The C.O.W.S. KATRINA: AFTER THE FLOOD Part XI

The Context of White Supremacy hosts the eleventh study session on Gary Rivlin’s Katrina: After The Flood. Mr. Rivlin is a White man; while on staff for the New York Times he covered the cataclysmic engineering failure and negligence that demolished New Orleans in August of 2005. His 2015 bestseller documents a decade of asymmetrical “recovery.” To make it plain, ten years of black New Orleanians being racially dislocated and deliberately deterred from rebuilding their lives. Rivlin inspects all areas of people activity: the institution of charter schools, the destruction of public housing, and the looting of funds designated for flood victims. Last week’s installment documented the unabashed arrogance of White New Orleanians as they took direct control of post-Katrina New Orleans. Rivlin detailed the The New Orleans Tribune’s checklist of things the White power structure wanted to accomplish: getting rid of black district attorney Eddie Jordan and taking over public schools. Stacy Head, a white female attorney, “ousted a black incumbent in a majority-black district that hadn’t had a Caucasian representative in more than thirty years.” In 2007, Head and her City Council colleagues voted unanimously to destroy public housing. As black citizens protested the decision, they were pepper-sprayed, Tasered, and arrested. Head blew kisses to the crowd.  We hope this text will offer a more complete understanding of Hurricane Katrina and it’s aftermath as a meticulously planned campaign of genocide against black New Orleanians.