The following message is from Lisa Moore, an African-American former UT
graduate student. She is writing about what her aunt, Denise, who was
there, told her.
the buses came and took them to the Ernest Morial 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. Lisa C. Moore
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