National Guard not allowing aid into the city

National Guard not allowing aid into the city : NOLA Indymedia

Get Your Act On! (Jeffrey and Andrea) are currently in Waco, TX. We are organizing a relief effort to bring much needed supplies directly into the City of New Orleans as almost NOTHING is getting in via 'official' channels (we have spoken to people still in the city).

Our house is still standing and should be relatively free of flood waters by now, so it will be used as a base for relief efforts as we are just 6 blocks from the lower 9th ward, one of the hardest hit neighborhoods. We will be purchasing a van or getting a large UHaul, filling it with supplies and driving it back to New Orleans.

If you can donate to our relief effort, please do so via this paypal link. If you do not wish to donate money directly, if you would like to purchase supplies that we can pick up (ie, from Lowes, Home Depot, Walmart), that would be great. A lot more info about our effort will be posted here by tonight as we get more details together. We can be reached via call at 254.640.8441 (Andrea) or 254.640.8442 (Jeffrey)

7:15PM Thurs Sept. 1 Update: It looks like the most economical thing to do is purchase a large van - we should be able to do this for $1000-$2000. If anyone has connections to people in the position to make a good sized donation, please ask them if they can help with this. Thanks!


9:30PM Thurs Sept 1. Update: Please help spread this message:

There are supplies sitting in Baton Rouge for the folks in New Orleans, but the National Guard has the city surrounded and is not letting anyone in or out. They are turning away people with s[QUOTE]upplies, claiming it is too dangerous. If we have planes that can drop bombs on people in Iraq, certianly we can air drop supplies into the city. Our goverment is KILLING the people of New Orleans. This is the message I am now sending to all major media sources, national and worldwide, as well as posting to email lists, blogs, etc. The story is getting out that the people there are not getting supplies, but the truth of WHY is not. Please help spread the word, we must get this story out. Please so not let any more of my friends die.

I can be reached at 254.640.8441 - feel free to call me or give my number to any media that needs a contact person to talk to.

Here is my message:

I am a resident of the Bywater in New Orleans (9th Ward). I am one of the lucky ones that was able to evacuate before the storm.

I have recently managed to speak to some friends stranded in New Orleans. They are starving and dehydrating and there is no news of when they will be receiving food and water. I have spoken to relief efforts and understand that there are plenty of supplies waiting for these people, BUT THEY ARE NOT BEING ALLOWED INTO THE CITY.

The National Guard has the city surrounded and is not letting anyone in or out, except the buses being evacuated. The excuse that they can not bring supplies into New Orleans because of the looting and gun fire is not a valid excuse - if they are too afraid to enter the streets of New Orleans, they need to be air dropping supplies into the city. If the United States is capable of sending planes that can withstand enemy fire to drop bombs in Iraq, certainly they are capable of air dropping supplies into a city where the worst of the gunfire they could encouter would be from semi-automatics.

Our government is killing the people of New Orleans. By witholding supplies, they are ensuring more deaths, and I hold them complicit.

Please bring this matter to the attention of the people of the United States. They need to know that New Orleans is deliberatly being denied food and water. Perhaps if the people there had food and water, they might not be shooting off guns.

Please feel free to call me for further information or with any questions. I appreciate your attention to this most serious matter.

I fear for my friends.

Sincerely,

Andrea Garland
Get Your Act On! (getyouracton.com)

On another note, Jeffrey and I are in the process of getting a large vehicle and loading it up with donated supplies needed for longer term cleanup efforts (generators, chain saws, solar cooking equipment, etc.). Some basic info and a paypal link is at Get Your Act On!(getyouracton.com) and more detailed info will be posted later. Please help spread the word about this, as well. We live 6 blocks from one of the hardest hit areas in New Orleans, so we intend to bring these necessary tools to our neighbors.

Also heard that part of the reason our house flooded is they dynamited part of the levee after the first section broke - they did this to prevent Uptown (the rich part of town) from being flooded. Apparently they used too much dynamite, thus flooding part of the Bywater. So now I know who is responsible for flooding my house - not Katrina, but our government.

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Loudoun relief crew turned away   Loudoun Sheriff's deputies and emergency personnel were on their way to hurricane-stricken Louisiana Thursday night but had to turn around when the federal government failed to come up with the required paperwork.

Sheriff Steve Simpson and his staff spent 12 hours trying to get the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the State of Louisiana Emergency Operations Center to act act. They didn't, and the 20 deputies and six emergency medical technicians - all volunteers -- turned around and came back to Loudoun.

The deputies' experience brings to our doorsteps a glaring illustration of the chaos in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But it does not dampen the deputies' willingness to assist: They may try again next week.

The deputies packed up to head south after a request from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Department. The department serves an area around New Orleans.

Deputies left Leesburg at 9 p.m. Thursday. They reached Harrisonburg at midnight and were told that neither FEMA nor the Louisiana was willing to act on the request from Jefferson Parish.

The deputies were to have been sworn in as local law enforcement officers and would have worked with teams in some of the most devastated areas. The relief team had gathered enough supplies to be self-sufficient for up to 14 days.

http://www.zwire.com/site/tab1.cfm?newsid=15144436&BRD=2553&PAG=461&dept_id=506035&r fi=6

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'They're not giving us what we need to survive'   Tnis is a story from an international showing that the U.S Government and Media are covering up the real horrors of the failure of the Bush Administration.

Jamie Doward reports on the fury of New Orleans residents who say they were ignored and mistreated by the authorities

Sunday September 4, 2005
The Observer

Only now, a week after Hurricane Katrina roared across the Deep South, leaving a trail of devastation across America's psyche, is the true story of the Battle of New Orleans emerging.
As convoys of commandeered school buses and Greyhound coaches transported tens of thousands of refugees out of the submerged city yesterday, in a belated and much-criticised relief operation, each vehicle brought with it new tales of horror.

Those trapped inside the two main shelters, the Superdome and the Convention Centre, paint a picture of a city that was subsumed beneath waves of violence, rape and death and accuse the police and National Guard of standing by, ignoring their pleas for help.

The claims are rejected by the federal and state authorities, who instead suggest the looting and lawlessness which followed the extensive flooding of the city was the result of a series of isolated incidents perpetrated by a few.

But it is clear from talking to survivors that what happened in New Orleans last week was far more extensive, bloody and terrifying than the authorities have admitted so far.

'We had to wrap dead people in white sheets and throw them outside while the police stood by and did nothing,' said Correll Williams, a 19-year-old meat cutter from the Crowder Road district in the east of the city, who waded two miles through waist-high water to make it to the Convention Centre after hearing on the radio it was being turned into a refuge.

'The police were in boats watching us. They were just laughing at us. Five of them to a boat, not trying to help nobody. Helicopters were riding by just looking at us. They weren't helping. We were pulling people on bits of wood, and the National Guard would come driving by in their empty military trucks.'

Williams only left his apartment after the authorities took the decision to flood his district in an apparent attempt to sluice out some of the water that had submerged a neighbouring district. Like hundreds of others he had heard the news of the decision to flood his district on the radio. The authorities had given people in the district until 5pm on Tuesday to get out - after that they would open the floodgates.

'We thought we could live without electricity for a few weeks because we had food. But then they told us they were opening the floodgates,' said Arineatta Walker, who fled the area with her daughter and two grandchildren.

'So about two o'clock we went on to the streets and we asked the army, "Where can we go?". And they said, "Just take off because there's no one going to come back for you." They kicked my family out of there. If I knew how to hotwire a car I would have,' Walker said.

Once inside the Convention Centre, Walker confronted a new hell. 'People were being raped, there were cries and screams, there were gunshots, but the police did nothing,' Walker said.

'The police were afraid to do anything,' said Chantelle, a black 22- year-old. 'They wouldn't come in. They took two white guys out one night but left the rest of us in here.'

Williams said: 'The floor was a swamp, you couldn't live in there. The police kept telling us buses were coming but they didn't. People started getting aggravated and then one policeman got mad, he caught an attitude with somebody and they caught an attitude back and started banging on his car, and that's how it started. He called for back-up and the next thing I know the military are down there throwing stun grenades. Everybody started running, bumping into each other, hurting each other.'

As the repeated promises of buses failed to materialise, people in the shelters started stealing cars. 'How do you expect people to act right when they're starving to death?' asked Williams. 'There were bodies all over. We were just throwing them out the front. They (the authorities) are blaming it on the people, making it look like it was the people's fault, but it's really their fault because they're not giving us what we need to survive. So now people are going and getting guns in order to fight back, in order to survive cos they don't want to help us.'

Outside the Convention Centre, where an estimated 15,000 people were seeking refuge, bodies lay ignored. A woman in a wheelchair and an elderly man on a chaise longue could be seen festering in the heat. On Wednesday, eight 11-strong teams from the Louisiana State Police entered the centre, where they were repelled by angry gangs, some of whom were armed. Yesterday scores of police officers were said to have resigned from the force, complaining their jobs had become too dangerous.

Until Friday morning only two buses had arrived at the Convention Centre to transport those inside out of the city, according to several trapped inside. The revelation suggests that the police and National Guard's inability to handle the crisis stemmed from chronic paralysis at the highest levels of the relief operation.

Outside the Superdome, which was at one stage home to some 25,000 people, a member of the National Guard was shot in the leg by his own gun as he was rushed by a crowd angry at the wait for buses to take them to Houston.
The authorities' failure to respond to the situation has prompted outpourings of national revulsion and calls for high-level resignations

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1562415,00.html

There were case of whites people being rescued as police and National Guard were laughing at blacks.