'They' Destroyed New Orleans

By Kenneth Cooper, AlterNet
Posted on December 24, 2005, Printed on December 24, 2005

My little cousin, Kenneth, sits across from me smoking a cigarette in the driver's seat of his car. Like everyone else in my family, he lost everything when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Now he sits in my driveway on a Saturday night in LaPlace trying to understand why.

"Them people blew them levees," he says, looking at me, puffing on his cigarette. "They wanted to save the white people Uptown, but they ain't know it was gonna be this bad."

I just look at him when he says this. He's sincere, not a trace of doubt in his voice. Some people might call him crazy for believing a theory like that. But truth is, he's not alone, far from it. Last month I went to Arlington and visited some of my in-laws, who evacuated there. When the subject of Katrina and the levees came up, all of them went to talking the exact same way.

"That's how they do us."

"They ain't want us there in the first place."

"So you know they don't want us back."

"And they wonder why people down there runnin' up in stores."

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