Everytime ppl are surprised by how the US responds to disasters, I think abt how, after Katrina hit New Orleans, the first priority of the US government was to build a prison.

And how their second priority was to make sure they used existing prisoners to build the new prison.

Camp Greyhound consisted of vast cages built in a bus station. Prisoners slept on the tarmac. Most of those incarcerated had been arrested for 'looting' - usually defined as black ppl taking essential supplies from abandoned, flooded shops.

Another large group of those detained at Camp Greyhound were those seemingly arrested for attempting to flee New Orleans - like the group arrested for using an abandoned mail truck to escape the city.

Later, the focus at Camp Greyhound shifted to forcing prisoners to accept 'community service.' The New Standard collated evidence suggesting 'arrests began to serve as a means of acquiring free labor'

Meanwhile, 'Mayor Nagin, Governor Blanco, and President Bush [all] implicitly and explicitly authorized the use of deadly force against "looters"'

Police armed with machine guns roamed the streets in unmarked vans, massacring fleeing black civilians. Vigilante gangs openly boasted about killing 'looters' and 'dumping the bodies with the coastguard'

The US state sees disasters as disorders, and can only respond via cops, prisons and soldiers. Its default position is invasion and incarceration, conquest and prison building.

All info from this Critical Resistance report on the Prisoners of Katrina https://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cerd/docs/ngos/usa/USHRN20.doc