Customer Reviews

Raping Louisiana: A Diary of Deceipt

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My husband got Steve Burgoyne the job in Louisiana.My husband came home after 3 months for a routine winter job and 2 years later we still don`t have a large sum of money from the person that hired him. I do not know how Steve could put up with the deprivation so long. Even with the loss of the money, I am still glad my husband came home when he did.
We, unlike the poor Hurricane Katrina victims, have a roof over our head and self earned food on the table, and our pride in doing what we thought would help others.

Being an avid news watcher, I had seen all the reports on Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath. What we were shown on television lacks validity after reading the book that Mr. Harris wrote using the diary and interview of the truck driver Stephen Burgoyne. This man was there and his diary reveals the ineptitude of our government to respond to a crisis here in the United States.
The book, Raping Louisiana; A Diary of Deceit should be required reading for all government personnel so that they may learn from their mistakes.
Mr. Burgoyne shows us through his diary what actually was done in the relief effort and clarifies why it has taken so long for the clean up effort. No wonder it isn't done yet and it will be years before it is. How scary to think that this could be the response to a disaster where we live.
His story also tells us how it was for him, being away from his family during all types of personal things; death, illness; holidays; anniversaries, etc. Our government owes these people who worked during the clean up more than the pay they received, they are owed a huge thank you for the sacrifices they made when they responded and did what the government wasn't doing.
I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to know the true story.

Hurricane Katrina, a disaster of Biblical proportions, is no longer in the news but the devastation of the land and the victimization of the residents of the Gulf Coast continues. Philip Harris's Raping Louisiana - A Diary of Deceit addresses the aftermath of the storm through the eyes of Steve Burgoyne, a middle aged truck driver from upstate New York. The bluntly honest depiction of his yearlong odyssey working in the Katrina cleanup efforts reveals the corruption, the despair, and the government waste in detailed diary entries.
Burgoyne's descriptions, presented with the minutia of a daily journal, illustrate the three types of people who came to the Gulf in the aftermath of the storm: crooks, victims trying to survive, and the people who came because they genuinely care. Burgoyne met plenty of all, the faceless contractors came down to make a quick fortune off the government and the unfortunate; the victims as they wandered the streets of the Dead Zone in the lower ninth ward; and the men moving debris and clearing the streets of rubble. Steve and his crew worked and lived in conditions little better than those of a third world country. They initially slept in travel trailers parked in horse pastures with no potable water or sewage facilities. But even in those conditions, the men stayed on working to make the land clear so the previous inhabitants of the Gulf Coast could return to their land. Every truck load carried away from previously populated area impacted the men who worked there. "It was stressful...you're picking up pieces of somebody's life." Throughout, it is evident that Burgoyne's family was his support network while he toiled in the land of the hopeless.
On the Gulf, with no affordable places to live, there is no working class to run the shops and businesses in the service industries. FEMA has made a feeble attempt to provide housing for those living in shelters surrounded by hopelessness. Those that stayed and now make their homes there are the disabled, the elderly, and the unskilled labor. They now sit in their FEMA provided formaldehyde-laced cages destitute and deeply depressed. The rebuilding of the city has completely ignored this disenfranchised population, government supplemented affordable housing is not a priority in the re-building boom. New Orleans is currently the murder capital of the world. Depression, suicide, and anxiety are rampant. The devastation of the storm still takes victims in its path through drugs and alcohol abuse. The imported workers and those refugees who remained self-medicate as they live side by side in a ravaged land.
Ignored, forgotten, and abandoned the Gulf Coast is still a hotbed of contention and corruption. Raping Louisiana is a good read for raising America's social consciousness. We can provide millions of dollars to tsunami stricken countries, we can fund a war to fight terrorism, and we can forgive billions of dollars of foreign debt but we have written off our own citizens. Raping Louisiana should be a wakeup call to those who have forgotten Katrina and her victims. Is anybody listening?