Katrina Turns 5: She's Growing up so Fast!

What a birthday party! Over the weekend Hurricane Katrina turned five-years-old; and to commemorate this milestone much ink and television coverage was devoted to doting over her in the required, obligatory terms.

The legacy of Katrina, said the President, must be "not one of neglect, but of action; not one of indifference, but of empathy; not of abandonment, but of a community working together to meet shared challenges." Political leaders and citizens alike should take those words to heart when times get tough and when issues threaten to divide us.

A much longer birthday party is planned for Hurricane Katrina as we will discuss the tantrum she tossed in New Orleans back in 2005 tonight and the legacy of her one shining moment, where we learned what would happen on a day without white people.

A few brave writers have dared write about Katrina in a manner befitting her memory, but they failed to realize that at this party only one group of people are allowed to cry. Remember, it's always their party and they'll never stop crying.

That brief week at the end of August and into the early part of September 2005 in New Orleans showed to America what will happen when a natural disaster strikes and what a day without white people will bring. Recall the floods that ravaged the city of Nashville earlier this year and consider the lack of news that story provided.

The silence of the media was deafening, as Nashville residents dealt with the disaster without the media broadcasting sob stories to the world and with no reports of helicopters being shot at nor wide-scale looting by police officers.

Worse, New Orleans has elected a white mayor and is in danger of losing its historical population that the media showcased incessantly during those fabled days in late August/early September of 2005:

Before Katrina, New Orleans was more than two-thirds Blacks. A recent study by Brown University sociologist John Logan found that New Orleans is at risk of losing as much of 80 percent of its Black population. Some officials predict that the reconstructed New Orleans will be predominately White. The transitioning is already clear. After Katrina, the city’s Black population is down to approximately 20 percent, says Mr. Lee. Predominantly White areas are bouncing back first. The signs of recovery are everywhere in the French Quarter, which is more than 90 percent White.

There, café and restaurant owners have begun opening their doors, allowing the tantalizing smells of fresh beignets, chicory-flavored coffee and spicy jambalayas to permeate the air. Curio shops are already peddling Hurricane Katrina-inspired T-shirts along with feathery Mardi Gras masks, and Bourbon Street is rich again with the sounds and smells of human excess. Moreover, the faint sounds of a throbbing bass chord and the whine of a brass horn wafts along the night breeze.

Areas where white people returned to in Post-Katrina have recovered and experienced growth, renewal and prosperity. The city that most people evacuated in August of 2005 and left under the watchful eye of both nature and Black people has regained one notorious accolade: most dangerous city in America. Cities that welcomed residents of pre-Katrina New Orleans also welcomed a spike in crime.

The gangs of New Orleans have long been rightfully feared, though Saints games have a calming effect on the population:

Maybe you use bizarre trends, such as an NOPD cop telling me the 911 calls almost stop when the Saints play and there's been only one murder during a game this year.

So Happy Fifth Birthday Hurricane Katrina. We saw what happens when you remove white people from the equation of modern civilization, and the result is barbarism courtesy of a real-life scenario The Crazies could only call fiction.

We at SBPDL won't forget the real story that Hurricane Katrina provided and no, it is not the one that The Nation attempted to spin-off duplicitous intentions. The Black police officers looted stores - though, strangely, they left Shania Twain CDs alone - and abandoned their job of maintaining law and order.

In the absence of law and order, any semblance of justice must be swift and without remorse to dissuade those remaining from leaving the realm of saints to become sinners.

There is no denying what Hurricane Katrina showed to the world. Haiti has been showing it for years and South Africa has gradually started to hint at what is to come. Recent Section 8 riots in Atlanta only showed how quickly things can descend to what we saw in The Big Easy those five days in 2005.

A day without white people is a notion that should chill the Talented Tenth to the bone, for it is Hurricane Katrina that sits atop the list of Stuff Black People Don't Like without equal. President George W. Bush became the face of blame in the whole sordid affair, but to truly see who is at fault would require Disingenuous White Liberals to look into the mirror along with those that they continuously enable, Black people.

There are those who would forget Hurricane Katrina and consign the real lesson of that event to the deepest recesses of the internet, buried under an avalanche of useless stories of hope amid the rebuilding.

Oh, and one more thing: it has recently come out that police were told by superiors that they had the authority to shoot looters:

In the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina, an order circulated among New Orleans police authorizing officers to shoot looters, according to present and former members of the New Orleans Police Department.

It's not clear how broadly the order was communicated. Some officers who heard it say they refused to carry it out. Others say they understood it as a fundamental change in the standards on deadly force, which allow police to fire only to protect themselves or others from what appears to be an imminent physical threat.

The accounts of orders to "shoot looters," "take back the city," or "do what you have to do" are fragmentary. It remains unclear who originated them or whether they were heard by any of the officers involved in shooting 11 civilians in the days after Katrina. Thus far, no officers implicated in shootings have used the order as an explanation for their actions. Only one of the people shot by police -- Henry Glover -- was allegedly stealing goods at the time he was shot.

Still, current and former officers said the police orders -- taken together with tough talk from top public officials broadcast over the airwaves -- contributed to an atmosphere of confusion about how much force could be used to combat looting.

In one instance captured on a grainy videotape shot by a member of the force, a police captain relayed the instructions at morning roll call to cops preparing for the day's patrols.

"We have authority by martial law to shoot looters," Captain James Scott told a few dozen officers in a portion of the tape viewed by reporters. Scott, then the commander of the 1st district, is now captain of the special operations division.

To those who suffered in Mississippi and other parts of Louisiana, we hope you have recovered. We now present for you a number of videos that commemorate Hurricane Katrina's fifth birthday. Like a parent who sees the early years of their child's life go by quickly, we at SBPDL can only marvel at how quickly the lessons of that event have been forgotten.

After all, it was documented so well. Just see below.