The city, still under a 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. curfew, has been largely deserted except for the massive police and military presence as well as firefighters, emergency medical service personnel, reporters, and convoys of electrical, telephone, and cable crews restoring services. Although the city is gradually being drained, big sections of it remain under water. City officials said September 13 that some neighborhoods—beginning with wealthier sections less affected by the storm, including the French Quarter and the central business district—will be reopened in coming days.

In Marigny, a section of New Orleans that did not suffer much flooding, Howard Allen and Adrian Thomas were among those who did not leave their homes. They helped rescue people who had been left to fend for themselves by the authorities.

“We used my pickup and took truckloads of people to the evacuation centers” at the Superdome and Convention Center, said Allen, a retired merchant marine and former member of the Seafarers International Union. He was helped by Thomas, a musician who plays in the French Quarter.

Allen said dozens of people in their neighborhood resisted the attempts by police and military to force them to abandon their homes and pets. They had heard of the brutal treatment meted out to working people in “shelters” such as the Superdome and to those who were flown to other states—often not told of their final destination—and separated from family members.

He explained that the police conducted house-to-house searches, harassing them day after day. “They kept coming back threatening us, claiming we were spreading disease,” he said. A group of 70 neighbors stayed in a nearby church until the military and police patrols pressured them into leaving.

Residents in several nearby neighborhoods had been organizing together to take care of basic necessities. “Our groups have been systematically broken apart by the daily pressure from the cops and the military,” Allen said. “They’re trying to starve us out by not giving us food, water, or gasoline,” he added. When they asked for food and water, the soldiers said they had been told not to give anything to those staying behind.

Thomas reported that despite all this, “by organizing ourselves we kept the city from shutting off the water for over a week. We had gas up to Sunday and telephone service until a week after the hurricane hit.”

Their group organized one person to get a set of door keys to check up on the houses and feed the animals for those who were forced to leave.

Militant reporters also visited Avondale, on the other side of the Mississippi River. The working-class area, located near the shipyards, shows wind damage, with shingles peeled off and homes that lost part of their roofs.

Paul Antoine, a sandblaster-painter who worked at the Grand Island Shipyards, said his family initially went to Houston before the storm. Faced with price gouging by the hotel where they were staying, they soon ran out of money and returned to Avondale. “When I got back here, I had no electricity or phone,” he said.

Bridget Antoine, a medical technician, reported that when they called the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a FEMA supervisor “told me to leave. I asked, where can I ask for help? He said, ‘Just go to a shelter.’” Referring to the cops, she said, “They beat my cousin right here, because they said he did not want to get out of the street.”

Paul Antoine said the police and soldiers “ride around in trucks, with some of them in the back, and point their guns at you. I’m in my house—you are not going to point your gun at me!”

Near the shipyards, a crew of three Bell South telephone workers were making repairs on a fiber optic line. One worker, who said they have been working 12 hours a day, noted that several of their co-workers lost their houses and were evacuated.

He expressed outrage at how insensitive some of the troops were to those being evacuated, many having spent days on rooftops without food or water. “There was one group waiting to be evacuated that included families. The troops just picked people at random, while people were pleading to stay together. All of them had guns as they were yelling, ‘You, you, and you—go.’”
 
 
Related articles:
Democrats, Republicans cover up responsibility for Gulf Coast disaster
Working people take own initiatives to confront social catastrophe
U.S. gov’t snubs Cuba’s offer to send doctors to Gulf Coast
How workers in battle transform themselves
Working-class response to Gulf Coast disaster
Hurricane evacuees in Houston reject being shipped out to sea
How cops obstructed evacuation
Shelters: shoddy conditions for evacuees
Workers displaced by Katrina seek union jobs  
 
 
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