Murder In New
Orleans: No Big Thing on the Big Easy
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
"The
doctors that committed murder got away, because the prosecutors of New Orleans
did not value the lives of the victims."
The story of the New Orleans holocaust played itself out in,
of all places, a hospital, where people go to live, rather than to die. At the
New Orleans Memorial Medical Center, as the city filled up with water, doctors
- most of them white - decided that some people had to die, because the water
was rising and there was no reason to believe that any help was coming from the
outside world. This is where, in the extremes of crisis, we see basic impulses
of people come to the fore.
Nine patients, most of them Black, were injected with overdoses
of lethal chemicals, in the same massive dosage - a clear pattern of homicide,
all committed in the same hours. The doctors did not die, but their patients
did. Their patients were poor people, who had no power. The doctors were of a
different class, and were treated as
such.
A grand jury acquitted the doctors. We all know that grand
juries are functionaries of prosecutors, who choose are do not choose to
prosecute crimes. So the doctors that committed murders - or, if you may prefer
the word, euthanasia - got away, because the prosecutors of New Orleans did not
value the lives of the victims. They valued upper class, white people's lives
more than Black, older folks lives. These murderous criminals are carousing at
the Mall, right now, grinning at each other, and telling their children that
they are moral people.
"These murderous criminals are carousing at the
Mall, right now."
This felonious immorality is only possible in a society that
is based on racial domination. Nothing else explains the small genocide that
occurred in Memorial Medical Center, or the larger crime that took the lives of
over a thousand New Orleans residents, and scattered hundreds of thousands to
the four winds. We don't know where they are. The prevailing white opinion does
not want to know.
So now, back to the hospital in New Orleans, where at least
nine patients were put to death by lethal injection by doctors - and the legal
establishment has absolved the killers of charges. Imagine if nine white, upper
class people had been assassinated. There would be hell to pay. But mostly
Black, entirely poor groups of people don't deserve to live - certainly not at
times of crisis that taxes the nerves of doctors and district attorney lawyers
and such. Please don't tax their fragile nerves: they might kill you.
What we are addressing is institutional racism, in its basic
form: murder. The Memorial Medical Center murders were only one of many -
through the ages. We must kill the beast, of racism.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.
BAR executive editor Glen
Ford can be reached at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
To listen to this Black Agenda Radio commentary, click the right-pointing arrow in the player below.
{mp3}047x_gf_NOLA{/mp3}
Broadcasters wishing to download a copy of the MP3 should visit our Black Agenda Radio archive page.
In response to campus repression tactics, a coalition of students and faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) held coordinated disruptions during a university gala.
In another step toward the achievement of its national sovereignty, Niger recently declared the United State's military presence in the country illegal.
The trial of the New York Panther 21 was the moment in the Black liberation movement that ushered in an era of intensified state repression and violence and increasingly aggressive tactics…
Three members of the Uhuru Movement were recently indicted on charges related to operating as "unregistered foreign agents." This attack has huge implications for free speech everywhere.
After months of social unrest, the youngest leader in the West African state’s history will take office pledging a progressive program.
