Hurricane Katrina was an Inside Job
The government takes advantage of you when you are the most vulnerable
When struck by a disaster, the immediate instinct of those affected by it, is to salvage whatever is left and rebuild their lives back to what they have known them to be. However, there are other individuals with a completely different perspective — they see a disaster as an opportunity to exploit. They take advantage of the period of physical and psychological disorientation that follows a disaster in order to implement new reforms, laws, ideas etc, and ultimately make them permanent. These new ideas put in place do not always necessarily have the best interest of those affected. All of this can be seen and backed up with examples from the events that followed after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina due to the fact that it was already below sea level and the levees that were put in place to prevent flooding were already unreliable, however the government did nothing about it. When the hurricane hit, the levees broke and the individuals that live below sea level happen to be the poorest and obviously the ones most affected. The government knew that the levees needed to bed fixed, but rather than aid the vulnerable, they sat back and waited for a disaster to wash them out and completely remake the area.
The “Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein explores the strategy of waiting for a disaster to strike in order to have a blank slate to aid them in advancing in their corporate goals. Klein refers to these orchestrated raids as “disaster capitalism”( Klein 6). Her article begins by defining and explaining the strategy behind the shock doctrine then using examples from disasters that have occured over the past years in order to help the reader truly understand and see how everything works. Then proceeds to break down the method into steps. First is having ideas already lying around, that way when a disaster occurs, those in power can quickly act upon them. Once the disaster hits there is about a 6–9 month gap of shock and disorientation that they must take advantage of in order to make new reforms permanent. Klein even goes as far to compare this strategy to the method of torture. Which involves isolating the prisoner, then overwhelming them with stimuli that results in shock and overall disorientation. It is during this phase that they are vulnerable and will give into things that they normally would not. Similar to the victims of natural disasters. After this Klein begins to question the shock doctrine method and comes to the conclusion that although it is effective, it is also radical, extreme and even dangerous. Individuals who crave a perfect clean slate are the ones that crave godlike powers, and will cause harm to others all in the name of power.
Naomi Klein’s article, “Shock Doctrine” relates to Hurricane Katrina in that it dives into the details of what occurred and how all the changes that were made after the disaster were even possible. One of the most noticeable changes that occurred after hHurricane Katrina hit, and that Klein spends time discussing is the drastic change from a public school system to a privatized one. The numbers truly say it all, prior to Hurricane Katrina, there were “123 public schools, now it just ran 4 ( Klein 5)”. Additionally “there had been 7 charter schools in the city, now there were 31 ( Klein 5)”. This is a great example of how those in power take advantage of the time period after a disaster strikes. Survivors are busy cleaning up their lives and trying to get whatever they can back, that by the time they are finally in the right mindset again, everything is already different. What they are familiar with, has been taken away from them and something new has been put in its place. The government insists that it’s “better”, and perhaps it is “better”, for everyone other than those affected. Not only have the survivors already endured extreme amounts of stress, they must also continue to endure stress as they are being targeted by those with power who do not have their best interest at heart. In regards to the school system, education should be a right, and equally available to everybody. A private school system is simply not accessible to those who are less fortunate. These are the ways that Hurricane Katrina and the “Shock Doctrine” correlate, however there was some information regarding Hurricane that was not included in the excerpt. Such as the details regarding the levees breaking. The government was aware that they needed to be repaired but did nothing. Had there been wealthy people living in the area, then those levees would probably have been fixed immediately. Instead, the poor individuals who lived there were being targeted and disregarded for, far before Hurricane Katrina even hit.
Overall, Hurricane Katrina was inevitably going to happen, what could have been entirely prevented was the aftermath. Had the levees been fixed rather than neglected. But in correlation to the ideas explored in Naomi Klein’s article, “Shock Doctrine”, the levees not being fixed was probably all part of the strategy to create a clean slate and remake the area into something completely different. Those who knew about the weak levies, waited for a natural disaster to occur, then took advantage of everyone being disoriented, emotionally, psychologically and physically for the next months to come in order to set new reforms and make them permanent. Although effective, I feel as though this is an inhumane and dangerous strategy.
