Activists protesting the forced permanent displacement of the poor residents of New Orleans have faced insanely overblown criminal charges and police brutality rising from their passionate defense of public housing. Bill Weinberg brought the story to my attention today, and it's a story I am not soon to forget or let die. Mr. Weinberg has presented the details in a highly professional and educated fashion. I will not seek to imitate his piece or steal from it. Instead I will elucidate some forms of police brutality and corruption which were a staple of New Orleans law enforcement for years, and which have only gotten worse since Hurricane Katrina.
While the floodwaters of Katrina rose, the prisoners in the Orleans Parish Prison were abandoned by the Sheriff's Department and left locked in their cells. The were left without lights, fresh air, food or water. The flood waters rose to chest level on the first floor. Even the inmates who managed to escape from their cells could not get out of the building. They broke windows to breathe fresh air, and hung burning fabric out the window in an attempt to be rescued. As Human Rights Watch reported:
“The water started rising, it was getting to here,” said Earrand Kelly, an inmate from Templeman III, as he pointed at his neck. “We was calling down to the guys in the cells under us, talking to them every couple of minutes. They were crying, they were scared. The one that I was cool with, he was saying ‘I'm scared. I feel like I'm about to drown.' He was crying.”
The poor residents of New Orleans, and South Louisiana as a whole, have always been treated as sub-human by the established power structure, both at the state and federal level. The story needs to be told again and again, so that nobody forgets, ever.
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