Evacuees at Cajundome wait for first lady, and for lunch
Jan Risher
jrisher@theadvertiser.com
As the first lady toured the Red Cross shelter at the Cajundome this morning, a line of evacuees waiting to eat their lunch trickled out the door of the Dome.
First lady Laura Bush arrived about midday to tour the shelter and meet evacuees.
By 12:50 p.m., the trays of food were still covered and hungry evacuees stood in line, holding empty plates. Rice, beans and jambalaya were on the menu. About that time, volunteers began rolling the carts of food into position to serve.
Originally published September 2, 2005
Times-Picayune
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Bush visit halts food delivery
By Michelle Krupa
Staff writer
Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bush’s visit to New Orleans, officials said.
The provisions, secured by U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and state Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom, baked in the afternoon sun as Bush surveyed damage across southeast Louisiana five days after Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 storm, said Melancon’s chief of staff, Casey O’Shea.
“We had arrangements to airlift food by helicopter to these folks, and now the food is sitting in trucks because they won’t let helicopters fly,” O’Shea said Friday afternoon.
The food was expected to be in the hands of storm survivors after the president left the devastated region Friday night, he said.
Kanye West has been accused of blighting hurricane relief efforts by making a “political” statement. He didn’t come close to breaching the political benchmark set by George and Laura and the dishonourable Haley Barbour-ous.
The truth is, Kanye West didn’t “politicize” a damn thing. George W. Bush did. The hurricane became a political issue the second Bush decided there were more important priorities than shoring up the preventive measures in New Orleans; such as giving tax cuts to billionaires and launching an evil, imperialist war against the people of Iraq. Hurricane Ivan made it abundantly clear that New Orleans was unprepared to deal with such a catastrophe if one were to occur. If only Bush could be half the statesman Fidel Castro is. The Cuban government managed to evacuate over a million people, and didn’t lose a single life to Hurricane Ivan.
In fact, I’d say Kanye was far too generous. Bush, as well as some of the other players in this affair, don’t simply “not care about” black people. They have been proactive oppressors of African Americans for years. As Texas governor, Bush never met a death certificate he didn’t like. As a result, he is personally responsible for the executions of numerous black men. Mississippi’s governor Haley Barbour warned that all “looters” would be dealt with “ruthlessly.” This is a man who has been linked to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group started from the White Citizen’s Councils of the civil rights era. These were groups committed to the preservation of Jim Crow and had intimate connections and overlapping membership with the Ku Klux Klan. And the New Orleans Police Department doesn’t need a “shoot to kill” order from the governor to go about attacking black folks. New Orleans consistently ranks among the top cities in the number of citizen complaints of police brutality. Just last month, a black man named Raymond Robair died after the police brought him to the hospital. Witnesses observed the cops brutally beating him, leaving him with four broken ribs and a ruptured spleen.