29, August 2015 Hurricane Katrina
Last week marked the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 storm that devastated the Gulf Coast, killing more than 1,800 people, forcing more than a million people to evacuate. President Obama echoed the sentiments of many of the local residents stating, "what started out as a natural disaster became a man-made one—a failure of government to look out for its own citizens." Many patients in hospitals, jail inmates were left to die. Many African-Americans desperately looking for food were gunned down by police for ‘looting’.
Remember the man in charge of disaster relief, Mike Brown, head of FEMA, who received accolades from President George W, Bush, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.’’ His qualification - he was the commissioner of judges at the International Arabian Horse Association who spent a year investigating whether a breeder performed liposuction on a horse’s rear end. This along with other major policy missteps will remain the enduring legacy of President Bush.
The storm laid bare the deep rooted inequalities affecting people of color. African Americans have borne the brunt of the disaster, displaced by gentrification. According to the Urban League, the income gap between black and white residents has increased 37 percent since 2005. Thousands of their homes remain abandoned. Much of the healthcare has been privatized. Neighborhood schools have been replaced by charter schools. Sadly, the people left out of the recovery are renters, the disabled, the elderly and people of color. 2
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