|
The Criminalization of
New Orleans Residents
Survivor Stories
Denise
Moore's Story
As told by Lisa C. Moore I heard from my aunt last night that my
cousin Denise made it out of New Orleans; she's at her
brother's in Baton Rouge. from what she told me:
her mother, a licensed practical nurse, was called in to work on
Sunday night at Memorial Hospital (historically known as
Baptist Hospital to those of us from N.O.). Denise decided
to stay with her mother, her niece and grandniece (who is 2
years old); she figured they'd be safe at the hospital. They
went to Baptist, and had to wait hours to be assigned a
room to sleep in; after they were finally assigned a room, two
white nurses suddenly arrived after the cut-off time (time
to be assigned a room), and Denise and her family were
booted out; their room was given up to the new nurses. Denise
was furious, and rather than stay at Baptist, decided to walk
home (several blocks away) to ride out the storm at her mother's
apartment. Her mother stayed at the hospital.
She described it as the scariest time in her life. 3 of the
rooms in the apartment (there are only 4) caved in. Ceilings
caved in, walls caved in. She huddled under a mattress in
the hall. She thought she would die from either the storm
or a heart attack. After the storm passed, she went back to
Baptist to seek shelter (this was Monday). It was also
scary at Baptist; the electricity was out, they were running on generators,
there was no air conditioning.
Tuesday the levees broke, and water began
rising. They moved patients upstairs, saw boats pass by on
what used to be streets. They were told that they would be evacuated,
that buses were coming. Then they were told they would have
to walk to the nearest intersection, Napoleon and S.
Claiborne, to await the buses. They waded out in hip-deep water,
only to stand at the intersection, on the neutral ground (what
y'all call the median) for 3 1/2 hours. The buses came and took
them to the Ernest Memorial Convention Center. (yes, the
convention center you've all seen on TV.)
Denise said she thought she was in hell. They were there
for 2 days, with no water, no food. no shelter. Denise,
her mother (63 years old), her niece (21 years old), and
2-year-old grandniece. When they arrived, there were already
thousands of people there. They were told that buses were
coming. Police drove by, windows rolled up, thumbs up signs.
National Guard trucks rolled by, completely empty, soldiers with
guns cocked and aimed at them. Nobody stopped to drop off water.
A helicopter dropped a load of water, but all the bottles
exploded on impact due to the height of the helicopter.
The first day (Wednesday) 4 people died next to her. The
second day (Thursday) 6 people died next to her. Denise
told me the people around her all thought they had been
sent there to die. Again, nobody stopped. The only buses
that came were full; they dropped off more and more people, but
nobody was being picked up and taken away. They found out that
those being dropped off had been rescued from rooftops and
attics; they got off the buses delirious from lack of water and
food. completely dehydrated. The crowd tried to keep them all in
one area; Denise said the new arrivals had mostly lost their
minds. They had gone crazy.
Inside the convention center, the place was one huge bathroom.
In order to shit, you had to stand in other people's shit. The
floors were black and slick with shit. Most people stayed
outside because the smell was so bad. But outside wasn't much
better between the heat, the humidity, the lack of water, the
old and very young dying from dehydration... and there was no
place to lay down, not even room on the sidewalk. They
slept outside Wednesday night, under an overpass.
Denise said yes, there were young men with guns there. But
they organized the crowd. They went to Canal Street and
"looted," and brought back food and water for the old
people and the babies, because nobody had eaten in days. When
the police rolled down windows and yelled out "the
buses are coming," the young men with guns organized the
crowd in order: old people in front, women and children next,
men in the back, just so that when the buses came, there
would be priorities of who got out first.
Denise said the fights she saw between the young men with guns
were fist fights. She saw them put their guns down and fight
rather than shoot up the crowd. But she said that there
were a handful of people shot in the convention center; their
bodies were left inside, along with other dead babies and old
people.
Denise said the people thought there were being sent there to
die. Lots of people being dropped off, nobody being picked up.
cops passing by, speeding off. National Guard rolling by
with guns aimed at them. And yes, a few men shot at the
police, because at a certain point all the people thought the
cops were coming to hurt them, to kill them all. She saw a
young man who had stolen a car speed past, cops in pursuit;
he crashed the car, got out and ran, and the cops shot him in
the back in front of the whole crowd. She saw many groups of
people decide that they were going to walk across the bridge to
the west bank,
and those same groups would return, saying
that they were met at the top of the bridge by armed police
ordering them to turn around, that they weren't allowed to
leave. So they all believed they were sent there to die.
Denise's niece found a pay phone, and kept trying to call her
mother's boyfriend in Baton Rouge, and finally got through and
told him where they were. The boyfriend and Denise's brother,
drove down from Baton Rouge and came and got them. they had to
bribe a few cops, and talk a few into letting them into
the city ("Come on, man, my 2-year-old niece is at
the Convention Center!"), then they took back roads to get
to them.
After arriving at my other cousin's apartment in Baton Rouge,
they saw the images on TV, and couldn't believe how the media
was portraying the people of New Orleans. She kept repeating to
me on the phone last night: make sure you tell everybody that
they left us there to die. Nobody came. Those young
men with guns were protecting us. If it wasn't for them, we
wouldn't have had the little water and food they had found.
That's Denise Moore's story.
* * *
* *
|
The Katrina Papers is not your
average memoir. It is a fusion of many kinds of
writing, including intellectual autobiography,
personal narrative, political/cultural analysis,
spiritual journal, literary history, and poetry.
Though it is the record of one man's experience of
Hurricane Katrina, it is a record that is fully a
part of his life and work as a scholar, political
activist, and professor. The Katrina Papers
provides space not only for the traumatic events but
also for ruminations on authors such as Richard
Wright and theorists like Deleuze and Guattarri. The
result is a complex though thoroughly accessible
book. The struggle with form—the search for a
medium proper to the complex social, personal, and
political ramifications of an event unprecedented in
this scholar's life and in American social history—lies at the very heart of The Katrina Papers. It
depicts an enigmatic and multi-stranded world view
which takes the local as its nexus for understanding
the global. It resists the temptation to simplify
or clarify when simplification and clarification are
not possible. Ward's narrative is, at times, very
direct, but he always refuses to simplify the
complex emotional and spiritual volatility of the
process and the historical moment that he is
witnessing. The end result is an honesty that is
both pedagogical and inspiring.—Hank Lazer
The Katrina Papers, by Jerry W.
Ward, Jr. $18.95
|
Lisa C. Moore /
posted 9 September 2005 |
