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"Finding Fault With FEMA"
Rec. 4-29-06
1) 3:47 Radio essay Mp3
2) 4:37 Radio essay Mp3
3) 5:08 Radio Essay Mp3
FINDING FAULT WITH FEMA
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[Col. Writ. 4/27/06] Copyright '06 by Mumia Abu-Jamal
In a time when both the President and the Congress are at low ebb in the polls, Congress has just released a bi-partisan report that sets forth many of the shortcomings of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Among their possible recommendations? The abolition of FEMA.
FEMA. The very acronym elicits grunts of discontent. The name has become little more than a curse, evoking ugly images and shameful realities of Hurricane Katrina.
But to blame FEMA for the government's egregious shortcomings in responses to the national disaster, is a little like blaming a rape victim for being promiscuous.
For as surely as there were hundreds of thousands of Black, Asian, Native American and poor white victims of governmental neglect during Katrina and its aftermath, FEMA has been victimized by the conservative mindset that such an agency isn't needed.
FEMA was formed by former President Jimmy Carter in 1979, to consolidate various national agencies under one roof. Under various administrations, FEMA has been either ignored, promoted, elevated, and demoted under the incumbent Bush administration.
Since 2000, FEMA has become an agency devoid of its best emergency management professionals, and its highest levels were peopled with Bush homies and cronies.
Scholar Michael Eric Dyson, in the book, *Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster* (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2006), pens a withering critique of the deconstruction of FEMA, from within:
"Of FEMA's top eight officials, five joined the agency with virtually no experiences in disaster management. FEMA's top three leaders -- [Michael] Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode, and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler -- were plucked from Bush's 2000 campaign for the White House advance operation. Scott R. Morris, Altshuler's predecessor and now director of the agency's Long-Term Recovery Office for Florida, worked as a media strategist for Bush's 2000 presidential campaign. David I. Maurstad, a senior official at FEMA's headquarters, was the Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska before joining the agency ... "
This scenario lowered the agency's morale even further and left FEMA, described as a "bureaucratic backwater," was scuttled by the administration. Is there any wonder that it didn't or couldn't perform in a time of national crisis?
FEMA, formerly a cabinet-level agency (with the president's ear), was demoted into a sublevel of the Department of Homeland Security, which, joined with the appointment of political hacks, and the brain drain loss of lower level staff, has left it a shadow of its former self.
To abolish an agency, just for the political sake of abolishing it, without regard for the forces which all but scuttled it, is but to abolish its memory.
At bottom is the conservative antipathy for the very notion of a government designed to help people, especially those most in need.
The ideologues of 'limited government' recognize only the role of the State in social repression of the poor and the powerless. When the state is called to serve, it will always encounter resistance from those quarters.
Hurricane Katrina was, and remains, a national disaster; but it wasn't merely a failure of FEMA. The failures of Katrina and its continuing aftermath, can be safely attributed to all levels of local, state and national government. It was a failure of Black leadership. It was a failure of the media. It was a failure of the faith community.
It was a failure of America to save and serve fellow Americans.
There is surely enough failure to pass around.
Shall the Bush Administration be abolished?
Shall Louisiana's Governorship be abolished?
Shall the New Orleans mayoralty be abolished?
While these questions are rhetorical, an argument can be made that all of these offices and administrations seriously failed the people.
To lay all of this on FEMA, is but the latest political diversion.
The Hurricane Katrina disaster exposed serious and continuing problems in American society. To abolish FEMA does nothing to begin to solve them.
The suffering of the people of Louisiana and the Gulf Coast deserve more than this.
Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal
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P.O. Box 19709
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Send our brotha some LOVE and LIGHT at:
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175 Progress Drive
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WE WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM CAN *NOT* REST!!
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