FEMA plans/FEMA paranoia
Sep. 12th, 2005 07:27 amIn the paranoid squatter-punk world of the late ‘80s, FEMA was well known. Iran-Contragate* partially revealed that some of what the FEMA folks were doing was drawing up plans for internment camps in case of war, especially in case Reagan felt politically able to actually invade Nicaragua instead of simply funding the terrorists, rapists, and farm-burners known as the Contras.**
The head of FEMA in those days, Louis Guiffrida, was well practiced in the architecture of political repression since he did a thesis at Amy War College on the scenario of a race war (not "pro or con" but as a what-if scenario). In case you’re interested, he decided that interning all the Blacks was, unlike the WWII Japanese, impractical, so he proposed only jailing the most militant 50,000. He was convinced that Blacks in the Armed Forces follow orders and remain loyal. These plans were updated, (with Oliver North’s help, he was the FEMA liason for Reagan) in the ‘80s to handle jailing lefties and Central Americans in the event of US troops taking on the Sandinistas and/or the FMLN.
The FEMA interment camp news hit the Black press in NYC and the Village Voice but never found a home in the major media outlets. The anarchists tended to go even further, linking it to proposed (at the time) housing of homeless people in decommissioned army bases, calling it a confluence of FEMA power and the enactment of the Kerner Commission conclusions, a way of removing poor people from potentially valuable land.
The Kerner Commission was set up to study the inner-city riots of the late ‘60s. The cynical way of reading their conclusions is that teeming cities, and the cultures they inherit or breed, will always cause riots and/or rebel. This causes property damage and business losses. Therefore what must happen, and what government should push for, is "spatial deconcentration" choking off neighborhoods so that they slowly die off and people have to move away. Less density and cohesion equals less danger to the powers that be.
I love the anarchists. They are my people. But man, for a "movement" with so many "artists" we sure have a tin ear for language. Spatial deconcentration, (much like naming your demo A16 or anything the peace punks named their bands) just isn’t catchy. And theoretically it was a always bit of a stretch to say that it was actually government policy even if it certainly was in the interests of many people with more than their share of government influence.
People often ask me if I ever expected to be a cheesemonger when I was younger. I usually half-jokingly reply that no, I expected to be in jail. And, as much as I really thought about it, I expected FEMA to have set up the prison. To be sure some of that was delusionary, romantic, middle class radicalism, thinking I would 1. be important enough to be sent to a camp and 2. not killed and 3. not be able to get out of it. And certainly that was just one scenario in my head, said for effect more than reflecting my actual thoughts.
I’m writing about this not because I think it’s directly applicable to the current situation but to remind people that FEMA has never been neutral. FEMA is underfunded and unnecessary to the forces of repression these days because Homeland Security and the Patriot Act reach farther than even Reagan dared to hope for. That’s why such an obviously useless crony such as Mike Brown was head of FEMA. I don’t care to argue about the motivations of my enemies, but if the people running the Bush Administration really felt FEMA was important they wouldn’t have handed it someone demonstrably inept.
But these issues are still real issues happening in different ways and this "ineptness" can certainly be used for the advantage of those who appointed him. The rebuilding of New Orleans will be fascinating and horrible to watch. One doesn’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to know that while many people are living in evacuee camps, with strangers, or in churches, other people are already planning to rebuild the city to their liking and to their profit. I mean, duh, that’s the way these things work.
FEMA itself doesn’t need to be an evil entity for this to happen. It doesn’t need to be part of an overarching government conspiracy. But FEMA, as a part of the government which cares for certain types of people over others, will end up aiding the Halliburton rebuilding effort which, if I may predict, will among many other things, probably create a less dense city.*** But who knows? The severity**** of the evacuee camps could spawn effective political evacuee organizations. There will be neighborhood groups and church groups who will be fighting for the interests of displaced poor and working class people. The rebuilding effort will be long and so will the political fights.
We’re talking about the control and reshaping of an almost complete major urban area, something that hasn’t happened here since 1906. It seems like much of the French Quarter is still standing and property in a new, more sanitized, New Orleans might be potentially very valuable. Fear of earthquakes hasn’t stopped my city from becoming one of the most expensive on earth and that trend really began in earnest with urban redevelopment that, by coincidence, involved the mass disruption of certain long-term urban communities. Something Katrina etc. has already done.
*Geez, doesn’t that sound kind of quaint these days?
**"The moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers"
***Which is both good and bad. One doesn’t need to support tower block housing projects in order to point out that the government goal might still be to displace poor people.
****For lack of a better word right now. I assume part of the goal is to make them as uncomfortable as possible so that people seek any other option, both due to cost and the very potential of organization.
The head of FEMA in those days, Louis Guiffrida, was well practiced in the architecture of political repression since he did a thesis at Amy War College on the scenario of a race war (not "pro or con" but as a what-if scenario). In case you’re interested, he decided that interning all the Blacks was, unlike the WWII Japanese, impractical, so he proposed only jailing the most militant 50,000. He was convinced that Blacks in the Armed Forces follow orders and remain loyal. These plans were updated, (with Oliver North’s help, he was the FEMA liason for Reagan) in the ‘80s to handle jailing lefties and Central Americans in the event of US troops taking on the Sandinistas and/or the FMLN.
The FEMA interment camp news hit the Black press in NYC and the Village Voice but never found a home in the major media outlets. The anarchists tended to go even further, linking it to proposed (at the time) housing of homeless people in decommissioned army bases, calling it a confluence of FEMA power and the enactment of the Kerner Commission conclusions, a way of removing poor people from potentially valuable land.
The Kerner Commission was set up to study the inner-city riots of the late ‘60s. The cynical way of reading their conclusions is that teeming cities, and the cultures they inherit or breed, will always cause riots and/or rebel. This causes property damage and business losses. Therefore what must happen, and what government should push for, is "spatial deconcentration" choking off neighborhoods so that they slowly die off and people have to move away. Less density and cohesion equals less danger to the powers that be.
I love the anarchists. They are my people. But man, for a "movement" with so many "artists" we sure have a tin ear for language. Spatial deconcentration, (much like naming your demo A16 or anything the peace punks named their bands) just isn’t catchy. And theoretically it was a always bit of a stretch to say that it was actually government policy even if it certainly was in the interests of many people with more than their share of government influence.
People often ask me if I ever expected to be a cheesemonger when I was younger. I usually half-jokingly reply that no, I expected to be in jail. And, as much as I really thought about it, I expected FEMA to have set up the prison. To be sure some of that was delusionary, romantic, middle class radicalism, thinking I would 1. be important enough to be sent to a camp and 2. not killed and 3. not be able to get out of it. And certainly that was just one scenario in my head, said for effect more than reflecting my actual thoughts.
I’m writing about this not because I think it’s directly applicable to the current situation but to remind people that FEMA has never been neutral. FEMA is underfunded and unnecessary to the forces of repression these days because Homeland Security and the Patriot Act reach farther than even Reagan dared to hope for. That’s why such an obviously useless crony such as Mike Brown was head of FEMA. I don’t care to argue about the motivations of my enemies, but if the people running the Bush Administration really felt FEMA was important they wouldn’t have handed it someone demonstrably inept.
But these issues are still real issues happening in different ways and this "ineptness" can certainly be used for the advantage of those who appointed him. The rebuilding of New Orleans will be fascinating and horrible to watch. One doesn’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to know that while many people are living in evacuee camps, with strangers, or in churches, other people are already planning to rebuild the city to their liking and to their profit. I mean, duh, that’s the way these things work.
FEMA itself doesn’t need to be an evil entity for this to happen. It doesn’t need to be part of an overarching government conspiracy. But FEMA, as a part of the government which cares for certain types of people over others, will end up aiding the Halliburton rebuilding effort which, if I may predict, will among many other things, probably create a less dense city.*** But who knows? The severity**** of the evacuee camps could spawn effective political evacuee organizations. There will be neighborhood groups and church groups who will be fighting for the interests of displaced poor and working class people. The rebuilding effort will be long and so will the political fights.
We’re talking about the control and reshaping of an almost complete major urban area, something that hasn’t happened here since 1906. It seems like much of the French Quarter is still standing and property in a new, more sanitized, New Orleans might be potentially very valuable. Fear of earthquakes hasn’t stopped my city from becoming one of the most expensive on earth and that trend really began in earnest with urban redevelopment that, by coincidence, involved the mass disruption of certain long-term urban communities. Something Katrina etc. has already done.
*Geez, doesn’t that sound kind of quaint these days?
**"The moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers"
***Which is both good and bad. One doesn’t need to support tower block housing projects in order to point out that the government goal might still be to displace poor people.
****For lack of a better word right now. I assume part of the goal is to make them as uncomfortable as possible so that people seek any other option, both due to cost and the very potential of organization.