During Natural Disasters: Is ‘Looting’ a Crime? Is Survival a Crime?
During Natural Disasters: Is ‘Looting’ a Crime? Is Survival a Crime?
In the past few years, every catastrophe, whether it is the man-made disaster after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, or the man-made disaster after the Earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, capitalism’s first responses have been to send in military and extra military forces to preserve law and order.
However, the victims of these disasters primarily need, medical care, food and water — one cannot survive eating bullets and hand grenades.
When the governments, primarily the USA, fail to protect people, but first respond to protect property and the property of the food stores, it demonstrates that Capitalism is now an inhumane system.
Their first move is to protect the rotting property of the stores, rather than prevention of the starvation of the people. When the starving victims grab the food before it spoils, the capitalist governments consider these people to be “looters”!
The question is: Should the starving victims of the disasters watch the food rot and the drinking water go rancid, and wait for medical care, food and water, until the area is secure for property? These disasters are a clear case of property rights coming before the people’s unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
When Katrina was about to hit New Orleans, no National Guard troops were sent to evacuate the poor citizens from the ninth ward. Since the people in the ninth ward were starving and in dire need of drinkable water, aid was not found, citizens, who were trapped, declared eminent domain of the food and water in the flooded and/or closed food stores. At that point a racial double standard was applied by the mass media, in lock step with George Bush — Blacks were call “looters” by the press, and whites were called “finders”.
The Great Racial Divide: Blacks “looting” Food – Whites ‘finding’ Food
The mass media whipped up the “looter” hysteria and many citizens of the white New Orleans community of Algiers Point, formed vigilante groups to defend themselves from “looters” and not allow Black Refuges, from flood ravaged ninth ward, to enter Algiers Point in order to find food and shelter. (Algiers Point is on the west side of the Mississippi, to go from New Orleans proper to Algiers Point people have to cross the Danziger Bridge from the east side of the Mississippi.)
Facing an influx of refugees, the residents of Algiers Point could have pulled together food, water and medical supplies for the flood victims. Instead, a group of white residents, convinced that crime would arrive with the human exodus formed a vigilante group and sought to seal off the area, blocking the roads in and out of the neighborhood by dragging lumber and downed trees into the streets. The Algiers Point cops also acted as a vigilante group.
Glen Ford, of Black Agenda Report, Glen Ford, of Black Agenda Report, pointed this out in his article Death at the Bridge in New Orleans:
“ . . . . One particularly vicious gang of at least seven cops converged on the Danziger Bridge over the Industrial Canal, apparently in search of Black people to kill during the post-storm confusion. The officers encountered an unarmed family of five[1] and a friend walking across the bridge on their way to a supermarket and opened fire on them, seriously wounding four and killing one. Then the cops went to the other side of the bridge and came upon two brothers on their way to a family member’s dental office. The cops killed one of the brothers, who was mentally disabled. When they were finally finished shooting, the cops put their criminal minds together to concoct a cover story and plant a weapon on the scene.”
They waved their guns and randomly murdered black people. They were photos and videos of their actions, but very little has been done. However on police officer has just recently confessed to his crime.
The vigilantes openly bragged about their exploits:
“It was great,” Algiers Point resident Wayne Janak (pictured below) says in a video that accompanies the report. ‘It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it.’Nathan Roper (pictured below) told Thompson, ‘The police said, If they’re breaking in your property do what you gotta do and leave them [the bodies] on the side of the road.’ A woman who asked to remain anonymous reported that her uncle in New Orleans ‘was very excited that it was a free-for-all — white against black — that he could participate in.’ She also told of a cousin who e-mailed her a photo in which he posed next to a black man who had been fatally shot — a modern-day version of the chilling photographs once popular as souvenirs of lynchings.” http://www.southernstudies.org/2008/12/if-it-moved-you-shot-it-investigation-details-vigilante-shootings-in-post-katrina-new-orleans.html
After the “looters” began the U.S, Government, used the pretext of “looters” to send in its private extralegal mercenary to police the “looters”. (The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) paid out $73 million to the Blackwater Private Vigilantes for their services. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14707922; while none of the people who pay rent their shelter did not even received a dime! http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/katrina-pain-index-2009/)