Bravo to them. Lots of cancer in my family.

• American Cancer Society focuses its ads on the uninsured - Whorn
  • Terrific article. I had not heard about - this. Thanks! (sm) kam
  • I agree that there is a problem with health care... - Observer
  • Bravo to them. Lots of cancer in my family. - shayles (sm)

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so give it all a rest would you. 

September 7, 2005

Women were Being Raped, Babies were Being Killed, Alligators were Eating People, But Where the Hell was the National Guard?
How We Survived the Flood
By CHARMAINE NEVILLE

  This is a transcription of an interview Charmaine Neville, of New Orleans's legendary Neville family, gave to local media outlets on Monday, September 5.

I was in my house when everything first started. When the hurricane came, it blew all the left side of my house off, and the water was coming in my house in torrents.

I had my neighbor, an elderly man, and myself, in the house with our dogs and cats, and we were trying to stay out of the water. But the water was coming in too fast. So we ended up having to leave the house.

We left the house and we went up on the roof of a school. I took a crowbar and I burst the door on the roof of the school to help people on the roof.

Later on we found a flat boat, and we went around the neighborhood in a flat boat getting people out of their houses and bringing them to the school.

We found all the food that we could and we cooked and we fed people. But then, things started getting really bad.

By the second day, the people that were there, that we were feeding and everything, we had no more food and no water. We had nothing, and other people were coming in our neighborhood. We were watching the helicopters going across the bridge and airlift other people out, but they would hover over us and tell us Hi! and that would be all. They wouldn't drop us any food or any water, or nothing.

Alligators were eating people. They had all kinds of stuff in the water. They had babies floating in the water.

We had to walk over hundreds of bodies of dead people. People that we tried to save from the hospices, from the hospitals and from the old-folks homes. I tried to get the police to help us, but I realized they were in the same straits we were. We rescued a lot of police officers in the flat boat from the 5th district police station. The guy who was in the boat, he rescued a lot of them and brought them to different places so they could be saved.

We understood that the police couldn't help us, but we couldn't understand why the National Guard and them couldn't help us, because we kept seeing them but they never would stop and help us.

Finally it got to be too much, I just took all of the people that I could. I had two old women in wheelchairs with no legs, that I rowed them from down there in that nightmare to the French Quarters, and I went back and got more people.

There were groups of us, there were about 24 of us, and we kept going back and forth and rescuing whoever we could get and bringing them to the French Quarter because we heard that there were phones in the French Quarter, and that there wasn't any water. And they were right, there were phones, but we couldn't get through to anyone.

I found some police officers. I told them that a lot of us women had been raped down there by guys, not from the neighborhood where we were, they were helping us to save people. But other men, and they came and they started raping women and they started killing, and I don't know who these people were. I'm not gonna tell you I know, because I don't.

But what I want people to understand is that, if we hadn't been left down there like the animals that they were treating us like, all of those things wouldn't have happened. People are trying to say that we stayed in that city because we wanted to be rioting and we wanted to do this and, we didn't have resources to get out, we had no way to leave.

When they gave the evacuation order, if we could've left, we would have left.

There are still thousands and thousands of people trapped in their homes in the downtown area. When we finally did get into the 9th ward, and not just in my neighborhood, but in other neighborhoods in the 9th ward, there were a lot of people still trapped down there... old people, young people, babies, pregnant women. I mean, nobody's helping them.

And I want people to realize that we did not stay in the city so we could steal and loot and commit crimes. A lot of those young men lost their minds because the helicopters would fly over us and they wouldn't stop. We would make SOS on the flashlights, we'd do everything, and it really did come to a point, where these young men were so frustrated that they did start shooting. They weren't trying to hit the helicopters, they figured maybe they weren't seeing. Maybe if they hear this gunfire they will stop then. But that didn't help us. Nothing like that helped us.

Finally, I got to Canal St. with all of my people I had saved from back there.

I don't want them arresting nobody else. I broke the window in an RTA bus. I never learned how to drive a bus in my life. I got in that bus. I loaded all of those people in wheelchairs and in everything else into that bus, and we drove and we drove and we drove and millions of people was trying to get me to help them to get on the bus, too.

Charmaine Neville is a member of the third generation of New Orleans's legendary Neville musical family. She fronts the Charmaine Neville Band.

Has anyone seen the ads yet?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/31/us/31cancer.html

Your post was wonderful, articulate and right on target.

They haven't been able to bait people on their own board recently and hurl their venom, but they need their "fix," so they come here instead and try to start trouble.  I agree that you shouldn't respond to them any more.  Why give them what they want?

Thank you for such an eloquent post.

Have you ever noticed the disconnect between those who are in favor of Bush?  The richest of the rich and those who are very highly educated and then those who aren't so rich and educated, with all the rest of us in the middle.  The richest of the rich don't have to worry about Roe because if it's gone, they can afford to go to another part of the world. 

And our country absolutely does not deserve the autocratic theocratic government that has been forced upon us.  One of the wonderful things about America is diversity of religious beliefs. What really frightens me about all this is that the war on terror is quickly becoming a "Christian versus Muslim" war.  Tom Tancredo from Colorado recently suggested boming mosques.  If we choose to turn this into a religious war, we are diminishing the importance of it and diminishing our country as a whole, regardless of faith, to bond together and be united against the war on terror.

As far as the shoe being on the other foot, from what I've personally witnessed by some of these people, they feel the shoe has been on the other foot for years, that they've been ignored, and now is their turn to take control.  They typically blame minorities and women for taking all the "men's jobs," blame the "liberal mainstream media" for virtually everything, and are suddenly feeling empowered after they felt beaten down over past years of tolerance and reasonableness, when they couldn't impose their prejudices and anger and religion on the rest of the country.  It's as if a smoldering volcano has erupted, and they are spewing out all the negative things that have been keeping inside in all these years past when fairness prevailed in this country.  They don't want to be just one of many religions in this country.  They want to be the only one that counts, the one that they can write laws to revolve around.

They want to end Roe.  They are against any contraception products that go against "the will of God."  They want to control what happens in your home, in your family, in your bedroom.  They want to control what you see on television.  They want to control who you love, whether or not it's legal for you to love who you love.  They want to take science backwards in the name of "God" and prevent stem cell research that might save the lives of their parents, sisters, brothers, and/or children who are already here. They holler and scream at and actually kill those who respect a woman's right to choose. They put more value on a petrie dish full of inanimate cells than they do on people who are already born, but you never hear them even whimper a word of disdain when children in our country are being molested and murdered on what seems like a weekly basis during this year alone. They want to control when you're born and when and how you die.

In short, they want to control not just the lives but the very SOULS of every single person in this country, and they detest anyone who disagrees with them.

You're right: 51% is no mandate, and after the 2000 selection, there are still some who aren't sure that Bush actually won in 2004.  They don't even realize that Bush is really on the side of the rich and not on their side.  They continue to defend and justify every action of Bush and those in his administration, whether it's actually something that defendable or justifiable or not –- such as entering into a bogus war based on lies and/or exposing the identity of a CIA agent working on WMD (in a time of war), both done purely for personal reasons and never really caring what's best for this country.

They sqawk about a lack of morals in this country, yet they don't think it's immoral for Bush to exploit the tragedy of 9/11 in order to scare the American public into agreeing to a war that Bush came into office with the intention of waging, long before 9/11 happened.  He lied to Congress, and he lied to the American people.  That's about the most immoral thing I've ever seen a president do. I never thought a President could actually make Nixon look GOOD, but Bush has done that 1,000 times over.

IMHO, we're heading down a very dangerous road in this country, and I hope America wakes up before it's too late.

One thing that wasn't mentioned was the vile increase in gas prices, which will also result in much higher heating costs this winter for many people.  That's an increased cost experienced by most Americans, which also effectively cuts their net income.  The rich, who keep getting richer under Bush, will easily be able to absorb that cost.  As usual, it's the poor and dwindling middle class who will suffer.

I wonder how many Bushies are now living near or at the poverty level and don't even realize it, as they continue to beat the Bush drum louder and louder.

Excellent post.   I couldn't agree with you more.

I'm about to leave the computer but am glad I saw your post before I left. 

I hope you have a wonderful day. 

Great post!!!  These are exactly the same reasons I voted for him.

When I look back on how Obama ran his campaign versus how John "Chicken-With-Its-Head-Cut-Off" McCain ran his, there was no question in my mind that if Obama can run the country only 1/100th as well as he ran his campaign, then there is great hope for this wonderful country.

Great post, Cyndiee!  What Bush did for 8 years did not work.  Giving more and more to the rich only created a greedy (now ANGRY), very small group of people who became greedier and greedier, as they stole from those with less money than they (as evidenced by 401Ks now being "201Ks").

There was no "trickle-down" with these people, just an unsatiable appetite for more, more, more.

At least Obama is TRYING to address the problem of offshoring/outsourcing work (for example), and he acknowledges the fact that the middle class have progressively become more poor under the Bush administration, as the rich progressively became richer.

I saw on the news last night that Bernie Madoff (for example) feels he should be able to keep his plush penthouse apartment (including maids' quarters) and some of his millions because he transferred ownership of those items to his wife.  (Again, check your 401Ks and tell me how warm and fuzzy that makes you feel.)

This is big-time class warfare going on in this country, where the majority of us are struggling and just the top 5% are thriving.  Obama sees this.  He's TRYING to fix a situation that no human being has ever encountered on this earth in history.  This isn't just an "American depression;" it's global, and (again, referring back to the documentary "House of Cards"), most of it was caused by the UNITED STATES and the greed of our richest citizens.  It's clear that economists can't even agree on a course to fix it, but continuing to make the rich even richer didn't work for eight years under Bush, and it won't work under Obama.  So Obama is trying to do something new and "spectacular," already fully taking the blame if his plan doesn't work (something Bush never did).

I believe he is deserving of the CHANCE to make it work.  The people who voted for him are willing to give him that chance.  The whole country was forced to give Bush a "chance," and all we got was lies, arrogance, a bogus war, debt and the decline of this country.

Time for a new attitude and a new plan.

Please just give Obama a CHANCE!!!