September 10, 2005
So, another day listening to the radio. Today I was listening to two New Orleans evacuees, who are staying in, respectively Salt Lake City and Minneapolis. And I was struck by their seeming astonishment at the warm welcome they were given as strangers, and at how nice the Caucasians can be when they are willing to deal person to person with another human being. Neither of these women had any More family in New Orleans, and neither had any intention of going back. But doesn’t his beg the question, reading between the lines, of what kind of treatment they expected from white people, and why?

Ok, put that together with this set of stories from Daily Kos, culled from a variety of sources, mostly relying on the story of the two San Francisco paramedics stranded in the city::

Daily Kos: Dry Crescent City Bridge : Keep Escaping Walkers off - shoot them.: "From The Times-Picayune
Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescnt City Connection.
Two paramedics stranded in New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina give their account of self-organisation and abandonment in the disaster zone


As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.
We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there
was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans. "

this story has now been repeated in the Times Picayune, and the NYT.
That’s the kind of treatment that the two African American evacuees expected.
Now consider what Bush said at the induction of Karen Hughes, charged with improving America’s image overseas. “Human rights and human dignity belong to all mankind,” he said. But watching CNN, FOX, MSNBC or reading any of a number of overseas papers, anyone could see how the total lack of respect for Human Dignity with which the US forces treated the minority population of New Orleans, locked in the Superdome without water, food, or bathrooms.
Good Luck, Karen. Maybe improving our image at home would help. Surely the sight of the unfortunate poor and black residents of NO did not help our image. .