Looting New Orleans

We need to celebrate the looting. When people, to survive, drop all `moral' baggage about not stealing. And when the authorities can't provide you with the water and food you need to survive, what are you left to do?
Of course you might, if you were a CNN floozie, ask just what those people were still doing there. Why didn't they obey the evacuation order?
As I argued at CPROBES, chances are that the authorities didn't have the thousands of buses available that they would have needed to get those people out. No doubt SUV drivers got out, but then who's left? Poor black communities.
Earlier when they were talking about looting, the image showed people walking away with water. Good on them.
Just now, horror of horrors, a young black male was walking away with an air mattress. Good thinking. It could both replace his lost bed and act as a flotation device. And for crying out loud, if he wanted to buy it, could he?
Scott McLellan says that Bush has a zero tolerance policy, even for those attempting to feed themselves. According to him they can get everything they need from the authorities. That's not what the multitude around the Convention Centre are reporting.

As the saying goes, when you've lost everything, you're free to do anything. Maybe, just maybe, a glimpse here or there of our beyond of capitalism.
Oh, they just replayed that guy with the air mattress, under the cover of looting. Racism is alive.

UPDATE: CNN reporter, talking about the evacuations, called those without car or money - to actually evacuate - the "wild card"... So the poor are the wild card. Well, that's not totally inaccurate...

Comments

[Alain]

RIPope, it is good to have you back! I think you are absolutely right. The looting is getting too much attention, the shooting at the Superdome, etc... It is rediculous for people to be demonized for taking food.

By the way, I was not able to pull up your blog, is it up and running? There might be a filter at work that prevents access.

[RIPope]

Thanks Alain; it's good to be back. That's odd about not being able to access CPROBES. Can't think of why. Anyone else having a problem?

[David]

They should have started looting before the hurricane...

"Lots of people in that area - the poor and the old and the sick - get checks from the goverment on the 1st of the month. They spend for the month with that money, so by the end of the month they are broke.

The storm hit on the 29th.

Many people could not afford the $50 to fill their gas tanks to leave. The interviewee said they people were begging him to please loan them the money for gas. They were forced to stay, and forced to stay when they were broke."

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/1/133731/8239

[Alain]

David, at the link you provided, there was a comment referring to some idiot named Jonah Goldberg, who is a right wing pundit on NPR on the weekends. Here was his lovely comment:

"ATTN: SUPERDOME RESIDENTS [Jonah Goldberg] I think it's time to face facts. That place is going to be a Mad Max/thunderdome Waterworld/Lord of the Flies horror show within the next few hours. My advice is to prepare yourself now. Hoard weapons, grow gills and learn to communicate with serpents. While you're working on that, find the biggest guy you can and when he's not expecting it beat him senseless. Gather young fighters around you and tell the womenfolk you will feed and protect any female who agrees to participate without question in your plans to repopulate the earth with a race of gilled-supermen. It's never too soon to be prepared."

This was on NPR! Incredible.

[David]

That Goldberg comment was from The Corner, I think, the National Review blog. One of the creepiest places on the internet.

[Alain]

David, thanks for clarifying but ofcourse that does not make it any better. What an horrendous situation, and scorning the victims is absolutely disgusting.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

As someone who's from Louisiana and is more horrified by the minute by what he sees, I feel the need to correct some of the misconceptions I see bandied about in this thread:

1. The looters I've seen on television aren't 100% black, but as you've no doubt noted (but failed to note), the only places photos and video of looters are available (because the only places that network cameras are able to access) are in the downtown section of NO...which is a predominantly black and impoverished district. Talk of looters in the outlying areas--such what reportedly happened at the Walmart in Kenner--indicate to anyone with knowledge of the area that there are, in fact, many middle to upper-middle class white people who have also turned looter. I think your jump to the conclusion of racism is more the product of the network's inability to shoot outside of downtown NO and your ignorance of the racial demographics of the NO area. (Not that you can be expected to know that; however, if you're going to start throwing around claims of racism, it's certainly your responsibility to find that out.)

2. There's a class of experienced hurricane survivors who simply refuse to leave no matter how severe the storm. These people aren't mostly poor...in fact, they're mostly middle-class individualists whose parents rode out Camille and who themselves rode out Andrew. They wouldn't have left no matter what, and now they're stuck in what's quickly become a near war-zone. In other words, your bland liberal aspersions case at SUV drivers is highly inaccurate: I suspect many a hardy SUV driver now wishes he and his or she and hers had escaped while they could.

Note: I don't disagree with your general point--that the looters are the victims and that looting is a necessary response to the breakdown in the networks by which one acquires the necessities of life--only the unnecessary claptrap in which you've couched it. You may now resume your self-righteous rants against capitalism and the like.

[Alain]

Scott, thanks for the information. It is good to get the perceptions of someone from the area. And thanks for your blessings regarding our self-righteous rants.:)

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Sorry if I sounded angry, but I'm sort of in a state of shock and incredibly irritable at the moment. So again, sorry about my own self-righteous rant...

[Alain]

Scott, no need to apologize. I looked at your blog and saw that your loved ones are OK, but may be homeless for a while. That is an incredibly difficult situation. I really do wish you and your family well.

[Matt]

I donno nothing about "celebrating" but it seems even the cops are joining in:

http://thecollectivelounge.blogspot.com/2005/09/fuck-police-cops-looting-new-orleans.html

[Amie]

"We need to celebrate the looting."

"As the saying goes, when you've lost everything, you're free to do anything. Maybe, just maybe, a glimpse here or there of our beyond of capitalism."

i don't quite follow.
who is the we that needs to celebrate this? i also don't know about glimpsing the beyond of capitalism, if it is a matter of capitalism letting people die or driving them to desperation ( "crime" ). Doesn't this happen every day?

[RIPope]

Every day, no, I don't think so. It's not every day, after all, that cops themselves join looters in the aisles of the neighbourhood Walmart, not to stop them, but to loot themselves. Together both `sides of the law' join in a new sensibility, oriented against the State and `global capitalism'.