The Nation: Katrina’s Hidden Race War

The way Donnell Herrington tells it, there was no warning. One second he was trudging through the heat. The next he was lying prostrate on the pavement, his life spilling out of a hole in his throat, his body racked with pain, his vision blurred and distorted. … Meanwhile, Herrington was staring at death. “I was bleeding pretty bad from my neck area,” he recalls. When two white men drove by in a black pickup truck, he begged them for help. “I said, Help me, help me—I’m shot,” Herrington recalls. The response, he tells me, was immediate and hostile. One of the men told Herrington, “Get away from this truck, nigger. We’re not gonna help you. We’re liable to kill you ourselves.” My God, thought Herrington, what’s going on out here?

Democracy Now covers the same story here and about 29 minutes into the Friday, December 19, 2008 podcast:

From a Danish documentary

INTERVIEWER: How did you protect yourself?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN 1: You had to do what you had to do. You know? If you had to shoot somebody, you had to shoot somebody. That simple.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN 2: We had looters.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN 3: It was great!

UNIDENTIFIED MAN 4: It was great!

UNIDENTIFIED MAN 3: It was like pheasant season in South Dakota!

From a Democracy Now interview right after Katrina:

AMY GOODMAN: This gentleman who lives in the neighborhood said that they have been trying to get—here, let me ask these guys, too. Excuse me. Excuse me. Hi. There’s a dead body right here. Can Louisiana State Troopers, can you pick it up?

LOUISIANA STATE TROOPER: You need to talk to our public information officer, Ma’am.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s been here for two weeks. We filmed it last week, and gentleman over here said he has been trying to get it picked up for two weeks. And Louisiana State Troopers, the Police, the Army, no one has responded. We’re looking right over at it right there.

LOUISIANA STATE TROOPER: You need to talk to our public information officer and contact him at the troop.

AMY GOODMAN: Your name is?

LOUISIANA STATE TROOPER: You need to talk to our public information officer.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you know about the body?

LOUISIANA STATE TROOPER: You need to talk to our public information officer.

AMY GOODMAN: Sir, do you know about the body over there?

(OTHER) LOUISIANA STATE TROOPER: Ma’am, you talk with our public information officer.

At least they didn’t arrest her …