Katrina and the Inner-City Challenge for Greens

Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans, Louisiana two years ago. And (for about fifteen minutes) Democrats, Republicans, and the So-Called Liberal Media actually had a serious discussion about class and race in America. In the coming days we shall read and hear a lot of self-serving partisan poppycock from liberal Democrats that everything that happened in New Orleans was the fault of Bush Republicans. In point of fact, the New Orleans inner-city Democratic Party Machine was up to its neck in cronyism and incompetence long before it was up to its neck in floodwaters.

The next great challenge for the Green Party of the United States is cracking the monopoly of the Democratic Party Machines within communities of color in the inner-city. Greens will never be able to really challenge the Democrats until we do this and we'll never effectively apply our 10 key values until we can start applying them where it is needed the most.

In a recent interview in Yes Magazine, Green activist, Malik Rahim brilliantly articulated a vision for inner-city New Orleans that goes way beyond the usual Democratic and Republican nostrums:

I think that we can show, not only people in New Orleans, Louisiana, or in America, but globally what happens when people of conscience come together, in spite of their government. If we can rebuild New Orleans in such a way that we break the dependency upon fossil fuels, if we look at alternative energy in our reconstruction and look at new methods, if we could move away from a levee system and start developing a storm protection system that no longer challenges nature, but works with nature. If we break the shackles of racism, and become a truly progressive city. If we could develop the schools and the education system, if we can work to develop health care for everyone. If we could do these things, we’d know that the sacrifice by all the thousands of volunteers from Common Ground and others wasn’t in vain, and I believe that the rest of the world can look at us as a model.

New Orleans as a model? What a revolutionary notion.

Read More and challenges by Cynthia McKinney and Donna Warren at Green Commons:

Katrina and the Inner-City Challenge: Cynthia McKinney, Malik Rahim, Donna Warren

New Orleans Redux

The media this week is going to give everyone an overdose of rehashed information on Hurricane Katrina, it's impact on New Orleans, the failures since. Every politician with enough cash for the plane fare (that may leave out McCain) will be heading there to take advantage of all those reporters and to spin the story.

There are many lessons to be learning from New Orleans. Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirschenbaum are laying out the lessons from Katrina that most of the rest won't be telling us. They do so in a series of posts today at Intersection, some of which are only summaries of similar material that Mooney has posted to Huffington Post or as "Storm Pundit" at The Daily Green.

In summary, what he has given us so far today is this:

• "the central lesson that I think we can take away after two years of the post-Katrina hurricane-global warming debate: science doesn't confer certainty; but scientific uncertainty doesn't justify inaction, either."
• We're not ready for any of these [major hurricanes striking big cities..Tampa, Houston, Miami]. Not by a long shot.
• We don't know precisely what global warming is doing to hurricanes; it would be foolhardy to claim otherwise. But we do know that we have scores of population centers that are highly exposed to to these storms. And if only due to sea level rise and nothing else, the risks to these population centers are changing--probably worsening.

  In this context, here's what's truly amazing to me: There is no national project to study changing hurricane risks to U.S. cities in light of the future scenarios that global warming may bring.

Just more political gamesmanship from those whose need for power exceeds their need to really help those in need. If I were as Christian as most of these presidential candidates claim to be, I would heed the words of the savior they profess to follow. "Even as you had done it unto the least of these, my brethren, you have done it unto me."

Hypocrisy abounds.

Of all the journalists covering this anniversary, I would guess that Tavis Smiley may be the only one who knows Malik Rahim. The others just don't get it.

As Mooney says at the close of his Storm Pundit post "Some times you just have to act."

Pogo was right.

In Thursday's New York Times, Nicholas Kristof entitles his Op Ed Column The Big Melt. You automatically know the subject is global warming. He begins with an interesting premise.

If we learned that Al Qaeda was secretly developing a new terrorist technique that could disrupt water supplies around the globe, force tens of millions from their homes and potentially endanger our entire planet, we would be aroused into a frenzy and deploy every possible asset to neutralize the threat.

Yet that is precisely the threat that we’re creating ourselves, with our greenhouse gases. While there is still much uncertainty about the severity of the consequences, a series of new studies indicate that we’re cooking our favorite planet more quickly than experts had expected.

This yet another instance where the focus of the so-called War on Terror has diverted our attention from dealing with the problems that really determine the future of man.

I watched Bill Moyers' Journal last night. Well, only the segment on Katrina Revisited. That as much as I could take. Maybe I was overloaded. I have just started to read Chris Mooney's newest book, Storm World. I am still learning the history of meteorology and it's divergent paths of development. But in the back of my mind is the knowledge that Tropical Storm Erin is bringing new floods to an already drenched Texas, the Hurrican Dean is now a Category 4 storm drawing a bead on Jamaica and that Typhoon Sepat has just battered Taiwan and is heading for mainland China. Mooney, whose family lost their New Orleans home, makes it abundantly clear that you can not associate any single weather event with global warming. But, you will see an increase in extreme events such as super hurricanes like Sepat and soon Dean.

Kristof concludes his column with the same analogy that introduced it.

In the same way, terror experts aren’t sure about the magnitude and timing of Al Qaeda’s next strike. But it would be myopic to shrug that because there’s uncertainty about the risks, we shouldn’t act vigorously to confront them — yet that’s our national policy toward climate change, and it’s a disgrace

Maybe the problem is the fact that Al Qaeda is a human sized problem with a human sized solution. But that is not a description of global warming.

Ultimately the actions we need to take involve ourselves, what we expect out of life, what we are willing to do to ensure the future.

I would expect that members of the Green Party would have the same degree of passion for this issue as they have ending the Iraq War or for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, but they do not. Maybe there is a way to bring this down to a human sized problem. Moyers focused his segment on the issue of corruption and the manner in which corruption has siphoned off $ billions from what should have been a restorative effort. Politicians swarm around money like bees in an almond orchard They all know that the way to maintain power is to use public money to support the locally powerful. So, Moyers reports that "10 of the 23 original New Orleans hospitals remain closed." According to him "Associated Press reports tax breaks intended for reconstruction of homes destroyed by Katrina are being used to build luxury condos hundreds of miles inland from where Katrina hit…Conveniently located near the University of Alabama football stadium."

We all know what was needed and we all can see what the politicians did.

Here are a couple of questions:

• Why is Moyers one of the few who reports the story in this manner?
• Why is this not on the nightly news?
• What is the GPUS going to say / do on Katrina's anniversary?

This is much bigger than just global warming and Katrina. I think that it is a failure to understand the very nature of what this political party should be doing. We are so tied up in the culture of protest that we fail to work out that which will attract people to this party. Our future will be determined not by what we protest but rather by what we accomplish. As a political party, we need to be about the future, not about the past and that requires a change in leadership.

The GPCA needs someone to articulate change in the way that Obama is trying to do for the Democrats. I won't criticize those who are leading an impeachment effort. It is necessary to keep that pressure on as well, especially knowing that it won't happen under the current Democratic leadership. Still, we need the same intensity, the same passion, for the future and making fundamental changes in how we respond to what we know is going to happen.

• How do we achieve a sustainable water supply?
• What can we do to ensure that there is adequate housing for all?
• How are we going to educate all of our children?
• How can we ensure that there is fresh water for our grandchildren to drink?
• What will we do when the sea level rises?

At one point in Moyers program, the statement was made that the vision of Miami in the future can be seen in New Orleans today. We do not have to accept that.

Now is the Time

I have not posted for quite a while, so I have a buildup of frustration and will post several things this AM. It only took a magazine cover to wake me from my slumber.

You should all pick up a copy of Time Magazine this week. I call your attention to the cover where photo of the new storm floodwall in New Orleans carries this caption.

Two years after Katrina, this floodwall is all that stands between New Orleans and the next hurricane. It's pathetic. How a perfect storm of big money politics, shoddy engineering and environmental ignorance is setting up the city for another catastrophe.

The author, Michael Grunwald, pulls no punches and blows away a number of myths, not the least of which was that Katrina was a horrendous Cat 5 storm at New Orleans.

The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn't a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics. Katrina was not the Category 5 killer the Big Easy had always feared; it was a Category 3 storm that missed New Orleans, where it was at worst a weak 2.

You can read the entire story here.

When I think of the amount of effort that people like Susan King put into the recovery effort I just get sick. When I contrast the on the ground leadership of Malik Rahim to the mess described by Grunwald, I feel like crying. Such a missed opportunity and such empty promises where Bush's promise to rebuild was just another declaration of the end to major combat. It is worse than pathetic, the word Time used on their cover. It is criminal.

This is particularly important for us in this state and at this time. We are dealing with many of the same issues: failing levees that need major repair if not replacement, big money politics at every turn, politicians who care more for their own image or career than the welfare of the people that they represent. There is not a single plan for the future of the Sacramento / San Joaquin Delta that meets the smell test. Sure, Núñez, Perata and Schwarzenegger promise to get things done. But they won't. Follow the money. When it comes time to do something, the money will be less than needed. It will get used on some legislator's pet project. There will be no accountability.

When the Green Party of California convenes it's general assembly in Riverside, perhaps there should be a moment of silence during which we can all think about the money that could have helped repair the levees in New Orleans but went instead to build a highway off-ramp to a riverboat casino. Then think about what we can be doing to make sure that it does not happen again, here, in this state, on our watch.

This is one issue that I will not let drop and I ask all of you to do the same.