hurricane

Anya Kamenetz's piece on the Village Voice site is worth reading. Nathan Newman has a series of posts on culpability, and the pork-barrel politics of FEMA relief. They NYT looks at the racialization of hurricane victimhood. And as looters desperately search for food and supplies, the federal government which did nothing to prevent what happened assures us that they will be pacified as refugees struggle to leave the city or attempt to negotiate substandard environments elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the situation in New Orleans continued to
deteriorate. Angry crowds chanted cries for help, and some among them rushed
chaotically at helicopters bringing in food. Although Mayor C. Ray Nagin
speculated that thousands might have died, officials said they still did not
have a clear idea of the precise toll.

"We're just a bunch of rats," said Earle Young, 31, a cook
who stood waiting in a throng of perhaps 10,000 outside the Superdome, waiting
in the blazing sun for buses to take them away from the city. "That's how
they've been treating us."