NOLA mayor should resign

Speaking to progressive Unitarian-Universalists in San Francisco on Sept. 18,
an activist lawyer says a rumor is spreading thru New Orleans' black community
and its diaspora.
The rumor claims that dikes (levees) were deliberately dynamited,
to flood the lowest portions of the city,
which tend to be the poorest and blackest districts.

There's no reason to believe this rumor. When it hit, Katrina didn't need any help. Admittedly, the KKK are MORALLY capable of genocide, but they weren't physically or technically capable of carrying out a complex operation during a hurricane. They, like anyone else in the area, would have been busy trying to survive. Nor could laypersons predict where Katrina would land.

The significance of this false rumor is that some NOLA blacks are capable of believing it.
Such credulity displays extreme alienation and distrust, resembling paranoia.

Concerning state and federal neglect of poor blacks in New Orleans,
before the hurricane hit and afterwards,
the lawyer says she doesn't know how much is because of racial bias,
versus class bias.

I think race is the main factor in state and federal neglect.

However, the elected Mayor of New Orleans is black,
so I think his behavior can best be explained by class bias.

Like any sane adult in his city, he must have understood that much of it lies beneath the (usual) water levels of the lake; that broken levees mean flooding; and that barriers can be broken by hurricanes.

As Katrina approached, he had a fleet of city buses at his disposal. He could have moved these buses to higher ground, making them available for possible evacuation, or for rescues, cleanup, etc. Instead he left his buses parked in a low part of his city, to be covered by water.

Does he care only about persons, of whatever color, who are rich enough
to have their own private vehicles?
Do bus-riders rank with the chronically homeless,
and with cats and dogs, as beings beneath his notice?

Ah, his friends may reply, his failure to save and use his buses was just a mistake --
without any bias.

Well, if that's true, then he's simply too stupid
to hold public office.

Either way,
NOLA's mayor should resign.





-- SF bus rider