First Person

They Believed They Were Sent There to Die

On her Tuesday show, Oprah Winfrey and others reported from New Orleans, Houston, and Mississippi. It's hard to say why---perhaps because Oprah is black, and someone every black person knows about and feels they know, perhaps because many of the reporters were actors, and they are open to their feelings of the moment and able to express them--but this was a very intimate hour, and because of that, more shocking and moving than most TV reports.

A doctor--an Oprah regular--reported from the New Orleans airport, where a triage center and makeshift hospital and morgue were operating. Ambulances were lined up for two miles. People were in lines to been seen for days. But the most shocking observation he made was that individuals who were judged too ill to be helped were placed in the morgue while still alive.

Early in the hour, Oprah reacted to hearing that in the chaos (and, as she discovered, the near total darkness) of the Superdome, not only was their violence and death but that babies were raped. This was first mentioned by the Chief of Police, but later confirmed by someone who had been confined there. Gangs were said to have linked up and fomented violence inside, while battling with police.

A different view of gang activity at the Convention Center is found in the following first person account. It is entirely possible that both accounts are true.

This is an account written by Lisa Moore but given by Denise Moore. It was published in the French newspaper, Liberation, and this is excerpted from a version posted here on dkos.

According to Liberation, "the Moore family is large and long established Creole Catholic family in New Orleans. The Moores are musicians - Deacon John (Moore) is the most famous one of them - professors, nurses... Their houses are now submerged by flooding, and most of them have lost everything following Katrina's passage. Lisa Moore, editor (Redbone press), has collected the testimony of her 43 year-old cousin, Denise Moore, once an education counselor, now a refugee in Baton Rouge. Here is her tale of a dive into Hell:

"she described it as the scariest time in her life. 3 of the rooms in the apartment (there are only 4) caved in. ceilings caved in, walls caved in. she huddled under a mattress in the hall. she thought she would die from either the storm or a heart attack. after the storm passed, she went back to Baptist to seek shelter (this was Monday). it was also scary at Baptist; the electricity was out, they were running on generators, there was no air conditioning.

Tuesday the levees broke, and water began rising. they moved patients upstairs, saw boats pass by on what used to be streets. they were told that they would be evacuated, that buses were coming. then they were told they would have to walk to the nearest intersection, Napoleon and S. Claiborne, to await the buses. they waded out in hip-deep water, only to stand at the intersection, on the neutral ground (what y'all call the median) for 3 1/2 hours. the buses came and took them to the Ernest Memorial Convention Center. (yes, the convention center you've all seen on TV.)

Denise said she thought she was in hell. they werethere for 2 days, with no water, no food. no shelter. Denise, her mother (63 years old), her niece (21 years old), and 2-year-old grandniece. when they arrived, there were already thousands of people there. they were told that buses were coming. police drove by, windows rolled up, thumbs up signs. national guard trucks rolled by, completely empty, soldiers with guns cocked and aimed at them. nobody stopped to drop off water. a helicopter dropped a load of water, but all the bottles exploded on impact due to the height ofthe helicopter.

the first day (Wednesday) 4 people died next to her. the second day (Thursday) 6 people died next to her. Denise told me the people around her all thought they had been sent there to die. again, nobody stopped. the only buses that came were full; they dropped off more and more people, but nobody was being picked up and taken away. they found out that those being dropped off had been rescued from rooftops and attics; they got off the buses delirious from lack of water and food. completely dehydrated. the crowd tried to keep them all in one area; Denise said the new arrivals had mostly lost their minds. they had gone crazy.

inside the convention center, the place was one huge bathroom. in order to shit, you had to stand in other people's shit. the floors were black and slick with shit. most people stayed outside because the smell was so bad. but outside wasn't much better: between the heat, the humidity, the lack of water, the old and very young dying from dehydration... and there was no place to lay down, not even room on the sidewalk. they slept outside Wednesday night, under an overpass.

Denise said yes, there were young men with guns there. but they organized the crowd. they went to Canal Street and "looted," and brought back food and water for the old people and the babies, because nobody had eaten in days. when the police rolled down windows and yelled out "the buses are coming," the young men with guns organized the crowd in order: old people in front, women and children next, men in the back. just so that when the buses came, there would be priorities of who got out first.

Denise said the fights she saw between the young men with guns were fist fights. she saw them put their guns down and fight rather than shoot up the crowd. but she said that there were a handful of people shot in the convention center; their bodies were left inside, along with other dead babies and old people.

Denise said the people thought there were being sent there to die. lots of people being dropped off, nobody being picked up. cops passing by, speeding off. national guard rolling by with guns aimed at them. and yes, a few men shot at the police, because at a certain point all the people thought the cops were coming to hurt them, to kill them all. she saw a young man who had stolen a car speed past, cops in pursuit; he crashed the car, got out and ran, and the cops shot him in the back. in front of the whole crowd. she saw many groups of people decide that they were going to walk across the bridge to the west bank, and those same groups would return, saying that they were met at the top of the bridge by armed police ordering them to turn around, that they weren't allowed to leave.

So they all believed they were sent there to die."