!First aid station
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agk's diary
9 September 2025 @ 05:04 UTC
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written on GPD MicroPC with vi over ssh
late at night, crickets and humidity
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The sound of Katrina, as I remember it:
- Fuck Katrina by 5th Ward Weebie
- Get Ya Hustle On by Juvenile
- Georgia Bush by Lil Wayne
A documentary recorded in our neighborhood, same
time as the interview below:
- Welcome to New Orleans by Rasmus Holm
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This is the end of my commemoration of twenty years
of hurricane Katrina. After this I can forget
again.
In August '05 an arsonist burnt my squat and all my
stuff. Spoonie shot and killed my dog. My boyfriend
was in jail. So when Mo and Bork told me to get to
New Orleans now, my cousin and I said fuck it,
hustled medical and construction supplies, and took
a bus to Philly where we smuggled ourselves there
in a truck of relief supplies.
My trusted comrade Roger was relieved when we got
to the first-aid station he started with neighbors
and friends. His parents were dying. With Mo and I
there (we arrived the same day) he could go.
When Michael posted the below interview with Roger
to New Orleans Indymedia, the Jefferson Parish
Sheriff Dept wouldn't let black people leave the
city yet. Our neighborhood's 30-strong "cracker
squad" militia had shot at least eleven black
people, including Donnell Herrington, and bragged.
A man they killed still lay under a blanket in our
street.
46,838 federal troops were deployed in Louisiana by
the day of the interview, many rotated directly
from Afghanistan and Iraq occupation. At least
10,000 had served in the 2004 battles for Falluja,
where in three weeks they followed orders and rules
of engagement to force 300,000 Iraqis to flee, kill
2,000, ...
("dead family members were buried in their gardens
because people could not leave their homes,"
"civilians carrying white flags gunned down by
American soldiers," "corpses tied to US tanks
and paraded around like trophies,"
-*This is our Guernica," The Guardian, 5/27/2005)
..destroy 36,000 homes, 8,400 shops, 60 nurseries
and schools, and 65 mosques and religious sanctuar-
ies, then impose a strict identity card system
that turned Falluja's ruins into a prison.
Within days of deployment to N.O., each soldier had
the first of many sickening realizations: "This is
not Iraq, or Haiti. It's my own country."
Many scores of local law enforcement from across
the country were deputized by Louisiana and self-
deployed with surplus military equipment. I didn't
see any of them have the sickening realization. I'm
sure in part because they were an all-volunteer
force. "The guys who went wanted to play zombie
apocalypse or have a license to kill black people,"
a Georgia State Trooper told me a year later.
On Sept. 9, storyteller Queen Mother Suma Diarra's
12 year old daughter Rfuaw said to Chuck Munson,
"I've been lucky as a person who is somewhere
between poor and middle class.... People need med-
ication. The curfew makes it hard to move around...
There are around 500 people still left here in
Algiers, including families, kids and elderly. We
have running water but no electricity. There are
still dead bodies lying in the street."
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Community efforts to save Algiers continue by
Michael Steinberg
New Orleans, Sept. 10, 2005 -- Efforts are contin-
uing by grassroots organizers to preserve the still
inhabited community of Algiers in New Orleans.
Algiers is located on the West Bank of the Mississ-
ippi across from downtown New Orleans. It was not
flooded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and
remains dry. The neighborhood has running water and
electricity, and utility workers are working to get
the gas on.
[From Sept. 9 article by Steinberg: Longtime
community activist Malik Rahim, Algiers resident,
has been rallying his neighbors to remain in their
homes and organize to save their community. Roger
Benham of Willimantic, CT came south with Food Not
Bombs members from Hartford, CT a few days ago.
"We went to Covington first," Benham said in a
phone interview with this reporter.... On the north
shore of Lake Ponchartrain, "Veterans For Peace has
a camp there and has been feeding people....
Veterans for Peace came into Algiers yesterday,"
Benham reported. "We took the causeway across
Ponchartrain into the city today. We had to go
through a checkpoint but got through OK....
We set up a medical station in the Masjid Bilal
mosque on Teche Street," Benham said.... The area
is under martial law and is being patrolled by the
US Army's 5th Cavalry.]
"It's our first full day of operating our first aid
station," Roger said. "We're trying to help people
help themselves." Benham and four other health care
volunteers, including three other licensed EMTs,
arrived midday Friday with a van full of medical
supplies....
Benham reported that a number of visitors to the
first aid station today were looking for prescript-
ion drugs they'd run out of. "Several of them were
vets who depend on the VA for their blood pressure
medications," he said.... "We also went to visit
elders in their homes nearby today. On one house-
call I met a 101 year old woman. She's doing fine."
Militarization
Benham had abruptly ended our phone interview
Friday night. He explained that was because of the
raid approach of a military unit. "That was Civil
Affairs," he explained. "They're going door to door
doing a census. There's also paramedics with them,
and FEMA paramedics as well. They don't quite know
what to make of us. They're trying to treat us as
community liaisons." The Civil Affairs personnel
are Army Special Forces from Fort Bragg, NC.
"The FEMA medics were upset that we're here, that
we beat them to the scene," Benham reported.
"They're fire department paramedics, one from San
Diego and two from Idaho."
FEMA's supposed to be setting up a medical aid
station as well," he said. "So far they've just set
up razor wire. It's next to a private charity
that's been distributing water and food from a
warehouse there [but only to people in vehicles]."
Utilities
Benham said the electricity had gone on the day
before. "Utility workers are trying to get the gas
on now," he said. "Some people already have gas.
The city water never went off. So some people can
boil it already, but the authorities are saying to
use bottled water."
Forward military assets
Benham said the neighborhood is now being patrolled
by the Army's First Cavalry. "The general vibe of
the military is OK. Most of the soldiers I talked
to are just back from Iraq. They wanted to know how
we got [invited] in the mosque. We're using the
masulluh (sanctuary), and they committed a no-no by
coming in with their weapons. They realized they
made a mistake though."
Benham reported that a US Navy amphibious assault
ship anchored in the Mississippi River near down-
town New Orleans was visible from Algiers.
At this point Benham informed me that FEMA was
likely listening in on our call. "They called
another of the EMTs I'm with," he said. "They asked
him specific questions about a phone conversation
he'd had here.
Benham then said he had to pause because a loud Sea
Stallion military helicopter was flying over.
Medication refill routine
When our interview resumed, Benham told me that
he'd asked a soldier about how people who needed
meds but don't have money to buy them could get
help. "People who have money and can get a ride can
go to drugstores that are operating now in nearby
towns [if the Sheriff's office will let them cross
the parish line]," Benham explained. "But if you
don't have money, the soldier said you'd be taken
to the airport and issued the needed meds. Then,
though, you'll be put on a plane and evacuated from
the city. If you have family in a major city
they'll take you there. If you don't they fly you
wherever the plane is going."
"What we need now is an MD who can write prescrip-
tions so people can get their meds."
Rasmus Holm and Malik
Benham said he'd seen some Danish journalists in
Algiers today, but other than that no media
presence since his arrival Friday. "The Danish
journalists had been around New Orleans before they
came here," he reported. But this was the only part
they'd seen that was still inhabited."
Benham also said that Malik Rahim has organized
more people to come to Algiers to provide relief
supplies and other support.
