessness. The message concludes by saying that the
entire
world must feel this tragedy as its own.
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