A rchive Date
[ 04-09-2005 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Williamson_Linda/2005/09/04/1201352.html
When Society Sinks Into The Swamp
By LINDA WILLIAMSON
Sun, September 4, 2005
Everyone likes to tell stories about how disaster and adversity bring out the best in people. But what about when they bring out the worst?
The horrific scenes we've witnessed in New Orleans over the past week in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina are about more than broken levees, smashed buildings and failed disaster plans - they're about the breakdown of society itself, and just how fast it can happen.
Two days into the tragedy, looting started; by Thursday, there were reports of riots, armed gangs firing on rescue personnel - even beatings, carjackings and rapes.
Is that all that stands between normal life and anarchy in the world's most prosperous nation? A lot of water, a lack of food and shelter - and three days?
It's tempting to view the horror of this past week as unique to New Orleans - a tragic accident of geography, weather and the city's personality that was, many say, waiting to happen.
As I learned on a wonderful road trip through the American South in 2000, New Orleans is a city that has alway flirted with wickedness - its vibrant, anything-goes feeling is a huge part of its charm. But it's also one of the poorest and most crime-ridden cities in the U.S.
Notwithstanding its important role in the oil industry, the Louisiana/Mississippi/Alabama coast is largely poor - in Biloxi, the white sand beaches and massive casinos are a stark contrast to the pawnshops and dilapidated homes directly across the waterfront highway. In Canada, we'd call these places "have-nots."
But let's not kid ourselves. Poverty itself doesn't cause lawbreaking - be it the anarchy in New Orleans or the gun violence in Toronto. There's something else, something ugly, in people that surfaces when authority starts to break down, and signals to them that it's time to ditch the Golden Rule in favour of Looking Out for No. 1.
Remember Toronto's garbage strike of 2002? Barely two days in, people in my oh-so-respectable neighbourhood started dumping their trash in the parks - and it soon spread to sidewalks, beaches and everywhere else. One glitch in the civic system was all it took for them to toss civility (and a lot of smelly trash) right out the window.
This is the root of the "broken window" theory of crime. When leadership is absent, when people sense that no one cares anymore, when petty crimes are tolerated or condoned, they breed greater crimes.
To be clear, I'm not talking about New Orleans' famous laissez-faire attitude to public nudity and partying (although by Friday, some social conservatives were predictably - and absurdly - ascribing Katrina's devastation to the wrath of God upon a place famous for "Girls Gone Wild" and a major gay festival called "Southern Decadence," set for last week.)
Rather, I'm talking about a much more dangerous - and all-too-common in this country - laissez-faire attitude toward fundamental things like emergency preparedness, national security, homelessness and vagrancy, and crime in general.
In New Orleans' case, everyone in authority, from city officials right up to President George Bush, has some serious explaining to do about their disastrous response to the disaster.
But it's not too big a leap, frankly, for those of us who've observed Toronto's gun violence this summer to imagine a similar failure of leadership - and growth of lawlessness - here.
As New Orleans founders and dies, people are beginning to admit the decay started long ago, but was ignored. In mourning The Big Easy, we need to look hard at our own cities and consider how easily they, too, could sink into the social swamp.
There but for ... well, grace - in every sense - go we.
You can e-mail Linda Williamson at linda.williamson@tor.sunpub.com
Have a letter for the editor? E-mail it to editor@tor.sunpub.com
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