Mumia Speaks about Katrina: One year later...

This is a transcript of Mumia Abu-Jamal's radio essay comments on Hurricane Katrina.


"Katrina, A year later.

It is amazing, the evocative power of one word, one name: Katrina.

It resonates like a klaxon in the dark of night. An alarm that quickens the pulse, forces sweat from our armpits and causes the heart to beat at a faster pace.

It is as much name, as it is nightmare, but it is more; it is Revelation,

The brief moment when lightning turns the night sky into bright as day, until the ears echo with the roar of thunder. For decades, at least, since the high points of the civil rights movement or the hey days of the black liberation movement.

U.S. blacks were able to live with the illusion, that while things were far from perfect, they were getting better. We were, as the theme song of 'The Jeffersons' went, "Movin' on up", to places of power, respect, prestige and responsibility. There were hiccups of course, but racism, that great dragon, Leviathan, was receding into its dark cave, perhaps for good, and then came Katrina.

In a flash, in a hour, in a day, in a week, we saw with our own eyes, the loss, the waste, the death and perhaps worse, the dismissal of black life by virtually every agency of state power:
Local, state and federal government. As well as other agencies such as the media, for if the state was deadly by its ignoring of black suffering. The media was deadly by its poisonous attention and its perversion of the truth.

The media gave the state license to ignore, to disappear, to downplay and to discard black life. For in there twisted racist coverage, blacks were savages and thus unworthy of saving.

If U.S. blacks had any illusions, the dark setted waters of Katrina washed them away. Nationalism, citizenship, belonging to the white nation were lies. The waters of Katrina cleared the crust of sleep from our eyes and taught us that, if you are black and poor then you are utterly on your own.

With the death of this illusion of nationalism, we learned that we are Rwanda, we are Burundi, we are united in our blackness, our social isolation, our distancing from the very definition of humanity; we are them.

A year has passed and disaster yet remains. Over half the city, over a quarter of a million people have not returned to the Crescent City. The lower ninth ward, the hub of black, poor and working class New Orleanians has neither running water nor electricity today. Between fighting the government and insurance companies, tens of thousands of people are still fighting for money, to rebuild their homes and lives.

Katrina standing alone is a beautiful name. But it may be many years before it stands alone again. For it is a event now, of historic proportions that impacts all that flows from it; Like a war, like a massacre, like a hurricane that transforms terrain, that shatters landscapes, that explodes myths of who we thought we were.

From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal."