This is from Mitchel Cohen, in Brooklyn

The People of the Dome

My friend Les Evenchick, an independent Green who lives in the French
Quarter of New Orleans in a 3-story walkup, reports that 90 percent of the
so-called looters are simply grabbing water, food, diapers and medicines,
because the federal and state officials have refused to provide these basic
necessities.

Les says that "it's only because of the looters that non-looters -- old
people, sick people, small children -- are able to survive."

Those people who stole televisions and large non-emergency items have been
SELLING THEM, Les reports (having witnessed several of these "exchanges")
so that they could get enough money together to leave the area.

Think about it:

- People were told to leave, but all the bus stations had closed down the
night before and the personnel sent packing.

- Many people couldn't afford tickets anyway.

- Many people are stranded, and others are refusing to leave their homes,
pets, etc. They don't have cars.

You want people to stop looting? Provide the means for them to eat, and to
leave the area.

Some tourists in the Monteleone Hotel paid $25,000 for 10 buses. The buses
were sent (I guess there were many buses available, if you paid the price!)
but the military confiscated them (!) and would not let the people leave.
Instead, the military ordered them to the now-infamous Convention Center.

HOW SIMPLE it would have been for the State and/or US government to have
provided buses for people BEFORE the hurricane hit, and throughout this
week. Even evacuating 100,000 people  trapped there -- that's 3,000 buses,
less than come into Washington D.C. for some of the giant antiwar
demonstrations there. Even at $2,500 a pop -- highway robbery -- that would
only be a total of $7.5 million for transporting all of those who did not
have the means to leave.

Instead, look at the human and economic cost of not doing that!

So why didn't they do that?

Why have food and water been BLOCKED from reaching tens of thousands of
poor people?

On Thursday, the government used the excuse that there were some very
scattered gunshots (two or three instances only) -- around 1/50th of the
number of gunshots that occur in New York City on an average day -- to shut
down voluntary rescue operations and to scrounge for 5,000 National Guard
troops fully armed, with "shoot to kill" orders -- at a huge economic cost.

They even refused to allow voluntary workers who had rescued over 1,000
people in boats over the previous days to continue on Thursday, using the
several gunshots (and who knows WHO shot off those rounds?) to say "It's
too dangerous". The volunteers wanted to continue their rescue operations
and had to be "convinced" at gunpoint to "cease and desist."

There is something sinister going down -- it's not simply incompetence or
negligence.

How could FEMA and Homeland Security not have something so basic as bottled
drinking water in the SuperDome, which was long a part of the hurricane
plan? One police officer in charge of his 120-person unit said yesterday
that his squad was provided with only 70 small bottles of water.

Last year, New Orleans residents -- the only area in the entire state that
voted in huge numbers against the candidacy of George Bush -- also fought
off attempts to privatize the drinking water supply.

One of the first acts of Governor Kathleen Blanco (a Democrat, by the way)
during this crisis was to TURN OFF the drinking water, to force people to
evacuate. There was no health reason to turn it off, as the water is drawn
into a separate system from the Mississippi River, not the polluted lake,
and purified through self-powered purification plants separate from the
main electric grid. If necessary, people could have been told to boil their
water -- strangely, the municipal natural gas used in stoves was still
functioning properly as of Thursday night!

There are thousands of New Orleans residents who are refusing to evacuate
because they don't want to leave their pets, their homes, or who have no
money to do so nor place to go. The government -- which COULD HAVE and
SHOULD HAVE provided water and food to residents of New Orleans -- has NOT
done so INTENTIONALLY to force people to evacuate by starving them out.
This is a crime of the gravest sort.

We need to understand that the capability has been there from the start to
DRIVE water and food right up to the convention center, as those roads have
been clear -- it's how the National Guard drove into the city.

Let me say this again: The government is intentionally not allowing food or
water in.

This is for real.

MSNBC interviewed dozens of people who had gotten out. Every single one of
them was WHITE.

The people who are poor are finally leaving the horrendous conditions in
the SuperDome and are being bussed to the AstroDome in Houston.

Call them "People of the Dome."

If people open fire on the National Guard coming to remove them against
their will, will New Orleans become the first battle in the new American
revolution?


Mitchel Cohen
Brooklyn Greens / Green Party of NY
--------------------------------------------
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Please let us stay on topic and be civil.

OM




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