Two years – since the names Katrina and Lower Ninth Ward seared into the world’s vocabulary, along with Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Falluja, as one of the monstrous crimes of the Bush Regime.
Two years – since the world watched in horror as bodies floated in the streets of New Orleans.
Two years – since the Bush Regime allowed tens of thousands of people – overwhelmingly Black people – to suffer, starve, dehydrate and die in the unbearable heat and humidity and toxic sludge of a flooded city.
Two years – since entire swaths of a city known for the joyous and unique culture it has given as a gift to the world were allowed to be overwhelmed and destroyed.
Two years – since tens of thousands of people were packed into the Superdome and Convention Center of New Orleans, in horrific, murderous conditions that recalled the enslavement that had originally brought African people to the “new world”.
Two years – since people trying to escape the living hell of New Orleans were turned around at gunpoint by racist police at the Gretna city line.
Two years – since the bodies of dead people were stacked on the luggage carousels of Louis Armstrong airport.
Two years – since tens of thousands of Black people were scattered throughout the country, separated from their families.
Two years – in which tourist sections and a football stadium have been restored while public housing has been shuttered and surrounded with barbed wire, people trying to return to the projects have been evicted by SWAT teams, and the public hospital remains closed, never to reopen.
TWO YEARS TOO LONG – the verdict is in; the Bush Regime is guilty, guilty, guilty, of towering crimes against humanity. (http://www.bushcommission.org/; http://internationaltribunal.org/tribunal-charges/).
One more day of this regime is too long. Now is the time for people everywhere to act with a defiance, rage and determination that is as radical as the times we live in, fully determined to wrest the fate of our planet and its people from the likes of Bush and Cheney and into the hands of the people, determined not just to call them out for their crimes but to put an end to them. DECLARE IT NOW: WEAR ORANGE! DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME!
In New Orleans and throughout the country, everywhere people gather to mark the two years that have gone by since Katrina, the color orange needs to burst out in neighborhoods and workplaces, on subways and busses, on campuses, in big cities and small towns, everywhere. The monstrous crimes committed against the people of New Orleans and the Louisiana/Mississippi Gulf Coast of Katrina by Bush and his crew can never be forgiven. They must be driven out; spreading orange everywhere is a vital way of breaking the paralyzing choke hold the tag team partnership of Bush/Cheney and the Democratic Party leadership has put on the people.