Abu-Jamal writes: "It's been 10 years since the watery carnage of Katrina, and one year since the fiery rage lit the night skies of Ferguson Missouri. Between these two harrowing events lay the state of Black America: isolated, demonized, and damned."
Mumia Abu-Jamal. (photo: Lou Jones/First Run Features)
From Katrina to Ferguson
09 September 15
t's been 10 years since the watery carnage of Katrina, and one year since the fiery rage lit the night skies of Ferguson Missouri. Between these two harrowing events lay the state of Black America: isolated, demonized, and damned.
When the levees broke and the rushing waters of Hurricane Katrina swept into the Wards of New Orleans, the 9th Ward, the Blackest Ward, received the greatest damage and the least relief. Today, 10 years after its horrific flooding, the 9th is barely half of its former population of working class and poor inhabitants. It is a shell of its pre-flood glory.
What the residents of the 9th learned was the cold, hard truth that they were all on their own, facing the fury of the storm.
They could call 911, and they may have even gotten an answer, but no one came for them. For they were in the 9th Ward, and they were expendable.
Flip to Ferguson. Summer 2014. The time of Mike Brown's killing by a cop, and the subsequent explosion of protest from Black youth. Young Black men, women, and children took to the streets and faced police sniper rifles, automatic weapons, Humvees, and scared paranoid White cops.
How many of us know that protest has continued daily since then? The media may have fled the story, but the people haven't. Some have pitched tents, others have set times daily to join the protests.
But they're there everyday to remind us of the very real and very deep discontent with an oppressive system that has soured they're days and nights. For the fires of Ferguson still burn. They burn in their hearts, simmer in their souls, and they roar in their minds. These fires of discontent.
And Katrina: if ever we wondered if Black lives mattered? The squalled treatment of the people of New Orleans, especially the 9th ward, answered that question decisively.
Politicians, banks, media, and entrepreneurs plucked what they could and kept on moving to leave the souls of the 9th to fend for themselves: isolated demonized, and damned.
Touch points for Black America: Katrina and Ferguson.
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