I heard this account several days ago. However, it was already being bashed. You see, the paramedics (Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky) who wrote the account described in the UPI story were not only union members but contributors to the Socialist Worker. Why did they stay in NO? So they could write a false bash piece like this about the government, said the nay-sayers.
Funny, now that we have Lawson’s quote, I haven’t heard these comments again. Who knows, maybe they will be back again soon. You can see the full account (not for the weak-hearted) published on the Socialist Worker Online, so it can’t be long.
Ok, what we need here is a law, or a collarary, maxim, razor, something, that on a message board dedicated to fighting ignorance, quoting socialist worker.org means you lose the argument. Period. Don’t care who you are, or what your point is, you’re wrong, on that basis alone.
Did you actually read that claptrap? I only managed the first half-dozen paragraphs or so, and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Favorite quote:
Oh yeah, that’s exactly what happened. Nobody picked up a brick, baseball bat, tire iron, garbage can, or used their fist, the windows themselves simply gave up the ghost, and gave way to the looters. Right.
Their alternative solution is almost as “brilliant”, the cops should have broken one of the windows and distributed the goods.
Let’s see, in the first case, people are relying on the mob to help them, in the second, it’s the government. No mention of anybody fucking helping themselves. Can’t have individual responsibility in socialist worker land, I guess.
And just for fun, a paragraph or two later, we get the term “sheroes”. There is no such thing. Never has been, isn’t now, and never will be, world without end, AMEN.
Kevin Drum notes that Gretna Chief of Police Arthur Lawson claimed that he was “… running buses to Metaire, where there was food and shelter, before [he] closed the bridge on Monday.”
Drum continues:
Why didn’t you keep running them? And if you couldn’t, why didn’t you let people walk? Maybe even escort them? It’s less than 20 miles, after all, an easy day’s hike. Why did you instead threaten to shoot anyone who tried to use the highway to walk to safety?
There were alternative means to protect life and property, assuming that Lawson considered the former to have value.
I’ll note though that 20 miles is probably not an easy day’s hike for those who are not in shape.
I don’t get how one alleged cime gives the pigs the right to start shooting at people wholly unrelated to that crime or to prevent them from exercising a basic civil right to freedom of movement.
And Updike? Go fuck yourself, you judgemental twat. If people are being held hostage and denied aid, then you have only those authorities to blame for people taking what they need from Walgreens. Fuck Walgreens anyway. People are more important then Walgreens.
Weren’t the people trying to leave and held back by police helping themselves? For that matter, weren’t the looters? What is all this “help themselves” crap? What were they supposed to do, blow at the hurricane? Bail out the flood with a tin can?
For the first-hand account of what happened on the bridge, the article in Washington Monthly links to a LiveJournal account by the two eyewitnesses.
Who are these people? Dunno. Are they automatically to be disbelieved because they self-identify as socialists? Is there anyone whose self-interest doesn’t tinge what they report?
(Is this really so hard to understand? :rolleyes: )
The OP is about a Washington Monthly piece which references (and links to) an article by UPI.
The UPI article is largely based on and contains direct quotes from
The internet site they are apparently referencing (as it is the one everyone else as been referencing) is EMS Network.
If you go to the EMS Network link, you will not find the account itself. Instead you will find a link to the article that I linked above at socialistworker.org. This is the exact same account from which sections were quoted word-for-word in the UPI article, if you actually read it.
Apparently, I lose the “message board dedicated to fighting ignorance” game for providing the original source for an article. Silly me.
Has Drum ever been to New Orleans? Good lord, they COULDN’T run buses to Metairie; that was the direction where the freeway was underwater. Coming across the Crescent City Connection bridge to Gretna, it’s at most 3 miles from the Convention Center, but at that point Gretna didn’t have any food or water, either. So there wouldn’t have been much point in people walking across the bridge since it was simply a case of “the grass is greener.”
And to continue walking down Highway 90 to where there WAS food and water would have been at minimum a 50 mile hike to Houma, which was the nearest town that actually DID have food and water. (Although no federal aid; friends of mine there helping the 3,000+ refugees who arrived at the Houma Convention Center starting on Thursday didn’t see a SOUL from FEMA, the Red Cross, or the military until Sunday night.)
If we’re going to fight ignorance, let’s at least correct the ignorance perpetrated by the Washington Monthly idiot, too.
Oh, and the Gretna city police chief wouldn’t have run buses to Metairie if he was the last man on earth, either; Gretna is its own incorporated city on the Westbank, and Metairie is an unincorporated area on the Eastbank, thus patrolled by the Jefferson Parish sheriff’s office. So that quote was just nonsense, IMO.
Artful? Artful? It’s like a 3 yr old who broke mommy’s favorite vase. “It broke”. No, you (the 3 yr old) broke it. “It broke” works as well as the “windows gave way”. In other words, it’s bullshit.
I take it that there are two or three people posting here who can’t believe anything that a socialist says. Socialists always lie, right? Brits, Danes, Swedes – all lefties.
Police state? The socialists were lying. Why would anyone want to get out of New Orleans? What’s a little rising water?
Isn’t it fairly human for people who are thirsty and hungry and in fear of their lives to try to get out of a place especially if they are unaware that the next town over doesn’t have food or water or help either?
Ever been in a burning or smoke-filled building? All you think about is drawing a clean breath of air.
Of course, the socialists could be lying and making things up to make the local police look bad. Let’s all assume there is a left-wing conspiracy to bring about the fall of the City of Gretna Chief of Police. That makes so much more sense.