Jackson Free Press

Stephen Elliott reports for Salon:

Many who leave go to Jackson, the capital of Mississippi. Plenty of people still don't have electricity in Jackson, and there are streets blocked by fallen trees. In the coliseum, near the capitol building, several thousand refugees bide their time, hoping to return to homes that have been destroyed. There is medical triage, stacks of water and snacks. There are workers in red shirts taking information, handing out blue bracelets. Cots fill the center and line the walls. Children play in front of the building. A woman lies with her husband and daughter. The daughter is just a baby and begins to cry. Soon her mother is crying too. The three of them arrived days ago from Biloxi. They stopped in Jackson when they ran out of gas.

The shelter is hot but not unbearable and there are enough security to keep the peace. Thirty people sit around a table watching a small television set, scenes of looting in New Orleans. The people watching the television don't like the depictions.

"What do they expect us to do?" a young man says.

"I'm not homeless," a woman says when the television refers to the looters as homeless. Like many others in the shelter she's from New Orleans. "Homeless people don't have an address. I have a home."

There are no hotel rooms available in the capital; all of them are full of the displaced heading north. In the other direction toward the Gulf one begins to see the wreckage of Katrina and the trail of tears that has created the new population of American refugees. At first, a few signs hanging from their hinges bear reminders of level 4 winds. Then stores with giant trees crashed through their roofs. Seventy miles south of Jackson there is almost no electricity, no phone service. People huddle in groups around closed banks. There are many impromptu aid centers doling out water and ice from the back of trucks.

South of Hattiesburg just past 7 in the morning hundreds of people wait in line in front of two gas stations. Many wait in cars but just as many are pedestrians carrying red fuel containers. Neither station is selling gas. Eventually one station opens the doors of the convenience store. Six people are allowed in at a time emerging with cases of warm soda, bags of potato chips, candy, cigarettes and popcorn. The registers don't work. Cash transactions only. All of the canned food is already gone.

The people in line are frustrated. "He could open the pumps if he wanted to," somebody says. A brief scuffle occurs across the street, two men shoving each other.

"It's the heat," says a man in blue shorts and no shirt. "Makes people crazy."

There's a lot of blame directed at the government. "What do they expect us to do?" one lady says. "They didn't start handing out ice for three days. By then everything had gone bad." Further south the destruction becomes more intense, nearly every building sustaining some sort of damage. Later in the morning some of the gas stations are selling fuel, and the lines at these stations stretch for miles with wait times of four hours.

Previous Comments

ID

134207

Comment

Thirty people sit around a table watching a small television set, scenes of looting in New Orleans. The people watching the television don't like the depictions. "What do they expect us to do?" a young man says. Here's a related topic on the psychology of looting.

Author

LatashaWillis

Date

2005-09-03T22:37:50-06:00

ID

134208

Comment

Good one, L.W. I must pause and say good things about the media right now. I think they are bending over backward to get this thing right at the moment. The nation is in shock at our lack of preparedness and, from what I can see, they're reporting it pretty straight now. I've seen a number of stories in the mainstream in the last 48 hours that I have admired greatly. One of the good things that could come out of this tragedy is better coverage of the poor, with any luck. If that proves to be true, it only took 40 years after the Kerner Commission report, but, they, better late than never.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2005-09-03T23:36:23-06:00

ID

134209

Comment

Good one, L.W. I must pause and say good things about the media right now. I think they are bending over backward to get this thing right at the moment. The nation is in shock at our lack of preparedness and, from what I can see, they're reporting it pretty straight now. I've seen a number of stories in the mainstream in the last 48 hours that I have admired greatly. One of the good things that could come out of this tragedy is better coverage of the poor, with any luck. If that proves to be true, it only took 40 years after the Kerner Commission report, but, they, better late than never.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2005-09-03T23:36:24-06:00

ID

134210

Comment

There was also an article about the poor in the disaster areas and why they were stranded. Here's an excerpt: An Associated Press analysis of Census data shows that the residents in the three dozen hardest-hit neighborhoods in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama also were disproportionately minority and had incomes $10,000 below the national average. "Let them know we're not bums. We have houses. Our houses were destroyed. We have jobs. It's not our fault that we didn't have cars to leave," Shatonia Thomas, 27, said as she walked near New Orleans' convention center five days after the storm, still trapped in the destruction with her children, ages 6 and 9. Money and transportation ó two keys to surviving a natural disaster ó were inaccessible for many who got left behind in the Gulf region's worst squalor. "It's a different equation for poor people," explained Dan Carter, a University of South Carolina historian. "There's a certain ease of transportation and funds that the middle class in this country takes for granted." Catina Miller, a 32-year-old grocery deli worker who lived in the Ninth Ward, a poverty-stricken New Orleans enclave created in the 1870s by immigrants who were too poor to find higher ground, said she certainly would have liked to have left the city before the hurricane hit. "But where can you go if you don't have a car?" she asked. "Not everyone can just pick up and take off."

Author

LatashaWillis

Date

2005-09-04T18:04:58-06:00

ID

134211

Comment

On the topic of the awakening of the media, and on whether we should wait a couple weeks before criticizing the emergency response (discussed on another thread), check out his Slate article. The most interesting park is the quotes from CNN's Anderson Cooper taking the gloves off on Sen. Mary Landrieu, the Democratic senator from Louisiana: Does the federal government bear responsibility for what is happening now? Should they apologize for what is happening now?" Cooper opened. As if campaigning before the local Democratic Ladies' Club lunch, Landrieu sing-songed back, "Anderson, there will be plenty of time to discuss all of those issues, about why, and how, and what, and if." She went on to thank President Bush, President Clinton, former President Bush, Senators Frist and Reid, and "all leaders that are coming to Louisiana, and Mississippi, and Alabama, "for their help. Her condescending filibuster continued: "Anderson, tonight, I don't know if you've heardómaybe you all have announced itóbut Congress is going to an unprecedented session to pass a $10 billion supplemental bill tonight to keep FEMA and the Red Cross up and operating." Cooper suspended the traditional TV rules of decorum and, approaching tears of fury, said: "Excuse me, Senator, I'm sorry for interrupting. I haven't heard that, because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated. "And when they hear politicians slapóyou know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. And there's not enough facilities to take her up. "Do you get the anger that is out here? Ö "I mean, I know you say there's a time and a place for, kind of, you know, looking back, but this seems to be the time and the place. I mean, there are people who want answers, and there are people who want someone to stand up and say, "You know what? We should have done more. Are all the assets being brought to bear?" Landrieu kept her cool, probably because she's in Baton Rouge, while the stink of corpses caused Cooper to tremble in rage all the way to the commercial break. Bodies rotting in the streets as hungry children step around them would make me go off on an elected official, too. Good for Cooper.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2005-09-04T18:12:56-06:00

ID

134212

Comment

I don't think Sen. Landrieu can take the heat much longer. I saw footage of her in a helicopter surveying the damage, and she broke down sobbing. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of federal officials resign after this.

Author

LatashaWillis

Date

2005-09-04T19:21:21-06:00

ID

134213

Comment

Yeah, all except the ones that should, probably.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2005-09-04T19:23:37-06:00