← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Petr
Thread ID: 20298 | Posts: 17 | Started: 2005-09-19
2005-09-19 22:23 | User Profile
[url]http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gretna16sep16,0,728170.story?track=tothtml[/url]
[FONT=Arial] [B] September 16, 2005 [/B]
[SIZE=5]After Blocking the Bridge, Gretna Circles the Wagons[/SIZE] [I]
By Nicholas Riccardi, Times Staff Writer
[B]GRETNA, La. ââ¬â Little over a week after this mostly white suburb became a symbol of callousness for using armed officers to seal one of the last escape routes from New Orleans ââ¬â trapping thousands of mostly black evacuees in the flooded city ââ¬â the Gretna City Council passed a resolution supporting the police chief's move.
"This wasn't just one man's decision," Mayor Ronnie C. Harris said Thursday. "The whole community backs it."[/B]
Three days after Hurricane Katrina hit, Gretna officers blocked the Mississippi River bridge that connects their city to New Orleans, exacerbating the sometimes troubled relationship with their neighbor. The blockade remained in place into the Labor Day weekend.
[B]Gretna (pop. 17,500) is a feisty blue-collar city, two-thirds white, that prides itself on how quickly its police respond to 911 calls; it warily eyes its neighbor, a two-thirds black city (pop. about 500,000) that is also a perennial contender for the murder capital of the U.S.[/B]
Itself deprived of power, water and food for days after Katrina struck Aug. 29, Gretna suddenly became the destination for thousands of people fleeing New Orleans. The smaller town bused more than 5,000 of the newcomers to an impromptu food distribution center miles away. As New Orleans residents continued to spill into Gretna, tensions rose.
After someone set the local mall on fire Aug. 31, Gretna Police Chief Arthur S. Lawson Jr. proposed the blockade.
"I realized we couldn't continue, manpower-wise, fuel-wise," Lawson said Thursday. Armed Gretna police, helped by local sheriff's deputies and bridge police, turned hundreds of men, women and children back to New Orleans.
Gretna is not the only community that views New Orleans with distrust. Authorities in St. Bernard Parish, to the east, stacked cars to seal roads from the Crescent City. But Gretna's decision has become the symbol of the ultimate act of a bad neighbor, gaining notoriety partly from an account in the Socialist Worker newspaper by two San Francisco emergency workers and labor leaders who were in a crowd turned back by Gretna police.
Numerous angry e-mails to Gretna officials accuse them of racism. (Harris and Lawson are white.)
New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said Thursday that Gretna officials "will have to live" with their decision.
"We allowed people to cross ... because they were dying in the convention center," Nagin said. "We made a decision to protect peopleââ¬Â¦. They made a decision to protect property."
Paul Ribaul, 37, a New Orleans TV-station engineer from Gretna, said New Orleans and the suburbs have a complicated relationship.
"We say we're from New Orleans, but we're a suburb," he said. "The reason we don't live there is we don't like the crime, the politics."
Ribaul was among Gretna residents who praised the decision to close the bridge. "It makes you feel safe to live in a city like that," he said.
Critics suspect a racial motive for the blockade. City officials heatedly deny any such thing.
Among black residents of Gretna, some say that although they get along with most of their white neighbors, a few of the neighbors harbor strong prejudices.
Some black Gretna residents also speak fearfully of New Orleans. "We don't have as much killing over here as in New Orleans," said Leslie Anne Williams, 42.
Nonetheless, Williams' mother, a lifelong Gretna resident who is also black, disapproved of the Police Department's decision. People fleeing New Orleans "probably had a better chance of survival over here," said Laura Williams, 70, "especially with all that shooting" across the river.
When Katrina hit, about 5,000 of Gretna's residents were still in town. Police zigzagged the trim streets of ranch houses and older wooden buildings, checking on those who had not evacuated.
Like New Orleans, Gretna lost power and water. Town officials pleaded unsuccessfully for help from the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Then they learned that New Orleans officials had told the thousands trapped in that city's downtown, similarly deprived of food and water but also dodging gunfights and rising floodwaters, to cross to Gretna.
Not sure how to feed even their own residents, Gretna officials were overwhelmed by New Orleans' evacuees. They organized bus caravans Aug. 31 to take the arrivals to Metairie, 16 miles away, where a food and water distribution center had been set up.
The evacuees waited for rides out of Gretna at the foot of the bridge, across the street from Oakwood Mall. As the hours ticked by and the crowd swelled, trouble began, Gretna authorities said.
Sometime on Wednesday, Aug. 31, a fire broke out in the mall, next to the local branch of the sheriff's office, and police chased suspected looters out of the building.
Mayor Harris had had enough. He called the state police.
"I said: 'There will be bloodshed on the west bank if this continues,' " Harris recalled. " 'This is not Gretna. I am not going to give up our community!' "
The following morning, Gretna's police chief made his decision: Seal the bridge.
The San Francisco paramedics said in an interview and in their article that there were gunshots over the heads of people crossing the bridge from New Orleans' convention center ââ¬â many of them elderly ââ¬â where they were stuck for days without food, water and working toilets.
Nagin, New Orleans' mayor, said that he'd heard similar reports about gunfire, as well as people being turned back by guard dogs.
Chief Lawson said that he was unaware of any of his officers shooting over the heads of evacuees on the bridge but said that one black officer did fire a shot overhead to quiet an unruly crowd waiting to board a bus.
Harris said Thursday that closing the bridge was a tough decision but that he felt it was right.
[B]"We didn't even have enough food here to feed our own residents," Harris said. "We took care of our folks. It's something we had to do."[/B]
[I]*
Times staff writer James Rainey contributed to this report.[/I][/FONT]
2005-09-19 22:51 | User Profile
Gretna should have sent the negros they had the other way, and then blocked the bridge... :yes:
2005-09-19 23:10 | User Profile
It is stuff like this that makes me believe that Jean Raspail's horror-scenario in "[I]The Camp of the Saints[/I]" is unrealistic. In a real-life situation, those ships would have been stopped in one way or another, or the Indian invaders would have been gunned down on the French beaches by locals.
When it [U]really[/U] hits the fan and Whites who consider themselves as liberals are [B]truly[/B] pushed against the wall, about 95 % of them will shake off their superficial cosmopolitanism with amazing speed. This is my prediction.
Petr
2005-09-19 23:26 | User Profile
Mayor Nagin is looking anywhere to point fingers, due to his own failures. That small town did not have the infrastructure, nor the law enforcement, to handle a massive influx of refugees. They were decent enough to get 5000 people to a place equipped to handle them.
They were not an evac point pre agreed by New Orleans, pre resourced.
They did the right thing, and are being called racists.
Bah.
AE
2005-09-19 23:57 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Petr]It is stuff like this that makes me believe that Jean Raspail's horror-scenario in "[I]The Camp of the Saints[/I]" is unrealistic. In a real-life situation, those ships would have been stopped in one way or another, or the Indian invaders would have been gunned down on the French beaches by locals.
When it [U]really[/U] hits the fan and Whites who consider themselves as liberals are [B]truly[/B] pushed against the wall, about 95 % of them will shake off their superficial cosmopolitanism with amazing speed. This is my prediction.
Petr[/QUOTE]
Maybe. But recall South Africa, 1994...
2005-09-20 00:02 | User Profile
In South Africa, the statistical odds were too great against Whites (who had also been subjected to a de-spiriting international boycott), and there was[B] not[/B] a frontal all-out attack and social collapse like in "[I]The Camp of the Saints[/I]", it was more like salami tactics.
Plus there was the fact many White South Africans (especially those of British origin compared to Afrikaners) really didn't feel that they belonged in Africa, that it was their fatherland that they should defend at all costs.
Petr
2005-09-20 00:22 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Petr].. When it [U]really[/U] hits the fan and Whites who consider themselves as liberals are [B]truly[/B] pushed against the wall, about 95 % of them will shake off their superficial cosmopolitanism with amazing speed. This is my prediction.
Petr[/QUOTE]
Whoah, I think that 95% is way too high. More like 20% of the liberal types...maybe, and thats only because they survive the initial onslaught.
2005-09-20 00:24 | User Profile
Well, perhaps we have different concept on just what "liberal" is. For example, I would include among "liberals" a huge chunk of those who would vote the Republican party in US.
But anyways, I really think that even many sincere WNs are doing the job for the enemy by spreading this "we're all gonna die" defeatist meme.
Petr
2005-09-20 00:49 | User Profile
Between the Jewish press, the Jewish lawyers, and the black victims look for some major lawsuits aimed at Gretna. They will be made to pay. That's my prediction.
2005-09-20 07:18 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Petr] [font=Arial] New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said Thursday that Gretna officials "will have to live" with their decision.
"We allowed people to cross ... because they were dying in the convention center," Nagin said. "We made a decision to protect peopleââ¬Â¦. They made a decision to protect property."[/font] [font=Arial] [/font][/QUOTE] Property and people. NO residents from the project routinely rape, rob and murder whites who wander too far from the French Quarter. And that's on a good day. Let's think about what they would do to Gretna residents when things aren't going so well.
2005-09-20 13:13 | User Profile
I wouldn't apologize, either. It's not for lack of food, it would be for my town's security.
2005-09-20 14:08 | User Profile
I just noticed you can't edit your own posts. This is discrimination against non-perfectionists! :thumbd:
2005-09-20 19:05 | User Profile
[QUOTE=phoenix_rising]I just noticed you can't edit your own posts. This is discrimination against non-perfectionists! :thumbd:[/QUOTE] Yes you can, have you checked you user settings? I frequently edit mine when I see a boo boo, though I should use Preview more often to avoid the need. :cool2:
AE
2005-09-20 22:22 | User Profile
[I]GRETNA, La. ââ¬â Little over a week after [/I[B]]this mostly white suburb became a symbol of callousness [/B][I]for using armed officers to seal one of the last escape routes from New Orleans ââ¬â trapping thousands of mostly black evacuees in the flooded city ââ¬â the Gretna City Council passed a resolution supporting the police chief's move.[/I]
[I]Gretna is not the only community that views New Orleans with distrust. Authorities in St. Bernard Parish, to the east, stacked cars to seal roads from the Crescent City.[/I] [B]But Gretna's decision has become the symbol of the ultimate act of a bad neighbor,[/B] [I]gaining notoriety partly from an account in the [/I][B]Socialist Worker newspaper by two San Francisco emergency workers and labor leaders who were in a crowd turned back by Gretna police.[/B]
[I]Among black residents of Gretna, some say that although they get along with most of their white neighbors,[/I] [B]a few of the neighbors harbor strong prejudices.[/B]
"'[I]Jews[/I]media', huh? Yeah, sure, pal. Mebbe ya better take your meds 'n' lay off the [I]Mein Kampf [/I]for a week or two. Just a friendly suggestion....", said Joe Pussywhip with a snort....
[I]New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said Thursday that Gretna officials[/I] [B]"will have to live" [/B][I]with their decision.[/I]
They probably wouldn't have lived at all if they'd let your voodoo niggas in, jewcoon.
2005-09-21 00:03 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Angeleyes]Yes you can, have you checked you user settings? I frequently edit mine when I see a boo boo, though I should use Preview more often to avoid the need. :cool2:
AE[/QUOTE] Ah. That explains it. Thanks. I posted that before I had the magic ten posts and couldn't do much of anything except keep posting.
2005-09-21 00:57 | User Profile
[QUOTE]They will be made to pay. That's my prediction.[/QUOTE]Not in Louisiana. The powers that be cannot take the chance of igniting a powder keg.
2005-09-21 04:02 | User Profile
Good for Gretna! Nice to know some communities still exists where common sense rules.