BY MARJORIE COHN
Saturday, September 3, 2005.
Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island
of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were
evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed
20,000 houses, no one died.
What is Cuban President Fidel Castro’s secret? According to Dr.
Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico and
specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defence is embedded in the
community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go."
"Cuba’s leaders go on TV and take charge," said Valdes. Contrast
this with George W. Bush’s reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina
hit the Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a TV
appearance and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a scathing
editorial on September 1, The New York Times said, "nothing about
the President’s demeanour yesterday – which seemed casual to the point of
carelessness – suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis".
"Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable (in Cuba),"
Valdes said. "Shelters all have medical personnel from the neighbourhood. They
have family doctors in Cuba who evacuate together with the neighbourhood and
already know, for example, who needs insulin."
They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and
refrigerators, "so that people aren’t reluctant to leave because people might
steal their stuff," Valdes observed.
After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations International
Secretariat for Disaster Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane
preparation. ISDR director Salvano Briceno said, "The Cuban way could easily be
applied to other countries with similar economic conditions and even in
countries with greater resources that do not manage to protect their population
as well as Cuba does."
Our federal and local governments had more than ample warning
that hurricanes, which are growing in intensity thanks to global warming, could
destroy New Orleans. Yet, instead of heeding those warnings, Bush set about to
prevent states from controlling global warming, weaken FEMA and cut the Army
Corps of Engineers’ budget for levee construction in New Orleans by $71.2
million, a 44 per cent reduction.
Bush sent nearly half our National Guard troops and high-water
Humvees to fight in an unnecessary war in Iraq. Walter Maestri, emergency
management chief for Jefferson Paris in New Orleans, noted a year ago, "It
appears that the money has been moved in the President’s budget to handle
homeland security and the war in Iraq."
An Editor and Publisher article on August 31 said the Army Corps
of Engineers "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the
war in Iraq, as well as homeland security – coming at the same time as federal
tax cuts – was the reason for the strain", which caused a slowdown of work on
flood control and sinking levees.
"This storm was much greater than protection we were authorised
to provide," said Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager in the New Orleans
district of the corps.
Unlike in Cuba, where homeland security means keeping the
country secure from deadly natural disasters as well as foreign invasions, Bush
has failed to keep our people safe. "On a fundamental level," Paul Krugman wrote
on September 2 in The New York Times, "our current leaders just aren’t
serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging
war, but they don’t like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending
on prevention measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice".
During the 2004 election campaign, vice presidential candidate
John Edwards spoke of "the two Americas". It seems unfathomable how people can
shoot at rescue workers. Yet, after the beating of Rodney King aired on
televisions across the country, poor, desperate, hungry people in Watts took
over their neighbourhoods, burning and looting. Their anger, which had seethed
below the surface for so long, erupted. That’s what’s happening now in New
Orleans. And we, mostly White, people of privilege, rarely catch a glimpse of
this other America.
"I think a lot of it has to do with race and class," said Rev.
Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. "The
people affected were largely poor people. Poor, Black people."
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reached a breaking point Thursday
night (September 3). "You mean to tell me that a place where you probably have
thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day,
that we can’t figure out a way to authorise the resources we need? Come on,
man!"
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had boasted earlier
in the day that FEMA and other federal agencies have done a "magnificent job"
under the circumstances.
But, said, Nagin, "They’re feeding the people a line of bull,
and they are spinning and people are dying. Get off your asses and let’s do
something!"
When asked about the looting, the mayor said that except for a
few "knuckleheads", it is the result of desperate people trying to find food and
water to survive.
Nagin blamed the outbreak of violence and crime on drug addicts
who have been cut off from their drug supplies, wandering the city, "looking to
take the edge off their jones".
When Hurricane Ivan hit Cuba, no curfew was imposed; yet, no
looting or violence took place. Everyone was in the same boat.
Fidel Castro, who has compared his government’s preparations for
Hurricane Ivan to the island’s long-standing preparations for an invasion by the
United States, said, "We’ve been preparing for this for 45 years."
On Thursday, Cuba’s National Assembly sent a message of
solidarity to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It says the Cuban people have
followed closely the news of the hurricane damage in Louisiana, Mississippi and
Alabama, and the news has caused pain and sadness. The message notes that the
hardest hit are African-Americans, Latino workers and the poor, who still wait
to be rescued and taken to secure places, and who have suffered the most
fatalities and homelessness. The message concludes by saying that the entire
world must feel this tragedy as its own.