I think the National Post, and our Rebecca Hagelin, have come up with two of the brightest thoughts on why New Orleans fell into such an abyss, people-wise, after the hurricane struck.
Here’s the first part of the National Post lead editorial today, called “The fruits of dependence”:
Hurricane Katrina and its terrible aftermath have left much of the world asking the same question: Why did over 100,000 New Orleanians fail to heed the mandatory evacuation order before the damage was done?
The most common explanation offered last week made a great deal of sense. New Orleans is poor—more poor than most casual visitors realize. About a quarter of New Orleanians apparently could not afford the transportation or outside accommodation that would have made a pre-planned escape possible.
But once the waters started rising, should not a basic survival instinct have taken hold? Their limited resources notwithstanding, why did more of those left behind not make a greater effort to get out, by whatever means at their disposal? It was almost as though some were resigned to their plight—ultimately willing to leave their fate up to the local, state and federal authorities on the unstated assumption that they would be looked after. And when that help failed to materialize, all they could do was wait some more, and hoist signs testifying to their piteous abandonment.
The sense that government would be there to make everything all right—to provide food, shelter, water, medicine—is not surprising given that for so many New Orleanians, a general reliance on social assistance is a normal part of daily life. With a median household income of US$31,369 and some of the country’s oldest and most notorious public housing projects, New Orleans is a city that is fully enmeshed in the vicious welfare cycle that leaves the poor incapable of taking care of themselves. If there was a problem, many of the residents had been conditioned to think, then surely the same people who came through every month with money for food, prescription drugs, housing and child care would be there to take care of it.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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