Reddit reviews Zeitoun

I change up the books on the non-fiction list every year and this one is no longer on the list. It's a good one though: here's a link to it on Amazon.

Students may enjoy looking into Dave Eggers' work. He's written another book I've considered putting on the non-fiction project list, Zeitoun, a wonderful fictionalized work of true events called What is the What, and he is the editor and founder of McSweeney's, which has spawned the cool sport's writing quarterly Grantland and a sister literary magazine, The Believer.

I highly encourage you to read the following material:

Zeituon is an awesome book that highlighted the nature of lawlessness and powerlessness many residents faced in the aftermath of Katrina.

A NY Times article from 2010 offers more regarding the rampant violence in the city after the storm.

A PBS website has an excellent collection of articles and announcements that were made by federal agencies after the storm. I've selected some material from Saturday, September 3rd, of 2005:

The Times-Picayune reports that 4,600 active duty troops under the command of Gen. Russel Honor� arrive in New Orleans. The situation begins to improve.

An estimated 25,000 angry and exhausted people are still at the Convention Center; buses begin arriving to evacuate them. New Orleans residents are still trapped by the floodwaters, and dispatchers receive about 1,000 emergency phone calls from people needing to be rescued.

FEMA Situation Update:
" …Troops poured in to restore order after almost a week of near-anarchy. ... Having largely emptied the cavernous Superdome, which had become a squalid pit of misery and violence, officials turned their attention to the Convention Center, where people waited to be evacuated as corpses rotted in the streets. The death toll in the city is not known, but the dying continues as people succumb to illness, exhaustion and days without food and water."

Richard Falkenrath, Homeland Security Adviser (2001-2004):
"There was a period of days when we weren't sure who was directing the federal response and were all the actions being taken. And the impression given in those four days is basically indelible. And it is injurious to the president. There's no question."

Another article from the Washington Post interviews Lt. Gen. Russel Honore about the aftermath of Katrina. This man was a hell of a leader; riding on horseback through the high water, barking commands. Hell of a man! Again, some choice words:

"At its peak, the military's joint task force had 22,000 military personnel, one of the largest military deployments in the South since troops returned home from the Civil War. No one knew how the contingent would respond when faced with restive residents, but many worried it could set a dangerous precedent.

Honore took pains to treat the residents like civilians, not criminals. He ordered weary police officers to keep their guns pointed down and reminded his troops they were in an American city, not war-torn Iraq. He refused to command his troops to forcibly remove the thousands of residents who refused to evacuate."

Of course, none of this material states outright that 'American troops were involved in fire fights with citizens'. I'm hoping that you can combine this material, perform your own research, and take it from someone who was present during the relief effort that the mixture of these conditions made violent outcomes inevitable. Lawless and rampant looting, organized crime take-over of city infrastructure, the rapid deployment of thousands of hardened combat veterans, and a constantly shifting leadership paradigm in the critical days after the storm all combined with another scenario: no immediate media presence.

The short answer is, yes, there was violence against predominantly black Americans, as they were largely represented in the organized crime groups who had seized important areas of the city, and it wasn't always rival gangs. The Army did not deploy there to just hand out food and cots. They came with rifles, and they came with rifles for an explicit reason.

Speaking of hurricanes and sketchy governmental response, has anyone ever read this book?

Yeah. Blackwater was there under contract from rich folks and the DHS to "secure neighborhoods." I initially learned about it from [Zeitoun.] (http://www.amazon.com/Zeitoun-Dave-Eggers/dp/0307387941) Half way through surviving the chaos of Katrina, he gets misidentified as a looter and detained for months without a real trial.

>"Camp Greyhound" in the city's bus terminal. According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the jail "was constructed by inmates from Angola and Dixon state prisons and was outfitted with everything a stranded law enforcer could want, including top-of-the-line recreational vehicles to live in and electrical power, courtesy of a yellow Amtrak locomotive. There are computers to check suspects' backgrounds and a mug shot station—complete with heights marked in black on the wall that serves as the backdrop."

That's a very objective description. Dave Eggers described it in a more subjective manner:

>Zeitoun was among thousands of people who were doing "Katrina time" after the storm. There was a complete suspension of all legal processes and there were no hearings, no courts for months and months and not enough folks in the judicial system really seemed all that concerned about it. Some human-rights activists and some attorneys, but otherwise it seemed to be the cost of doing business. It really could have only happened at that time; 2005 was just the exact meeting place of the Bush-era philosophy towards law enforcement and incarceration, their philosophy toward habeas corpus and their neglect and indifference to the plight of New Orleanians.

It's sad that we can't say that this was a purely "Bush-era" philosophy towards extra-judicial detention. Obama just replaced Blackwater with drones and kill lists. But I digress.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/08/secret-history-hurricane-katrina

http://www.thenation.com/issue/october-10-2005#