I. When the Levee Breaks “When the Levee Breaks” by Kansas Joy McCoy and Memphis Minnie
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/08/a-short-history.html More “When the Levee Breaks”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-AanPHMbC4 If it keeps on rainin'
--If it keeps on rainin'--
If it keeps on rainin'
--If it keeps on rainin'--
The levee's goin' to break
--The people's goin' to break--
The levee's goin' to break
--The people's goin' to break--
If it keeps on rainin'
--If it keeps on rainin'--
The levee's goin' to break
--The people's goin' to break--
When the levee breaks
When the levee breaks
When the levee breaks
We'll have no place to stay
Mean old levee
--Mean old levee--
Mean old levee
--Mean old levee--
Taught me how to weep and moan
--Taught me how to weep and moan--
Taught me how to weep and moan
--Taught me how to weep and moan--
Mean old levee
--Mean old levee--
Taught me how to weep and moan
--Taught me how to weep and moan--
When the levee breaks
When the levee breaks
When the levee breaks
We'll have no place to stay
All last night
--All last night--
All last night
--All last night--
I sat on the levee and moan
--Oh cryin' won't help you--
I sat on the levee and moan
--I sat on the levee and moan--
Prayin' won't do you no good
--I sat on the levee and moan--
All last night
--All last night--
Oh cryin' won't help you
--I sat on the levee and moan--
Prayin' won't do you no good
--I sat on the levee and moan--
When the levee breaks
When the levee breaks
When the levee breaks
We'll have no place to stay
http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/a/a_perfect_circle/when_the_levee_breaks.html II. Dark Underbelly of American History The Federalists have vowed to take this country back to the days before FDR. That means we have to study our American history, even if we believe, as one DU poster wrote recently, that those who write about history “do nothing”.
Here I go, doing nothing again.
Tonight, Keith Olbermann brought up an important bit of American history that most of us are not taught in public school. Way back in the roaring 1920s, the Mississippi did what it does from time to time----it flooded its flood plain. They call it the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Eventually, the flood waters moved south and threatened the venerable, wealth city of New Orleans. Unwilling to accept damage to their city through this act of God, the powers that be made a decision. They would sacrifice the homes and livelihoods of the people who lived in St. Bernard Parish and Plaquemines Parish by having the National Guard deliberately blow up the levees which protected those lands, in order to divert flood waters which threatened New Orleans. Ironically, the flood waters never rose high enough to threaten the city of New Orleans, meaning that Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes were sacrificed for nothing.
Today, those watching CNN, heard a city official from Plaquemines Parish describe the leaking levee in his community. As he tried to discuss the way that the federal government has ignored pleas to help improve the
private earthen levees that protect the agricultural and residential community (the way that the Army Corp of Engineers protects the city of New Orleans with federally maintained levees), Wolf Blitzer cut him off and returned to Republican Convention coverage. I guess Plaquemines Parish is still considered expendable.
The shame of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 goes way beyond the destruction of the levees. All along the Mississippi, whites who had been displaced from their homes and farms by the flood waters were rescued by boats. Blacks who had been displaced by the flooding were crowded onto the crumbling levees, where they were denied food and water for days at a time. Sound familiar? When the Bush administration starved the citizens of NOLA who had taken refuge in the Superdome, they were just repeating history.
The African-Americans who were detained upon the levees were forced into slavery. For months, they labored to repair the levees, working long hours for no wages.
From a 1997 NYT’s review of John M. Barry’s
Rising Tide http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/13/reviews/970413.13watkint.html Near the end of John M. Barry's extraordinary history there is a kind of epiphany that is as dark as the gelatinous, stinking muck the Mississippi left behind after one of the most devastating floods in American history. For weeks, Will Percy of Greenville, Miss., the son of the Delta plantation owner and Southern entrepreneur-aristocrat LeRoy Percy and the future adoptive father of the writer Walker Percy, had floundered, frustrated by circumstances and his own incompetence as head of the Washington County Red Cross and chairman of a special flood relief committee. Black work gangs and their refugee families resented being held as virtual prisoners in dreadfully squalid ''concentration camps'' set up along miles of the Greenville levee. Water, food and medical supplies were inadequate. Percy's subordinates held him in contempt, and his equals, including his own father, undercut his authority and ignored his decisions.
And now a black man had been killed by a white policeman for refusing to go back to work on levee repairs after having labored all night. The black community seemed certain to explode. To prevent this, Percy, whose family prided itself on its amicable, if typically patrician, relations with black people, addressed a mass meeting of blacks and launched into a diatribe that could have spewed from the likes of Theodore Bilbo. He had ''struggled and worried and done without sleep in order to help you Negroes,'' Percy whined. In return, he said, they had demonstrated a ''sinful, shameful laziness,'' and because of that, ''one of your race has been killed. You sit before me sour and full of hatred as if you had the right to blame anybody or judge anybody. . . . I am not the murderer. That foolish young policeman is not the murderer. The murderer is you! Your hands are dripping with blood. Look into each other's face and see the shame and the fear God set on them. Down on your knees, murderers, and beg your God not to punish you as you deserve.''
Greenville's black people -- perhaps too numb with disbelief to react -- did not rebel, but, Mr. Barry writes, ''the bond between the Percys and the blacks was broken. The Delta, the land that had once promised so much to blacks, had become, entirely and finally, the land where the blues began.'' In that one brief vignette, Mr. Barry peels back layers of self-delusion and myth, inviting us to stare into the racial abyss of the Deep South. And the abyss has stared back.
Another description of the events of Greenville:
http://rwor.org/a/015/katrina-lessons-1927-flood.htm After the first wave of the flood receded in the Delta and Black people were released, a second surge threatened the levees protecting the main town of Greenville. This time Blacks were forced—under the threat of being conscripted at gunpoint—to save the city by strengthening the damaged levee system. One thousand Black men, “overseen by several dozen whites,” worked around the clock for eight days in a tremendous act of heroism to save the city. For thanks they got more oppression and abuse, including a stark increase in lynchings. John Barry describes a post-flood report from a committee of Black citizens from Greenville:
The report confirmed that black refugees “could not secure supplies without an order from a white person,” and they found “oppression,” that black “men were beaten by soldiers and made to work under guns. That more than one wanton murder was committed by these soldiers... hat women and girls were outraged ... by these soldiers.”
Months later, once the levees were rebuilt, southern Blacks began another wave of migration, away from the South, to the North. They also fled from the Republican Party which had failed them. For Pres. Coolidge and Commerce Secretary Hoover had promised Blacks that they would get land after all the work was done, but of course, they lied. The newly rebuilt South was to be one where even more wealth and power was concentrated in the hands of a few
white people.
Sound familiar?
That is what the Federalists mean when they say that they want to roll back the nation to before the days of FDR.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaquemines_Parish,_Louisianahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mississippi_Flood III. God is Good, the People of Plaquemines and NOLA are Brave and We Can Not Survive Four More Years of Federal Neglect I found this document online:
http://www.hq.usace.army.mil/cepa/releases/neworleanslevees.htm Providing similar protection to the area of lower Plaquemines, which is home to 2 percent of the area’s population, is estimated to cost a total of $1.6 billion. Before committing to that funding request, the Administration is awaiting the results of the Corps’ further analysis that will provide additional insight into the technical challenges of protecting such a narrow strip of land; whether certifying the levees there exacerbates an already challenging environmental situation (i.e., sinking and wetlands erosion); and whether such improvements would be economically justified. For that reason, flood advisories from FEMA were issued only for the Belle Chasse levee-protected area of Plaquemines and for areas outside of levee protection in Plaquemines.
Next year, in 2007, FEMA’s recommendation was for Plaquemine’s residents to rebuild on stilts 8-18 feet off the ground.
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=41073Meanwhile, we have spent about $300 billion waging a never ending war in Iraq since Katrina hit NOLA. That is enough to have protected Plaquemines Parish 200 times over.It is all a matter of priorities, I guess. After 100 years of war in Iraq, will we have time and resources to rebuild our infrastructure here at home? Will there be anything left to rebuild? There is only so much that we can do with sandbags.
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