Anna Bligh: 'We are Queenslanders', response to flood disaster - 2011

12 January 2011, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Well, Queensland is reeling this morning from the worst natural disaster in our history and possibly in the history of our nation. As we look across Queensland and see three quarters of our state having experienced the devastation of raging floodwaters, we now face a reconstruction task of post war proportions. That is how we are seeing it and that is the sort of steely determination that it will require to overcome what we have seen in the last three weeks.

As we have all watched with awe at the power of Mother Nature here and Ipswich and in Brisbane we are also very mindful that in the regions of Queensland people are still facing rising floodwaters.

Here in the southeast I think a number of people have woken up to some good news and some relief this morning but I have to stress that authorities in the south east are still on full alert. This continues to be a very dangerous situation.

But we also know that this morning, thousands of people in the southeast, literally thousands, have woken to the unbearable agony of their homes have been devastated, their businesses, their workplaces have been devastated and for some people it's been both their workplace and their homes, washed away.

For many others, they may not have water in their backyards but they have woken to the devastation of parts of their city. I don't think there is any more a powerful symbol than what's happened to the modern city of Brisbane than the sight of our floating walkway drifting down the Brisbane River this morning. The floating walkway is a much loved part of Brisbane. It is the modern face of a thriving, sophisticated capital city. It is a loss that we will all experience and there will be other experiences just like it. In neighbourhoods where people watched their parks, their swings, their recreational spaces, possibly their schools all devastated. So there's a lot of grief and there's a lot of pain, not only here in the southeast but in other parts of Queensland today.

Here in the southeast I wanted to acknowledge that overnight we had no emergency rescues. That is a great tribute to the people of this region. I am very proud of them. They did what we asked. We said 'please be sensible, make sensible decisions, move to higher ground, don't stay in dangerous situations' and they followed all the warnings, they co-operated with our emergency staff and I am very, very proud of our staff who were out there on the frontline last night. We had an enormous army of police, fire and rescue and emergency staff. They were assisted by about 400 defence personnel right across this region. It was an incredible effort overnight and I am very grateful to all of the people who heeded our warnings and helped our emergency staff keep us all safe.

When an event like this happens, you see the best come out in people and we've seen it already on our streets, people out there helping their neighbours and doing everything they can and what we're now seeing is an avalanche of people wanting to volunteer for the clean up, not only here in Brisbane but across the whole of the state.

But we'd also encourage people, please help your neighbours, your friends and your family first. If we help the people we know around us then that will make the task for the authorities that much easier. As I said at the start, we have seen here in our capital city a devastating event but it is no more devastating than those that we have seen in towns and cities right across regional Queensland for the last three weeks.
Debris in Grantham township in the wake of the 2011 floods.

Can I say to Queenslanders everywhere: Wherever you are and there are so many places to list, if you are in central Queensland, if you're in southwest Queensland, if you're in western Queensland, if you're in the Burnett Region, the Darling Downs, Toowoomba, the Lockyer Valley, Ipswich or Brisbane, all of those places have been affected by floods and I say to every one of those people in those areas and to Queenslanders in other parts of the state: as we weep for what we have lost, and as we grieve for family and friends, and we confront the challenge that is before us, I want us to remember who we are.
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We are Queenslanders; we're the people that they breed tough north of the border. We're the ones that they knock down and we get up again. I said earlier this week that this weather may break our hearts and it is doing that but it will not break our will and in the coming weeks and in the coming months we are going to prove that beyond any doubt. Together, we can pull through this and that's what I'm determined to do and with your help, we can achieve that. Thank you."

Anderson Cooper: 'Not racial, not racially charged, racist', response to Trump's Haiti remarks

11 January 2018, CNN Studios, New York City, USA

Before we go tonight, I just want to take a moment to talk about Haiti, one of the place the president of United States referred to today as a shithole country. I was taught math in high school by a Haitian immigrant name Yves Volel who work hard, who dedicate themselves to teaching kids of America. He ultimately returned to his country in Haiti and was assassinated while running for president.

I spend a lot of time in Haiti, I first went there in the early 1990s, as a young reporter. In 2010, my team from CNN was the first international team of journalists on the ground after the earthquake struck. I spent more than a month there and have return many times on assignment and on vacation. Like all countries, Haiti is a collection of people, it's rich and poor, well-educated, not good and bad many. But I've never met a Haitian who isn't strong. You have to be to survive in a place where the government has often abandoned this people, where opportunities are few and where mother nature has punished the people far more than anyone should ever be published.

But let me be clear tonight, the people of Haiti have been through more, they've been through more, they've with stood more, they fought back against more injustice than our president ever has.

Tomorrow marks exactly eight years since the earthquake struck Haiti, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake killed between 220,000 and 300,000 people. The actual numbers will never be known, because they were buried in unmarked pits. One and a half million people were displaced. For days and weeks without help from their own government or police, the people of Haiti dug through rubble with their bare and bloodied hands to save complete strangers. Guided only by the cries of the wounded and the dying. I was there when a young girl name Bee (ph) who'd been trapped in rubble for nearly a day was rescued by people who had no heavy equipment, they just had their God given strength and their determination and their courage.

I was there when a 5-year-old boy name Mangly (ph) was rescued after being buried for more than seven days. Do you know what strength it takes to survive on rainwater buried under concrete, a 5-year-old boy buried for seven days. Haitians slap your hand hard when they shake it, they look you in the eye. They don't blink, they stand tall and they have a dignity. It's a dignity many in this White House could learn from. It's a dignity the president with all his money and all his power could learn from as well.

On the anniversary of the earthquake, on this day, when this president has said what he's said about Haitians, we hope the people on Haiti who are listening tonight, and (INAUDIBLE) L.A. and Miami and elsewhere, we hope they know that our thoughts are with them and our love is with them as well.

Ray Nagin: 'This city will be chocolate at the end of the day.', aftermath of Hurricane Katrina - 2006

17 January 2006, City Hall, New Orleans, USA

These were off the cuff remarks at a MLK day event at City Hall. Nagin was later forced to apologise for 'Chocolate City' remark. He denied he was only interested in the African-American population, explaining "How do you make chocolate? You take dark chocolate, and you mix it with white milk and it becomes a delicious drink. That's the chocolate I'm talking about.'

I greet you all in the spirit of peace this morning. I greet you all in the spirit of love this morning, and more importantly, I greet you all in the spirit of unity. Because if we're unified, there's nothing we cannot do.

Now, I'm supposed to give some remarks this morning and talk about the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. You know when I woke up early this morning, and I was reflecting upon what I could say that could be meaningful for this grand occasion. And then I decided to talk directly to Dr. King.

Now you might think that's one Katrina post-stress disorder. But I was talking to him and I just wanted to know what would he think if he looked down today at this celebration. What would he think about Katrina? What would he think about all the people who were stuck in the Superdome and Convention Center and we couldn't get the state and the federal government to come do something about it? And he said, "I wouldn't like that."

And then I went on to ask him, I said, "Mr. King, when they were marching across the Mississippi River bridge, some of the folks that were stuck in the Convention Center, that were tired of waiting for food and tired of waiting on buses to come rescue them, what would he say as they marched across that bridge? And they were met at the parish line with attack dogs and machine guns firing shots over their heads?" He said, "I wouldn't like that either.''

Then I asked him to analyze the state of black America and black New Orleans today and to give me a critique of black leadership today. And I asked him what does he think about black leaders always or most of the time tearing each other down publicly for the delight of many? And he said, "I really don't like that either.''

And then finally, I said, "Dr. King, everybody in New Orleans is dispersed. Over 44 different states. We're debating whether we should open this or close that. We're debating whether property rights should trump everything or not. We're debating how should we rebuild one of the greatest cultural cities the world has ever seen. And yet still yesterday we have a second-line and everybody comes together from around this and that and they have a good time for the most part, and then knuckleheads pull out some guns and start firing into the crowd and they injure three people." He said, "I definitely wouldn't like that.''

And then I asked him, I said, "What is it going to take for us to move and live your dream and make it a reality?'' He said, "I don't think we need to pay attention anymore as much about the other folk and racists on the other side.'' He said the thing we need to focus on as a community, black folks I'm talking to, is ourselves.

What are we doing? Why is black-on-black crime such an issue? Why do our young men hate each other so much that they look their brother in the face and they will take a gun and kill him in cold blood? He said we as a people need to fix ourselves first. He said the lack of love is killing us. And it's time, ladies and gentlemen.

Dr. King, if he was here today, he would be talking to us about this problem, about the problem we have among ourselves. And as we think about rebuilding New Orleans, surely God is mad at America, he's sending hurricane after hurricane after hurricane and it's destroying and putting stress on this country. Surely he's not approving of us being in Iraq under false pretense. But surely he's upset at black America, also. We're not taking care of ourselves. We're not taking care of our women. And we're not taking care of our children when you have a community where 70 percent of its children are being born to one parent.

We ask black people: it's time. It's time for us to come together. It's time for us to rebuild a New Orleans, the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans. And I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day.

This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way; it wouldn't be New Orleans. So before I get into too much more trouble, I'm just going to tell you in my closing conversation with Dr. King, he said, "I never worried about the good people -- or the bad people I should say -- who were doing all the violence during civil rights time.'' He said, "I worried about the good folks that didn't say anything or didn't do anything when they knew what they had to do.''

It's time for all of us good folk to stand up and say "We're tired of the violence. We're tired of black folks killing each other. And when we come together for a secondline, we're not going to tolerate any violence." Martin Luther King would've wanted it that way, and we should. God bless all.