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September 20, 2005

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself

Many of you may already be aware of Gretna story:

GRETNA, La. — Little over a week after this mostly white suburb became a symbol of callousness for using armed officers to seal one of the last escape routes from New Orleans — trapping thousands of mostly black evacuees in the flooded city — the Gretna City Council passed a resolution supporting the police chief's move.

"This wasn't just one man's decision," Mayor Ronnie C. Harris said Thursday. "The whole community backs it."

Three days after Hurricane Katrina hit, Gretna officers blocked the Mississippi River bridge that connects their city to New Orleans, exacerbating the sometimes troubled relationship with their neighbor. The blockade remained in place into the Labor Day weekend.

This little burg is the definition of what happens when fear takes over. The people of this town have lost their humanity. Instead of opening their town up to evacuees of Katrina, the citizens of Gretna (themselves without amenities, although not as bad off as New Orleans) armed themselves and threw the victims out.

And now their mayor is left to defend the actions of the town. One such defense can be read at Helpy-Chalk, where Rob summarizes his interview with Mayor Harris of Gretna:

I can see quite clearly where he is coming from: He thinks he did the right thing, because he protected his people. His problem is that he has too small a view of who his people are.

Rob's two sentences are an appropriate summation of much of the way people in poverty are dealt with in this country. We do the "right thing" with those we consider "our people". Maybe it's our next door neighbor whose in trouble. Perhaps it's someone at the local school who lost everything in a tragedy. People are willing to help like crazy when those in need are "our people". It's when we find a way to isolate people and make them "their people" that we lose our way.

The people of Gretna don't consider their fellow US citizens to be their people..and willingly left them to die because it would have put a strain on their resources for a few days and because they were afraid that some of the people might commit crimes. They were willing to let their neighbors die because of fear.

As a nation, so many of us have allowed ourselves to become enfolded by panic and worry that we're willing to abandon humanity and common decency in the name of a trumped up self preservation. This Lord of the Flies mentality is ruining us...creating among us the kind of savagery that we say we can't abide in others.

Gretna is a mirror. And it's time to take a cold, hard look.

(h/t: Lindsay)

Posted by Carla at September 20, 2005 10:17 AM