Hurricane Ike was no equalizer

Sept. 22—As Hurricane Ike raged ashore in the early hours before sunrise on Sept. 13, its ferocious winds roared and whipped western Louisiana and 35 eastern Texas counties. Galveston Island and the Bolivar Peninsula bore the brunt of Ike, but the storm battered communities across hundreds of miles of the Gulf Coast.

Lenwood Johnson in Freedman’s Town in Houston. He got power turned back on for Houston public housing within days after Ike hit. A week later he was himself still without power. WW photo: Gloria Rubac

The facts of the storm can be found in newspapers and online. But the reality of life for the working class is glossed over as story after story on radio, television and in the print media claims that people from all walks of life have been devastated and that Ike has been an “equalizer.”

Yes, everyone lost power. Everyone has tree limbs and debris in their yards. The bosses and workers alike have wet carpet and sheetrock that needs to be ripped out. But the similarities end there.

The wealthy have industrial-size generators built into their mansions or were able to buy them after the storm. But workers and the poor scrounged for ice chests and coolers, then spent hours and hours looking for ice each day they were without power. They tried to save what food they had in their homes.

As this article is being written, almost one million people in Houston still lack electricity. A map on the power company’s Web site shows outages almost entirely on the eastern half of the city—home to Houston’s working class, including the Black and Latin@ communities, as well as the oil refineries, chemical industries and the pollution they create.

Houstonians are still under curfew, which is strictly enforced in working-class and oppressed communities. The lucky are given $500 tickets—others are taken directly to jail. Cops occupy the poorest communities like Nazi storm troopers.

It took the Federal Emergency Management Agency three days to set up what they called PODs—Points of Distribution—where people could line up in the hot sun to receive two bags of ice and a case of bottled water. Now, six days later, they have all but disbanded the PODs. People have to turn to private businesses, food pantries and other local agencies.

With FEMA’s water and ice, people were given flyers telling them to call or apply online for disaster relief. Online? How can people without power apply online, even if they have a computer?

On one talk-radio show, people called in saying that FEMA wasn’t answering calls. One man said he had called 166 times. A woman in tears, with crying children in the background, said she had called all day and never got an answer.

Local television showed police forcibly removing evacuees from motels, telling them that FEMA did not have them on its approved list. One woman cried as she explained that she had spent all her money on gas to leave the coast and now had nowhere to go. Another said that FEMA had told her not to worry, as it would pay for her motel costs until she could return home. Now the cops were threatening arrest if she did not leave the motel.

“Equalizer my foot. Hell no!” says Lenwood Johnson, a Free Man’s Neighborhood Association board member. “Ike was not an equalizer. Things are never equal—poor people always suffer after storms like this.”

Johnson has lived in public housing for decades since illness forced him out of his job in the petrochemical industry in 1979. He is still a resident of a public housing project in historic Freedman’s Town, a community built in Houston in 1865 by formerly enslaved Africans.

After Hurricane Ike hit Houston, public housing residents were without power for several days. Johnson spent more than 24 hours on the phone talking with everyone he could think of to get power restored. He was particularly concerned about the seniors. Without electricity, those on oxygen, who needed dialysis or insulin, or were not mobile could be in jeopardy.

He accomplished what the mayor, City Council and federal government chose not to do. “Lenwood Johnson did more for us seniors than the mayor or FEMA or anyone else in Houston,” says 88-year-old Casey Davis. “He got our lights turned back on!”

Less than eight hours after Ike passed over Houston, people in River Oaks, Houston’s wealthiest neighborhood, were living their lives as if nothing had happened. This reporter observed lights on in many mansions and tree trimmers working in the rain to clear the carefully manicured lawns. Women dressed in designer workout suits were taking their daily jog around the neighborhood.

without lights, water

Galveston, the hardest-hit area on the Gulf Coast, had ordered the mandatory evacuation of its residents, but the 1,000 prisoners locked up in the Galveston County Jail were not included. They are still in jail with no power, no water and no functioning toilets. They haven’t even been able to wash their hands since Ike hit 10 days ago.

Five days after the hurricane, President George W. Bush held a press conference at the Galveston County Courthouse, which sits just below the jail. Two generators were brought in so Bush could have air conditioning and lights. The Galveston sheriff asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff if the county could keep the generators because his staff and the prisoners had no air or lights. Chertoff refused.

Power outages in Huntsville, 70 miles north of Houston, had no impact on the assembly line of death there. On Sept. 17, Huntsville state prison had no lights, but the authorities found the energy to put William Murray to death—making him the ninth person executed in Texas this year. The total is the highest in the country.

Around 2,000 undocumented workers live and work in Galveston. The majority did not evacuate because they feared that if they took the buses to a shelter, they would be deported. So they stayed on the island during the hurricane. Now they are without power and water and living in unsanitary conditions.

Radio commentators on a Houston Clear Channel news station had the nerve to talk about all Houstonians coming together, including the owners of the mobile taco trucks that are abundant around town. Several said how wonderful it was that the people with the trucks were serving food in Houston in the hours and days just after the hurricane. Everything else was shut down.

Ironically, this same station had been part of a racist, organized attempt by right-wing activists and legislators to shut down the taco trucks by imposing ridiculous restrictions on them.

It will be a long time before life gets back to normal along the Gulf Coast. But don’t believe anyone who tells you that all were affected equally. The rich will continue their lives unaffected while some of the poor may never survive the property damage, the loss of lives or the psychological terror this hurricane unleashed.

Rubac’s own home remains without power. She had to sleep on a friend’s floor and defy the curfew to file this story.