THE EMPEROR IS NAKED
C. Michelle Finley Ph.D.
Richmond California
September 4, 2005

I am weary of Americans dying en masse on this commander and chief's watch. If he was not part of the planning of 911, and did not intentionally underestimate the reports he received warning his office of the threat to thousands of American lives and well being, then he certainly used the event to exploit the American people with misdirection and fear tactics to achieve his father's political goals.

The lack of compassion for human life exhibited by the current administration is appalling. The blind, murderous brutality and lack of cultural respect for the Arabs of the Middle East has been downplayed. The obvious motivation behind holding Palestinians and Iraqis accountable for the transgressions of Bush Sr.'s Saudi oil allies has been denied. Ironically petrol prices soar despite the mass spilling of Arab and American blood. Taxes have increased for the working class and the rich get fewer and richer.

The number of troops from impoverished and struggling class Americans are disproportionately sacrificed in the name of large corporate interests. The National Guard and "Weekend Warriors" have been deployed to the Middle Mast leaving commentators to question what trained human resources we have in the event of a disaster on our own turf. Our returning troops are traumatized and feel they were betrayed. The troops still over there want to come home.

Then Katrina entered the stage to expose the emperor's nakedness more fully than ever before. In fact, she has exposed the entire nation's nakedness as well. Days before she made contact, New Orleans commentators lamented the weakness of the levy hoping that it would withstand the hurricane. It seems local officials had earmarked federal funds for the fortification of that levee some time ago, but the funds were diverted to Iraq by the current administration.

Katrina was a level five threat which is as high as the ratings go. Hurricane Andrew was a level three and reportedly ripped the roofs off houses. They knew days in advance of the potential for disaster.
Perhaps the decision-making process assumed Katrina would be less devastating. In that case the poor area would have been hardest hit with far less damage to the more gentilated areas. The poor live in the inner city and are mostly black. Since slavery New Orleans has been a caste system with almost no movement between the economic classes for blacks in part because they are so easy to visually recognize. The blacks I've known from that city say the only way to move up is to move out. It is always very difficult for poor people in the world to move because it requires economic resources, outside contacts, and leaving behind what is known (including loved ones) in addition to other reasons. When I was in New Orleans for a Neurosciences Conference a few years back, I was equally devastated by both the assumptions of my servitude by whites and the other worldly poverty I witnessed in the African American areas.

I grew up poor in Chicago where the blacks from Mississippi and Louisiana escaped to. In fact, my mother's people are from Mississippi and my daddy's people are from Louisiana which means I have blood down there. In Detroit I saw poverty, it was as most large cities I've been to with blacks. The majority are poor and relegated to a particular segment of the city, only to be seen in servile positions by day with the exception of tokens isolated from ethnic support in middle level job positions. These individuals, of which I have become one, are tokens of how far this nation has come. We are meant to be proof that things are fair and equitable with respect to race and movement between the classes. Examples of the equity of American success story. The area where I live is progressive in this respect when compared to other large American cities and yet police harassment and brutality based on racial profiling is quite common.

So the poor were the hardest hit by Katrina. On NPR yesterday on my way to work I heard about the shooting and looting in the streets. I heard a man describing how there were people on land shooting at a supply ship that was taking supplies to needy people. "I cannot imagine how a person could do that," he exclaimed incredulously. In a vacuum of information, I fell for it. Animals, I thought. Savage animals.
Then I learned that it was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit plus high humidity. So these people are sweating out with no drinkable water. This had been going on since last Sunday. These people can't get out. In fact, they were lured inside the City Center and other major buildings by the thousands-women, children, babies, men, almost all black. Then they were locked in from the outside. Locked in with no food or water for days.

They are also denied exit from the scene of the disaster into neighboring parishes by the police.
I found out that the looting was for water and survival supplies from unclerked local stores and that some people were distributing the supplies to women and children the first couple of days while they waited to be rescued from the catastrophe that included the waterlogged dead and dying in the streets. That there were two hospitals across the street from one another, one for people with medical benefits, the other was a charity hospital. I heard how the monied hospital was evacuated before the eyes of the poor while the police used arms to keep the charity hospital people from jumping on the rescue wagon because there were limited resources. There are no flushing toilets. The doctors, nurses and staff doing charity were also left behind. How the sparse supplies are being sent only to the rich part of New Orleans and not to the poor. Only the people with money were being rescued. The poor were being left behind. This is when a different picture began to emerge in my mind.

Yesterday Bush made his first soundbite by going on "Good Morning America" saying 'help is on the way be patient'. It takes time, he said for ships and helicopters to get there. I began writing this on the fifth day and still there is no relief.

My fear is when the federal government get there they will punish the survivors with death, beating and imprisonment because these victims are predominantly Black and that has been the default police position for dealing with black people there for generations according to Black people from there to which I've spoken. The president says "zero tolerance" for looters when he sees a picture of a Black man with water, disposable diapers and toilet paper though he understands white people doing the same thing. Police run "looters" away from a Walmart while they survive off the supplies in the store themselves. There are media criticisms of gunfire directed at police without any knowledge of the circumstances. Who would surrender to police under these circumstances knowing that to do so is to surrender one's life?

Then I learned that the National Guard had orders to shoot Americans perceived by individual soldiers to be looters "on sight" without due process of law. For stealing food and water after several days of governmental neglect. How many of us have survived five days without food and water under those horrendous circumstances? It is unconscionable to think that an American citizen on their own turf could be legally shot by our own government without benefit of trial in 2005. Where are their constitutional rights? Why are these poor people being denied the basic RIGHT TO LIFE?

Please note that our government doesn't have to pay relief funding to dead people, so the more poor and black people that die, the cheaper it will be. The more money the government will have to kill internationally using the current administration's moral sense of right and wrong-good and evil. We all saw how generous the president was with his first, inadequate Tsunami relief offer which again embarrassed this nation.

The government says we can help by sending money. That confuses me. Last year I paid eight percent of my annual income to federal taxes. I'm actually okay with this because I know that it goes to government agencies that will mobilize quickly in the event of a disaster and remedy the problem. That is worth paying taxes. But that money was diverted to Iraq and I had no say in that. Most of the people I come into contact with do not support the colonization of the Middle East but then again California is not a Bush state, and being democratic I tend to know more democrats. How do I know that if I send yet more money to help clean up Bush's mess some portion of that won't be diverted to big oil interests? How do I know my money won't just go exclusively to the rich white victims? I have no reason to believe that it would go proportionately to individuals of all races and classes as I wish. In fact all I see leads me to the contrary conclusion.

When I imagine that I am there-in the stunning heat after staggering through contaminated water, tying the dead to telephone poles to keep the days' old bloated bodies from floating by day then surviving the terror of wet pitch darkness. Sleep deprived and shocked into numbness. No time to grieve the death and dying of loved ones. The atrocities I've seen in the name of survival. The overwhelming acts of selflessness and leadership I've witnessed. The stench of human excrement and the savageness of human survival in its rawest form. Perhaps I have taken food from an old person after days of hunger. The terror, the absolute hellishness of the night time... I cannot imagine. But I can imagine what it must be like to pay city, state and federal taxes and watch the supply ships roll past, out of bullet range while I die slowly of dehydration and contamination and hunger for a week. I can imagine shooting at that ship with the only flares I have, which are bullets.

Louisiana did not vote for Bush. The poor are not his constituency. He will not be running for office again so maybe he doesn't care. Maybe he plans to spin this in some way that makes the next top oil producing, non-Saudi country responsible for the nonresponsiveness of our government to this human disaster. All I know is the two biggest American disasters to happen in my 43 years on the planet have been on this man's watch. Each time he delays response to protect his own political interests at the expense of the well being of thousands of Americans.

What I want is accountability from the current White House administration. When I make mistakes I own up to them and make them right. If I need to lose my job over it I will. I have no respect for a "commander" who wants all the power this country has to offer and no responsibility.

I want the politicians to stop avoiding the questions and concerns of the American people. I want an end to the erosion of human rights in this country. I want the Bush administration and the rich, corporate interests to stop cannibalizing the poor and working class of all races in this country. I want honest, democratic elections.

I want an end to media censorship ironically in the face of all these new cable channels. Late last night a reporter went through the streets with a camera and broadcasted on NBC what he saw. Talk about wretched and sad. It was mesmerizing. No one could have watched what was going on in the streets without openly sobbing. An old man slumped dead in his wheelchair after having scribbled a message to his loved ones on his arm. Dead babies and wailing mothers. All dead from dehydration days after the hurricane. Human bodies and excrement floating for days. Today they said they would rebroadcast it but they glossed over it, sucked the life out of a piece of real journalism, and it is unclear what has been done to the journalist; for there was no sight, voice or mention of him.

I want for human life to mean something again in this country the way I was taught in school. I want the media to stop sensationalizing...hovering in helicopters with their news cameras taking pictures of waterlogged, dying people but not dropping them any water or tuna or power bars or anything. And there is a racial prejudice level to this also. Perhaps it is easier for some of these white reporters (while others are clearly devastated by the lack of humanity of our government) to distance themselves from the victims because they are mostly black people. I want the media to stop blaming black people for their victimization under white supremacy. The media refuses to acknowledge black people as victims even when they are victims of a natural disaster.

Most of all, I want to believe in this country again. The flag which I was required to chant "I Pledge Allegiance / To the Flag/ Of the United States of America...With Liberty and Justice For All" while holding my right hand over my heart every day in school while growing up. That followed by "My Country Tis' of Thee /Sweet Land of Liberty". I want an end to the national embarrassments into which the current president has lunged us. I want an end to the present political regime now that our big dirty secret of racism has been washed out by Katrina for all the world to see. A terrorist is one who strikes terror in the hearts of others. Even white reporters who are trying to report objectively are yelling outraged denouncements and choking back tears at the treatment of these black people. Who is the terrorist now?
It is now day seven and more Americans are dead and media representation of the masses is being squelched...