(From tompaine.com)

The complete failure of the Bush administration -- and to a lesser extent state and local authorities on the Gulf Coast -- to respond to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina has raised questions about the motives at play. The fact that the lives of hundreds of thousands of poor and Black people were thrown up for grabs and that the Bush administration could not mobilize any significant response for five days has led many people to assume that this was an act of planned genocide. How else, one may wonder, could such a thing have been allowed to happen?

There is another way to think about the disaster: the steerage on the Titanic. To refresh your memory, that was the section of the ship that provided the cheapest accommodations and where the poorest were housed. It was also the lowest part of the ship, the least safe and the site of overwhelming death. One may remember, as portrayed in the film Titanic, that the passengers in steerage were literally locked in, trapped like rats such that they could not escape the rising water.

Does this somehow sound familiar?

Let's talk about the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina victims in real terms. Let's name it for what it is: Genocide.

That's what Brother William L. Patterson did in 1951 after the UN Convention on Genocide went into effect. Patterson presented a document to the United Nations that argued the failure of the federal government to act against lynching. He used Article II of the UN Convention. And so can we.