September 4, 2005
-
Waiting for Godot
© The Author, 2005This week has been insane. Hurricane Katrina has ravaged countless homes at the same time Shaun and I moved into a new one.
Not only am I peeved at our government’s gross lack of response, but also I am disgusted by societies’ collective ambivalence toward the overwhelmingly black, economically disadvantaged victims of Hurricane Katrina. It seems that the only reaction that most Americans are having to Hurricane Katrina is to flip to a news station to be entertained by devastation when Everybody Loves Raymond goes to a commercial break. The human loss in New Orleans has been reduced to mail room conversation, and that makes me sick. If you’re mail room is standing around gabbing about it, then grab a box, write “donations for Katrina” on it and put it in close proximity to the gabbers. It is paramount that we shut our pie holes and move into action.
When 9/11 happened the whole country rallied together to assist. There were blood drives, a shit load of benefit concerts, restaurant specials where part of the proceeds went to helping the situation, food and water drives, ribbons to buy–you name it, the country was at its feet to come through. It makes my heart break that the victims of Katrina are not only shit on by their government, but the people of this country only seem able to watch their misery without once getting off their ass to help. It is disgusting.
I am too weary from moving and in too much of a rampage over the societal and governmental neglect that the victims of Hurricane Katrina is facing to write an articulate essay that explores the full breadth of this, but blogger Tims Head did a kick ass job of it. Please visit Tim’s Head’s site (the link is on my subscriptions) and read his eloquent Saturday post about our country’s hideous non-response to Katrina.
A good site to find out ways you & your friends can pitch in: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4826789
Comments (6)
I think I wrote that essay because it was something I could no longer NOT write, if you know what I mean. How can we be the most advanced country in the world and yet let this happen on our shores? What about all the planning after 9/11 that supposedly improved our emergency preparedness? Why didn’t the U.S. government summarily activate the National Guard, as they could have done? It’s all so disturbing.
On the other hand, I am pleased with how many people are indeed opening their wallets to help. More fundraisers will come. Ultimately this is the time we need to step up and show, as I said, we are still a great nation.
I think you’re right about the hurricane being a non-enemy. After 9/11, there was a distinct (albeit the wrong) enemy — Afghanistan — that we could bomb the shit out of to make ourselves feel better. In our country’s mind, the deaths that happened on that day and the ones following it were unnecessary, preventable, and unjust.
The problem with a natural disaster is that we don’t see them as preventable. There is nothing we could have done, so the rhetoric goes; why didn’t they just run a little faster? They knew this was coming, I hear everyone say, they live below sea level, they should know better. Unfortunately, these deaths were as preventable, unnecessary, and unjust. True, the devastation would have happened regardless, but there has been too little, too late. The area hit by the hurricane is one ravished by poverty; access to transportation and media outlets is vastly limited. Not to mention the fact that they get hurricane warnings every year — it just so happened that this year they were actually true.
The lack of sympathy, caring, and action on the part of the rest of the country is appalling, but I do have hope that it will manifest itself in benefit concerts down the road. The tsunami benefit concert took some time to put together; maybe there is one already in the works for the Gulf. What appalls me the most are these people on Xanga who keep saying things that imply that the people who live there had it coming because they knew and didn’t leave. To me that shows an extreme lack of understanding of the fact that access to a car is a luxury; that the conveniences that many of us take for granted are not always widely available. It isn’t a freaking coincidence that most of the people who were hit the worst are black and under-priveleged. Somehow, word got out just fine to the rich white folks, who hopped in their SUVs and gas-guzzled their way to Texas. To believe that everyone had equal access to an escape route is to ignore one of the biggest tragedies of this particular tragedy.
Now, millions of people are homeless. I spoke to a couple from Louisiana today who said that they were being told not to come back for several months. She said that for them, moving isn’t as big of a deal, because her boyfriend could get transfered to another branch of Hewlett Packard and they could go, but that for the people who lost the most, relocating isn’t quite so easy. A lot of people only have family in that area; where they had very little to begin with, they now have nothing. Why people living elsewhere can be indifferent to this tragedy is beyond me.
You know what I think it really is? I think 9/11 scared the shit out of everyone. Suddenly, terrorists could be anywhere and do anything. Everyone is at risk. Al Qaida attacked New York and DC but it was symbolic of attacking the whole country; the people killed in the attacks or directly affected by them weren’t the only victims — we are were, because we all experienced a loss of our concept of liberty and safety on that day.
But a hurricane is different. A hurricane can only happen in the Gulf. You’re safe in LA, or Portland, or Ames, IA. It was a tragedy that affected a certain demographic in a certain part of the country, but Soccer Mom in Montana doesn’t have to fear for the safety of her children. And without that direct threat to our own personal safety, it seems, the people of this country seem incapable of caring for the safety of others.
It makes me sick.
WAIT A MINUTE! Please don’t believe everything the biased press has to say! New Orleans is a very large city and people were told to evacuate 48 hours in advance. No thinking person takes a category 5 storm lightly, but many of the people you saw on television CHOSE to stay in their homes rather than getting to shelters. Then they expected others to risk their lives to get them off rooftops. The press gave time to the irresponsible bunch who expect someone to take care of them rather than showing the many who appreciated everything that was being done. When you’re waiting for help, it seems like eternity. But millions of dollars and thousands of man hours have been spent getting as many people to shelters as quickly as possible . New Orleans is getting a lot of press because there are so many people who are in trouble there, but the whole coast from Florida to Louisiana was affected. This is a horrible disaster but remember it is the presses’ intention to make news and stir up controversy. They’ve proved that again.
You won’t see the huge numbers of people who have come forward with assistance to help these people unless the press decides to do a documentary on that. The first day out, Houston businesses and private citizens gave over $6 million to the relief of those coming to the Astrodome (the unloved minorities you’re hearing about). The evacuees have travelled in commercial busses and whatever could be managed to get them to safety. Houston has taken in 200,000 people. How many people are in the cities you live in or near? The citizens have volunteered time and money and whatever they could to help–an abundance.
Don’t get me wrong–I’m horrified by what I’ve seen and heard. But there’s always another side to the story that has to be told because the press won’t tell it. Hurricane season isn’t over yet–what hell we’ll have if a storm hits Houston.
Hey Rusty Dust–thanks for stopping by and sharing another side of the story. I’m sure the people were given advance notice and told to leave, but that dosn’t help much if you don’t have a car. I live in Chicago and I don’t make enough to have a car, and neither do any of my friends and most of my bosses. The cost of living in this country is INSANE and no one is getting raises (in fact, my husband’s employer went on a raise FREEZE for the entire staff for two years). The scariest dreams I have at night are those that involve something devastating happening in Chicago and having to flee and being unable to. There are so many people here that everyone trying to leave in the same measly 48 hour period is unthinkable. Its hard to even buy a train ticket or rent a car in this city with that short notice on a normal day. Sure, if there was room on the commuter trains we might be able to book it to the burbs, but then what? Our family lives out of state and we don’t know anyone in Illinois. We’d be stuck in a cruddy shelter that was inequipt to take care of us properly. We could alwys try to bike to saftey, but we only have one bike. Not everyone has cars, especially if you are live in a city and are anything but loaded. I can easily see myself in the situation of the people in New Orleans, stuck in a shitty ill-equipt shelter or worse, trapped in my sinking apartment. What is blocking people from being able to do the same to stop being simply horrified and start taking action? What stopped the goverment from being able to see that situation and send in a plethora of free busses (too many would have been nice) to evacuate those without cars?
I am happy that people have taken others into Houston–that is fantastic. And you are right–the media hasn’t really covered that. It would be great if they did so that other people in other cities might see what a huge sacrifice it is to take a family into your home and help them out for an ungiven amount of time (if you are able and feel safe enough in doing this yourself, please log on to http://www.ihavespace.com), and think of a way that they can help too.
Anyhow, thanks for your thoughts!.
Thank you for not blasting me off the page. I hear your concern about evacuating Chicago and I hope your city fathers have a plan on file to make it happen if it must. That’s where everything has to start: city to governor to president. Read the Houston Chronicle (http://www.chron.com) and you’ll see the concern that’s being voiced down here about an evaculation plan. We actually have streets and highways designated as evaculation routes, but they are sadly clogged with normal rush hour traffic every day. Also, Galveston has to evacuate around or through Houston.
This disaster should cause the citizens of every major city in America to pressure their representatives to put together a serious disaster preparedness plan for their city. From what I’m hearing, New Orleans was not prepared. The saddest thing to me is that their major hospitals were not prepared with sufficient food and water for more than two days. That’s not the government’s fault–that’s the fault of the hospital directors. There’s a lot of blame and finger-pointing going on which will make good press for at least a year. If it causes constructive action, then it won’t be wasted. If it is just noise, we’ll go through this lesson again.
My thoughts have been running much along the lines of mydogischelsea. What will we do with the citizens of that region now? Surely they can’t be expected to live in shelters for months on end while efforts are made to sanitize and rebuild the city. And absorbing them into already-established communities (like Houston) for this same matter of months seems equally unfeasible. Surely there’s another solution of some kind. There has to be. But short of beginning immediate construction on a brand new city somewhere not flooded, I can’t think of what it would be.