Did bureaucracy mandated by law account for the four-day delayed response of the Federal Government to the New Orleans catastrophe? Read on to get the scoop.

On August 30, 2005, the day after Hurricane Katrina struct land, the flood levees broke and New Orleans drowned as water rose twenty-five feet high.
Nearly a quarter-of-a-million people, mostly African-Americans and poor, were trapped by water. Some of them climbed into attics and onto rooftops. Others held on to whatever they could as long as they could, in attempting to survive. Almost 1,000 died, several thousands life-debilitatingly wounded and the remainder of them suffered miserably for four days without anyone coming to their rescue, despite their cry of desperation for help.
It appeared that only people from the news media made contact with them and allowed Americans across the nation and people throughout the world to see the horror that plagued these people on television. The Red Cross workers said they did not help because they were informed, certainly not by the Mayor of New Orleans, that they might get shot by looters. It is obvious that the Government of Louisiana, saturated more by ineptness than by water, did not perform in keeping with her capability. However, for a tragedy of this magnitude, it was the responsibility of the Federal Government to respond, not on the fifth day, but on the first, second, third and fourth day of this horrendous catastrophe.
The reason the Federal Government gave for failing to respond on the first four days of the tragedy, according to her chief spokesman, the Commander-in-Chief, is: the Federal Government was obligated to follow the law. That is what this writer calls "Lawbureaucracy." African-Americans, count me in, are acquainted with Lawbureaucracy, perhaps, better than any other group of Americans. Lawbureaucracy allows, if not encourages the Federal Government to take homage in pursuing a laissez-faire - hands off - policy of not responding to injustices such as lynching and the disfanchisement of black people in those States where most black people resided at the time, on the pretext that the Federal
Government was just obeying the law by respecting State Rights that allowed States to determine who had a right to vote, and one could say, based on the record, or be lynched, as well. This was the position of the Federal Government with regard to black people's right to vote until 1965, nearly a hundred years after the Fourteenth Amendment of the
United States Constitution was adopted in 1868, that declared: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States...are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States... ." Despite the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution the Federal Government took pleasure, if not delight, in supporting State Rights. Even without a Constitution common sense and human decency should be sufficient to cause a civil Government to oppose the actions taken by States in supporting lynchig and the disfranchisement of a group of its citizens. It should be added that today those States with a significant black population are denying ex-felons, most of them black, the right to vote. The year I was born Senator Thomas Heflin (D-Ala), my native State, while filibustering an anti-lynching bill said, "Whenever a Negro crosses the dead line between the white and the Negro races and lays his black hand on a white woman he deserves to die!" Five years later, during a single year, twenty lynchings were reported. From 1882-1968, according to Tuskegee University records there were 4,743 lynching in America. Nearly all of them were African-Americans.
To repeat, according to the President, Lawbureaucracy accounted for the Government's failure to respond to the desperation of the people in New Orleans on the first, second, third and fourth day of the New Orleans tragedy.
Let me remind the President and other Federal Government leaders that there is a Higher Law than the Law of the Land or Lawbureaucracy. God's Law, demonstrated in conscience-guided actions, is the law most cherished and honored by the noblest of those among us. The Law of the Land may say, "Don't cross in the middle of the street where there is not a crossing designation." However, a person upon seeing a small child on the other side of the street coming across the street may do as I have done, hastily cross the steeet in the face of on-coming traffic and rescue that child who could have been killed by an automobile. In a matter-of-fact vernacular this person said, "Damn the law, I am going to save this child!". Just suppose the President and other leadeers of the Federal Government had said "Damn the law - Lawbureaucracy - we are going to save those likely-to-be-drowned and misery-ridden people in New Orleans," how many dead people would be alive and how many who experienced misery would not have had any or less misery?
When there is a castastrophe, particularly of a great magnitude as the one in New Orleans, the President and the Federal Government must respond without embracing Lawbureaucracy. Ironically, Lawbureaucracy was not an issue or a barrier for the President in his March of 2003 decision to invade Iraq. He did not let Lawbureaucracy stand in his way of launching the Iraq War.
Some people have suggested, and I tend to agree, that Lawbureaucracy was applied or respected, however disrespectful it was, in New Orleans because the victims in that city were African-Americans and poor. Noticably, these are the same kind of people who, more than three-quarters of a century ago, were lynched and disfanchised in America.
To honor Lawbureaucracy above saving lives and aiding people in misery is indefensible. These guilty people should be brought to justice. The blood of those who died needlessly in New Orleans is on their hands. Let me reiterate, there is a Higher Law than Lawbureaucracy that always directs people to do the right and lovely thing.

Copyright 2005 by Uriah J. Fields