Race War Killings in Post Katrina New Orleans Went Unpunished

Well, Whaddayaknowboutthat! 
St. Louie is Welcome at Algiers Point

In fact, a lot of the good things about N.O. are due to Black Jazz musicians, yet...

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"The Lord of the Flies" ruled in 'Algiers Point' New Orleans after Katrina had ravaged the area, but unlike other, less fortunate neighborhoods, had left it unflooded. The area was designated as an evacuation point because of lack of the lack of deep water, but blacks who tried to get to the place to catch a bus out of the devastated area were likely to be threatened or even shot by local white vigilantes whose violent natures and innate bigotry fed off TV news and officials reports of rampant looting and violence by 'gang members'.

In Algiers Point, the violence was done by whites, mostly men who would not let blacks get to the evacuation place, shooting up to 11 men and keeping others away through fear.  Afterwards the vigilantes received their own self praise and that of others in their community.

Some of the lack of investigation and punishment might even be reasonable as the police department was overstretched, and equipment and police, health, and autopsy records did not have a set location for storage for a long time after the hurricane.  Still one of the young black men who was attacked tried to tell his story to the authorities to no real avail. 

Read full report at The Nation magazine "Katrina's Hidden Race War " (no registration needed so far, and I think The Nation keeps their archives open). Also see other reports that are linked from the site of the report.

My thoughts:

Reading what the vigilantes said I got the feeling that they experienced joy and pride in what they did.  I'm betting they called up Rush Limbaugh and told him about it and spent weeks, even months boasting on right wing hate sites like freerepublic.com about the shootings.

The residents of Algiers Point were lucky that the vigilantes were able to identify 'others' they could fear and hate by skin color or they might have become targets to their neighbors.   

I think that people don't give right wing hate sites enough credit in keeping bigotry and blood lust alive so long after civil rights became the presumed law of the land.  It's just waiting hidden on the Internet for an opportunity to work in large groups.  The rest of us need to be vigilant against such a situations and demand that law enforcement authorities be so too.  

As we've seen so far in our nation, a person doesn't need to be dark skinned to be targeted by the bigots.  They've come after war protestors and women in various ways.  Popular hate radio is powerful in keeping the violent aryan male-centric culture alive.  Even though Hollywood tries to counter the hate of minorities, their willingness to capitulate on violence and portrayal of anyone not ready to use a violent means as 'wusses' promotes a dangerous climate in the US and throughout the world as our culture is exported

Who taught al Qaeda that the bigger the explosion the better in civilians situations?  Our movies did.  And they teach white supremacists that its proper to kill people who make then feel scared, even though the white guys are carrying a gun and their victims are unarmed and just trying to get some food or reach an evacuation point in a disaster.

Now I doubt that the new administration will target Algier's Point with an investigation just because the victims were black men.  It is a matter of justice though and keeping a very dangerous philosophy from being used for what is basically an insurrection is important, and I noticed, (via one of the side links I mentioned above) that John Conyers, the head of the House Judiciary committ,ee has started to look into the matter.

tags: new orleans  katrina  algiers point  

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