167 “Carnival celebrated temporary liberation”: Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 10.
169 “The TAZ is like an uprising”: Hakim Bey, T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism (Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 2003), 99.
169 William Wordsworth: The Prelude (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), 226.
171 “It was the great national thaw”: Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 134.
171 “Paris is a true paradise”: Gustave Courbet, in a letter to his family, April 30, 1871, “Paris is a true paradise! No police, no nonsense, no exaction of any kind, no arguments! Everything in Paris rolls along like clockwork. In short, it is a beautiful dream. All the government bodies are organized federally and run themselves,” in Letters of Gustave Courbet, ed. and trans. Petra ten-Doesschate Chu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 416.
171 “Down the Ramblas”: George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1952), 5.
171 Eleanor Bakhtadze: In Mark Kurlansky, 1968: The Year That Rocked the World (New York: Random House, 2004), 227.
171 “Paris was wonderful”: Eleanor Bakhtadze, in Mark Kurlansky, 1968: The Year That Rocked the World (New York: Random House, 2004), 225.
171 “Everbody forgot who he was”: Josef Koudelka, in “Invasion 68: Prague,” an interview with Melissa Harris, Aperture, no. 192 (Fall 2008): 22.
172 “felt life quicken and accelerate”: Ariel Dorfman, Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), 244.
172 “two days that felt as if”: Gioconda Belli, The Revolution Under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War (New York: Knopf, 2003), 291.
172 “The whole earth the beauty wore of promise”: Wordsworth, The Prelude.
173 jubilee: See Peter Linebaugh, “Jubilating; Or, How the Atlantic Working Class Used the Biblical Jubilee Against Capitalism with Some Success,” Radical History Review 50 (1991).
175 “When we initiated the work of working with tenants”: Marco Rascón, in interview with the author, April 2007.
175 “Another thing that existed in 1985”: Ibid.
176 “Super Barrio”: Marco Rascón, in interview with Ralph Rugoff, Frieze magazine, http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/the_masked_avenger/.
176 “The first time he showed up”: Ibid.
176 “Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, with his face of a statue”: Rascón, in interview with the author, April 2007.
178 “The means are the end”: This is said many places by Subcomandante Marcos, including in an interview by Gabriel García Márquez and Roberto Pombo, “The Punch Card and the Hourglass,” New Left Review (May-June 2001): “The seizure of power does not justify a revolutionary organization in taking any action that it pleases. We do not believe that the end justifies the means. Ultimately, we believe that the means are the end. We define our goal by the way we choose the means of struggling for it.”
179 “Marcos is gay”: Subcomandante Marcos, in The Speed of Dreams: Selected Writings 2001-2007 (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2007).
179 “The Zapatista movement proved the power”: Laura Carlsen, “An Uprising Against the Inevitable: An Americas Policy Program Special Report,” http://americas.irc-online.org/am/3217/.
180 “Here the people govern and the government obeys”: See Rebecca Solnit, “Revolution of the Snails,” February 2008, http://www.TomDispatch.com/post/174881/.
IV. THE CITY TRANSFIGURED: NEW YORK IN GRIEF AND GLORY
Mutual Aid in the Marketplace
185 “I said, ‘The people who were in the towers’ ”: The reminiscences of Mark DeMarco (November 27, 2001) in the Columbia University Oral History Research Office Collection (hereafter CUOHROC), 19.
185-86 “They’re back” and “I just started down”: Michael Noble, in interview with the author, April 2007.
187 John Abruzzo: In Mitchell Fink and Lois Mathias, Never Forget: An Oral History of September 11, 2001 (New York: Regan Books, 2002), 166-67.
187 “We had to stop several times”: The reminilscences of Zaheer Jaffery (November 14, 2001, December 4, 2002, and June 24, 2005) in CUOHROC, 17 and 19.
187 “What are you doing?”: One of the firefighters, in Jules and Gédéon Naudet, 9/11, documentary film, 28 minutes in.
188 “I remember looking back”: The reminiscences of John Guilfoy (November 13, 2001, and May 10, 2003) in CUOHROC, 17-18.
188 “with a deep Brooklyn accent” and “8:45 a.m. September 11”: Usman Farman, in Jee Kim et al., eds., Another World Is Possible: Conversations in a Time of Terror, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Subway and Elevated Press, 2002), 12.
188 “For a couple of minutes”: Errol Anderson, in Fink and Mathias, Never Forget, 119.
189 “We could not see at all”: Adam Mayblum, quoted at http://www.snopes.com/rumors/mayblum.asp (accessed 2008) and various other sites online.
189 “They say, ‘No’ ”: The reminiscences of Maria Zambrano (November 14, 2001, and October 28, 2003) in CUOHROC, 23.
189 “A couple of young kids”: Stanley Trojanowski, in Fink and Mathias, Never Forget, 179.
190 “Something else that I won’t forget is”: Joe Blozis, in ibid., 200.
190 “I have the greatest admiration”: Ralph Blasi, in ibid., 57.
190 “I can honestly say”: Ada Rosario-Dolch, in ibid., 38.
191 “One of our harbor boats pulled in”: Peter Moog, in ibid., 80.
191 A fireman remembers . . . “People were just diving onto the boat”: Mike Magee, ed., All Available Boats: The Evacuation of Manhattan Island on September 11, 2001 (Bronxville, NY: Spencer Books, 2002), 40.
191 A waterfront metalworker . . . says, “Everyone did what they needed to do”: Ibid., 54.
192 “Maybe by now I have a river view”: The reminiscences of Ellen Meyers (November 4, 2001, and March 16, 2003) in CUOHROC, 17.
192 “get out of here” and “It seemed like a steady surge”: The reminiscences of Marcia Goffin (December 10, 2001) in CUOHROC, 12, 13, and 16.
193 Astra Taylor: In interview with the author, San Francisco, March 2007.
The Need to Help
195 “Movement toward the disaster”: Charles Fritz and Harry B. Williams, “The Human Being in Disasters: A Research Perspective,” Annals of the American Academy (1957) (unpaginated, copy from Hazard House Library, University of Colorado, Boulder).
196 “Everybody wanted to respond”: The reminiscences of Temma Kaplan (February 13, 2005) in CUOHROC, 7-8.
196 “By afternoon, Amsterdam Avenue”: Ibid.
197 “On 9/11 I just needed to reaffirm”: Ibid.
197 “From the voice of altruists”: Deborah Stone, The Samaritan’s Dilemma: Should Government Help Your Neighbor? (New York: Nation Books, 2008), 180.
198 “I left there”: The reminiscences of Ilene Sameth (October 29, 2001, and May 19, 2003) in CUOHROC, 25-26.
198 “Restaurants, cooks . . . converged in impromptu kitchens”: James Kendra and Tricia Wachtendorf, “Rebel Food, Renegade Supplies” (Newark: University of Delaware Disaster Research Center, 2001), 15.
198 Edmund J. Song: Blog, http://blog.muevelonyc.com/2001/09/30/emails-from-911/.
198 A volunteer up in the middle of the night: The reminiscences of Daniel I. Smith (October 24, 2001, and September 20, 2004) in CUOHROC, 73-74.
199 “and at that point, we realized”: The reminiscences of Emira Habiby Browne (August 1, 2002) in ibid., 21.
199 One of the organizers wrote me, “We in New York”: Marina Sitrin, comments via e-mail regarding the author’s manuscript, August 2008.
200 “Many of its grand old places”: Marshall Berman, “The City Rises: Rebuilding Meaning after 9/11,” Dissent (Summer 2003).
201 “It was the first time that I had been”: Jordan Schuster, in interview with the author, San Francisco, February 2007.
20
2 “The George Washington statue”: The reminiscences of Elizabeth Grace Burkhart (January 30, 2002, and April 15, 2003) in CUOHROC, 33-34.
202 “people kept coming by”: The reminiscences of Temma Kaplan (February 13, 2005) in ibid., 11.
203 Kate Joyce: E-mail message to the author, April 14, 2006.
203 Perhaps memory of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing: See Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins, Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11 (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 80.
205 “I began as one guy behind a table”: Tobin James Mueller, in 9/11 journal, no longer posted online.
205 “Everyone here was rejected”: Ibid.
206 “No one is turned away”: Tobin James Mueller, in interview with the author, New York, June 2007.
206 “We grew until Friday night”: Ibid.
206 “in any given ten-minute period”: The reminiscences of Daniel I. Smith (October 24, 2001, and October 31, 2001) in CUOHROC, 56 and 62.
207 “I mean, we had security”: Ibid., 80.
207 “the appearance of these groups”: Tricia Wachtendorf, in “Rebel Food, Renegade Supplies,” 8.
208 “I do think however”: The reminiscences of James Martin (October 15, 2001, and March 24, 2003) in CUOHROC, 15-16.
208 “So there’s that feeling of unity”: Ibid.
209 “Osama bin Laden has done a lot to get Catholics”: The reminiscences of Stephen Katsouros (November 4, 2001, and March 2, 2003) in CUOHROC, 21.
209 “From that day, for a month”: Pat Enkyu O’Hara, in interview with the author, New York, 2007.
209 “The smell didn’t go away”: Ibid.
Nine Hundred and Eleven Questions
211 A Rand Institute analyst . . . “Terrorists want lots of people”: Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat (New York: Random House, 2006), 141.
211 “Only relatively small numbers of New Yorkers”: Tom Engelhardt, “9/11 in a Movie-Made World,” September 7, 2006, http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/118775/9_11_an_explosion_out_of_the_towering_inferno_/.
212 a former city detective, “If anybody kept a record of which floors”: Barrett and Collins, Grand Illusion, 44.
212 “I know a lot of the firefighters were very upset”: The reminiscences of Ruth Sergel (December 5, 2003) in CUOHROC, 16.
213 The space was leased from a landlord who afterward became a major campaign donor: Wayne Barrett on Democracy Now broadcast, Pacifica Network, January 3, 2007.
213 “Giuliani, however, overruled all of this advice”: Barrett and Collins, Grand Illusion, 41.
214 9/11 Commission Report . . . “Some questioned locating it”: National Commission on the Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report (New York: Norton, 2004), 284.
215 When journalist Juan Gonzalez: Barrett and Collins, Grand Illusion, 279.
215 Seven years later, more than ten thousand exposed people: Editorial, “Ground Zero’s Lingering Victims,” New York Times, September 15, 2008.
215 “I think that the nation is not going to be able”: Camille Paglia, in Susan Faludi, The Terror Dream (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007), 23.
215 National Review article: In Faludi, Terror Dream, 23.
215 Feminism had “slid further into irrelevancy”: Cathy Young, in ibid., 21.
215 “Giuliani’s homoerotic death cult”: Anonymous, in off-the-record interview with the author, New York, February 2007.
216 9/11 Commission . . . “The existing mechanisms”: 9/11 Commission Report, 348.
216 “In responding to the attacks”: Richardson, What Terrorists Want, 150.
217 “A painstaking re-creation”: Dan Eggen and William Branigin, “Air Defenses Filtered on 9/11, Panel Finds,” Washington Post, June 17, 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48471-2004Jun17.html/.
218 “By the standards of speed”: Elaine Scarry, “Citizenship in Emergency: Can Democracy Protect Us Against Terrorism?,” Boston Review (October/November 2002), http://www.bostonreview.net/BR27.5/scarry.html/.
218 “When the plane that hit”: Ibid.
219 As one British psychiatrist put it, the new diagnosis “was meant to shift”: Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel, One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005), 147.
219 nineteen psychologists wrote . . . “certain therapists”: Ibid., 177.
219 One of the authors . . . “The public should be very concerned”: Ibid., 179.
219-20 “It’s been very interesting during my lifetime”: Kathleen Tierney, in interview with the author, March 2007.
220 “Inherent in these traumatic experiences are losses”: Richard G. Tedeschi, Crystal L. Park, and Lawrence G. Calhoun, eds., Posttraumatic Growth: Positive Changes in the Aftermath of Crisis (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998), 2.
220 “Often it is just such”: Viktor E. Frank l, Man’s Search for Meaning (1959; repr. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006), 72.
221 Nietzsche once commented, “Man, the bravest animal”: In Berman, “The City Rises.”
221 “Disaster provides a form of societal shock”: Charles Fritz, Disasters and Mental Health: Therapeutic Principles Drawn from Disaster Studies (University of Delawre: Disaster Research Center Historical and Comparative Disaster Series #10, 1996), 57.
224 “and actually within an hour”: The reminiscences of Mark Fichtel (December 11, 2001) in CUOHROC, 16.
225 I met one couple: They preferred to remain anonymous.
V. NEW ORLEANS: COMMON GROUNDS AND KILLERS
What Difference Would It Make?
231 “And I’m screaming”: Clara Rita Bartholomew, in interview with the author for Alive in Truth Oral History Project, San Francisco, November 2005.
233-34 Cory Delaney and “got out of their cars”: City Pages Oral History Interviews (City Pages is a Minneapolis-St. Paul newspaper): http://recordingkatrina.blogspot.com/2005/09/minneapolisst-paul-city-pages-new.html/.
236 Compass told . . . Oprah Winfrey, “We had little babies in there”: Quoted in Douglas Brinkley, The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 573.
236 Nagin reported . . . “hundreds of gang members”: Brian Thevenot and Gordon Russell, “Reports of Anarchy at Superdome Overstated,” Newhouse News Service, September 26, 2005.
236 “in that frickin’ Superdome”: Ray Nagin, in Susannah Rosenblatt and James Rainey, “Katrina Takes a Toll on Truth, News Accuracy,” Los Angeles Times, September 27, 2005.
237 “These are some of the forty thousand extra troops”: Governor Kathleen Blanco, quoted in When the Levees Broke, DVD, directed by Spike Lee (2006; HBO Documentary Films and Forty Acres and a Mule Filmworks), and in “Military Due to Move into New Orleans,” CNN, September 2, 2005, among other sources.
237 “On the dark streets, rampaging gangs”: CNN Reports, Katrina: State of Emergency (Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2005), 75.
237 “Chaos gripped New Orleans”: Editorial, New York Times, September 1, 2005.
237 The police were captured on national television: See NBC report, available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHcajIRcBvA. Curiously, the header on the TV report is “Stealing for Salvation.”
238 “and that really opened up the mall for us”: Peter Berkowitz, “We Went into the Mall and Began ‘Looting’: A Letter on Race, Class, and Surviving the Hurricane,” Monthly Review online, http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/berkowitz090905.html/.
239 “In some communities”: Enrico Quarantelli, “Looting and Antisocial Behavior in Disasters” (Newark: University of Delaware Disaster Research Center, 1994).
240 The job of supplying buses was contracted out: See Tim Shorrock, “Why Didn’t the Buses Come? Bush-Linked Florida Company and the Katrina Evacuation Fiasco,” Counterpunch, January 21/22, 2006, http://www.counterpunch.org/shorrock01212006.html/.
241 “
Reporters, even from some of the big papers”: Jed Horne, Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near-Death of a Great American City (New York: Random House, 2007), 107-8.
241 “Katrina’s big lesson is that the crust of civilization”: Timothy Garton Ash, “It Always Lies Below: A Hurricane Produces Anarchy. Decivilization Is Not as Far Away as We Like to Think,” Guardian, September 8, 2005, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/sep/08/hurricanekatrina.usa6/.
242 “a snakepit of anarchy, death, looting”: Maureen Dowd, “United States of Shame,” New York Times, September 3, 2005.
242 “Now the captain is saying, ‘Okay’ ”: In City Pages Online Oral Histories.
243 “Then came the military helicopters”: Ibid.
243 “And we were left there”: Denise Moore, in transcript from “After the Flood,” This American Life (Chicago Public Radio), September 9, 2005, http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1097/.
244 they “got together, figured out”: Ibid.
244 “I’ve got a report of two hundred bodies”: In Thevenot and Russell, “Reports of Anarchy at Superdome Overstated.”
245 “Troops Begin Combat Operations”: Army Times, September 2, 2005.
245 “characterized their work”: Jeremy Scahill, “Blackwater Down,” The Nation, October 10, 2005, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051010/scahill/.
Murderers
248 Danny Brumfield was shot in the back: See “Autopsy: Man Killed by Police After Katrina Was Shot in Back,” CNN online, July 18, 2007, http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/07/16/nola.shooting/index.html/.
248 Susan Bartholomew . . . “My right arm was on the ground lying next to me”: John Burnett for All Things Considered, “What Happened on New Orleans’ Danziger Bridge?,” National Public Radio, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6063982/.
249 “Pretty quickly, it became clear”: Michael Lewis, “Wading Toward Home,” New York Times Magazine, October 9, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/09/maga zi ne/09neworleans.htm l?scp=2&sq=m ichael%20 lewis%20katrina%20uptown%20new%20orleans&st=cse/.
A Paradise Built in Hell Page 41
