AMY GOODMAN: Malik Rahim is the co-founder of the Common Ground Collective, which helped bring thousands of people from all over the world to help rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He was also one of the founders of the New Orleans chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. In 2008, he was a congressional candidate for the Green Party. He’s joined us over the years since then. I recently went back to New Orleans and interviewed Malik Rahim again.

AMY GOODMAN: Malik, we are sitting here at the Morial Convention Center, where, 20 years ago, thousands of people were taking refuge from Hurricane Katrina. Your thoughts on what happened back then and the lessons for today?

MALIK RAHIM: Well, I would have to — first, I have to thank you for this time. When I think of what happened, not only here, I have to also think about what was happening in Algiers. And I have to think of the role that you and Democracy Now! played at that time. Most mainstream media was sold on the big lie that this city had resorted to anarchy, that it was taken over by thugs, and there was looting, there was murder, there was rapes that was going on, that now, 20 years later, we know that all this was false. But it was the excuse. It was the excuse in order to rid the city out of people that was no longer tolerated.

There was a difference between those who seek safety at the Superdome than those who seek safety here, because the ones at the Superdome was there seeking safety from Hurricane Katrina. But those that was here, those that was the tens of thousand that was stuck up in this building, wasn’t as cool as it is now, didn’t have many air. But they was fleeing a flood, a known flood. They was fleeing hurricane corruption, hurricane racism, you know? They were — that’s the hurricane that they was fleeing from. And they was unable to bring supplies with them. Most people, when that flood came, that’s all they had, was the clothes on their back. And then they had to wear these polluted clothes, because the water was polluted, the water was toxic. And they had to wear this for days. So, I think about the condition of those that was trapped here, and especially the children. You know, as an elder, I can understand. But, you know, because I’m in the twilight of my life. I’m seventy — I’ll be 78 in December, so I’m in the twilight of my life. But for to see children trapped up in here and dying needlessly.

AMY GOODMAN: Remind me, this was George W. Bush’s presidency. He had appointed as the head of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency —

MALIK RAHIM: Michael Brown.

AMY GOODMAN: — Michael Brown, who was — his specialty was Arabian horses. He was more concerned about the size of his cuffs on his — on his elbows, to show that he had rolled up his sleeves. And Bush said to him — what was his congratulatory message to Brown?

MALIK RAHIM: I can’t — I can’t remember what the Bush —

AMY GOODMAN: “Heck of a job, Brownie”?

MALIK RAHIM: Yeah, something like that.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about when the FEMA head, Brown, was asked about the people here at the Convention Center?

MALIK RAHIM: Well, he didn’t know they was here.

AMY GOODMAN: He said, “I don’t even know that they’re here.”

MALIK RAHIM: He ran his operation from Baton Rouge, so everything that he was seeing was secondhand. Everything that he was saying was secondhand. He wasn’t here. He was in — living the life of luxury in Baton Rouge, while people here was dying, you know? So, again, it shows what we went through then. But, Amy, the sad part about it, it could happen today. Déjà vu is alive and well here, because if a hurricane would happen right now, we are ill-prepared for it, the same way we was ill-prepared 20 years ago.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Malik Rahim just a few weeks ago, sitting with me in the Convention Center in New Orleans, where so many thousands took refuge from Hurricane Katrina. Malik co-founded the Common Ground Collective, which helped bring thousands of people from all over the world to help rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He was also one of the founders of the New Orleans chapter of the Black Panther Party.

When we come back, we stay in New Orleans and speak with independent journalist Jordan Flaherty. Back in 20 seconds.

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NERMEEN SHAIKH: Scenes of Mardi Gras Indians in the streets of New Orleans when Democracy Now! was there in 2006.