Merlene Maten of New Orleans was a 73 year old Deaconess. During Katrina, she and her disabled husband evacuated to a hotel on higher ground. Packing the recommended 3 days of supplies in her car, they stayed in the hotel during the storm. When Maten went to get some sausages from her car, she was arrested by police and accused of looting. Her bond was set at $50,000 despite the police having no evidence of her looting. She was freed after public outcry but not before spending 16 days in jail.
by ZhenXiaoMing
12 Comments
Behold: the land of the fee, home of the slave
I recently watched that Katrina documentary on Netflix. I had a lot of respect for the military official that came in screaming at his underlings to “put your guns down!!”.
And then showing the side by side news stories where a white person “found food” while a black person “looted supplies” or whatever. This racist fucking country man.
Classic American police
The more I learn about the shitshow that was the aftermath of Katrina the more I see that all the jokes about the US are actually really accurate.
The media kept running “they’re raping babies in the Superdome!” stories that were 100% fabricated.
the department of homeland security actually ACTIVELY interfered with each any every effort to rescue or help people, even destroying supplies and arresting people trying to do good
Fun fact! Slavery is still legal in all 50 states as a form of criminal punishment, at which point private prisons loan out prisoners to farms and other places to work.
So if you ever wondering why the US has more people in its prison system then fucking China does, and why police in the US kinda suck a lot of the time. This is why.
Oh man, with what’s going on now I wonder if there was a meme about the jumping of the old lady and taking people’s guns away.
About a year or so ago I was listening to the podcast It Could Happen Here where a black Katrina survivor was interviewed and he talked about how in the aftermath of Katrina self described anti-looter groups who were essentially just lynch mobs were patrolling the cities harassing and sometimes just straight up murdering black people under any spurious accusation of looting. It was bleak and shed new light on what a POS Chris Kyle was for being part of one of these groups
[A great example of the theory of elite panic in action.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_panic) Why help solve a crisis when you could instead spend resources reasserting your authority?
I’d like to say that I was surprised to see her face and her physical traits after i clicked the link but sadly I’d be lying.
There’s documented media where white people are shown having taken food from flooded stores and stating that they had ‘found food’, while pictures of black people doing the same thing have them listed as being ‘looters.’
Don’t let people tell you that the system isn’t inherently racist.
Its been crazy to me learning about all this shit with Katrina through reddit and twitter. Idk if I just memory holed it but I feel like the UK news covered the flooding extensively and then that was it?
Although I know [when Top Gear went](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Gear:_US_Special) they remarked on how they couldn’t believe the US had left so many neighbourhoods in complete disrepair over a year later.