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On 29 August 2005, Hurricane Katrina slashed the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida panhandle. Its mauling winds, pounding rains, and relentless floodwaters left behind a 90,000-square-mile swath of destruction, an area comparable in size to Great Britain. Estimates of insured losses soon climbed as high as $30 billion, making this one of the costliest disasters in American history.
The human toll taken by Katrina was incalculable, but even as officials grimly predicted the number of dead might climb into the thousands, news footage of the storm's aftermath filled television screens everywhere with images of something far more devastating than nature could have wrought at the height of her fury. The world was shocked to discover a great, historic city that even before disaster struck had been left to languish in decay and misery. And they saw, perhaps for the first time, an America whose ruling elite, heavily invested in the economic conquest of the planet, had not only failed to protect their own backdoor but seemed to have grown shamelessly indifferent to the cries of those tired, poor, huddled masses—their own countrymen—whom it was now more convenient to dub "refugees."
Hurricane Katrina tore a gaping hole in the tinsel fabric of America's identity through which all could now view what looked far more like a war-ravaged third-world country than the seductive glossy photos of pleasure and privilege found in the pages of Better Homes and Gardens and Architectural Digest. Exposed to the eyes of every man, woman, and child were the downtrodden, disfranchised, demoralized, and dispossessed of a North American empire that has perennially portrayed itself as the land of equality, freedom, opportunity, and plenty. The contrast between myth and reality could not have been more acute.
But the devil is truly in the details. Nearly one of every three New Orleans residents lived below the poverty line before Katrina hit, and the overwhelming majority of them were African Americans. According to some estimates, over half of all children in Louisiana live in poverty, and the situation is even worse in neighboring Missisippi. Of the approximately 134,000 who remained behind after the pre-hurricane evacuation, most probably could not afford the cost of relocating to higher, safer ground.
The poverty statistics for America as a whole are hardly more encouraging. The number of poor rose for four consecutive years from 31.6 million (11.3 percent) in 2000 to 37 million (12.7 percent) in 2004. Increasing numbers of Americans also find themselves without health insurance. In 2004, some 46 million, or roughly 15 people out of every hundred, were uninsured.
Conventional wisdom suggests that education is the royal road out of poverty to prosperity. But those who are among America's most highly educated—college and university teachers—continue to find that their advanced degrees are often no more than one-way tickets to low-wage adjunct professor posts with no benefits.
If these facts and figures are alarming—and they should be, then it is clear the United States is headed in a very wrong direction. With its aging infrastructure vulnerable to natural catastrophes and, just as likely, to terrorist attacks, and fractured by injustice and inequity, America has been so severely compromised that drastic remedial steps are required.
First among these should be the immediate resignation of George W. Bush—or failing to secure the President's voluntary departure—his impeachment and removal from office. Flaunting the symbols of patriotism while undermining basic civil liberties and implementing policies that reinforce class division and rouse the indignation of other nations is the failed legacy of a failed presidency. Waging a war abroad on false pretenses to gain control over the world's second largest oil reserve and impose a patently ersatz democracy on another people and culture is no more than brazen imperialism, and it has resulted in the squandering of funds desperately needed to rebuild, strengthen, and protect America. By the year 2010, if projected rates of spending hold, the Iraq War will have made the United States an estimated $600 billion poorer, and countless more thousands of Americans and Iraqis will have suffered needless, violent deaths for a cause as futile as its premises were unjust.
This is unacceptable. America must be renewed. Her great cities, including New Orleans, must be rebuilt so that they cannot only survive but thrive. And her people must rededicate themselves to the true spirit of democracy that strives ceaselessly to eradicate every trace of that socioeconomic inequality that Katrina, in her wrath, laid bare for all the world to see.
—Joseph Dillon Ford