Democracy Now!
Dec 19, 2008
Katrina’s Hidden Race War: In Aftermath of Storm, White Vigilante Groups Shot 11 African Americans in New Orleans
In a shocking new report, The Nation magazine exposes how white vigilante groups patrolled the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, shooting at least eleven African American men. Local police have never conducted investigations into the shootings. We speak to reporter A.C. Thompson and New Orleans resident Donnell Herrington, who nearly died after being shot by a white vigilante. [includes rush transcript]
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Katrina’s Hidden Race War
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A Correction, an Apology, and the Second Battle of New Orleans
by Chris Floyd
Empire Burlesque (Chris Floyd)
Dec 19, 2008
In a brief post yesterday, I wrote that African-Americans were treated as second-class citizens in the United States. I would now like to apologize for making such a controversial — and flagrantly incorrect — statement. Obviously, I was letting my knee-jerk liberal PC prejudices run wild. For as a new article in The Nation forcefully demonstrates, African-Americans are not treated as second-class citizens in the United States; they are treated as wild animals to be hunted down and shot in cold blood.
The article is a very detailed investigation of the white vigilante groups that formed, with police approval, in the white enclave of Algiers Point in New Orleans in the days after Hurrican Katrina. Although authorities had designated the area — which had largely escaped damage in the storm and flood — as a vital evacuation point for those trapped in the city, a group of white residents seized the opportunity to declare open season on anyone with black skin. Many African-Americans were shot and several were killed; but no one knows the exact number, because New Orleans police have refused to investigate any of the incidents, and coroner’s records of the gun-blasted bodies that showed up in the area have unaccountably gone missing.
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