Okay, so I am close to crying at my desk. I am reading on yahoo news the lastest reports from New Orleans. People are scavenging for food, there are fights, rapes, bands of armed looters. Store owners are standing outside of their businesses with shotguns. It seems to be getting worse. In one instance there are elderly left for dead outside sitting in wheelchairs presumably for lack of medical attention. Is this for real? FEMA can't evacuate people because random shots are being fired at helicopters? I don't get this. In another story people in the area are offering spare bedrooms to the stranded - via the internet and such which is very touching. (Too bad most can't access the internet or get to the free room) The looting I can condone is that at pharmacies, rite aids, grocery stores, walmarts. Some of these people were swept away with NOTHING and they have small children, babies in tow. There are folks with serious medical conditions. They need a clean tshirt, some bottled water, a sack of peanuts, baby formula, diapers, etc. Come on!
The situation down there seems really, incredibly fucked. I don't know what to make of this. Obviously it is horrible, tragic, and frenzied, but why are these people left to virtually fend for themselves? No toilets, no food, no water. For days? Is this what happened with the tsunami? I just don't understand it. Is it because most of the refugees are poor and not white? It just isn't how you imagine things going. I feel very weird sitting here going about my daily business. Arthur has been obsessed with watching tv reports in the evening on all the different channels. He keeps pointing out that there are thousands of Nat. Guardsmen from Louisiana in Iraq. Is Pres. Bush handling this situation correctly?
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I realize that now is maybe not the time for criticism. You know, that it is more important to just focus on what needs to happen but it seems like there was very little "readiness" to combat this oncoming disaster. I guess the whole country did not realize the extant of damage HKatrina would wreck? It just seems really messed up in a way I can't put my head around. Granted I am getting my information from media reports. All I am asking for is a bit of more positive news.
The bands of armed gangs looting the downtown and terrorizing survivors and rescue teams should be drowned. It makes me so angry that there are always fucks like this. Losing faith in humanity. Outrage is filling up my throat.
I totally hear you, I was in tears this a.m. as well, reading the paper. It's totally unreal that it could be happening not far from where we all live - and it is so dire. I read that babies are being evacuated without their mothers due to lack of formula. I mean, can you imagine that? I can't believe any of what I have been reading and that an entire beautiful city could be wiped away.
Bush of course is mishandling it because he mishandles everything. I just hope people don't start dying from not getting supplies. Can't large amounts of food and water, etc. be donated and helicoptered in? Why is it not happening fast enough?
Krix, I am ruminating, chewing my cud here. third comment to my own post. But...it is becoming increasingly clearer all the time that this is a country of the haves and the have-nots. I see it every fucking day just here in NYC and now in the situation down in New Orleans. There was a segment on the brooklyn news channel last night about the poor getting poorer statiscally in New York city this year. There is an eradication of the middle and lower classes in this city. One estimate is that for a family of 4 to get by in Brooklyn the poverty level would be around 50,000 because the cost of housing is so high.
This stuff makes me crazy. Crazy.
I know MM. If they can fly reporters around in a helicopter and have people on the ground reporting can't they drop some bundles of bottled water and loaves of bread and fruit? It defies logic.
social anarchy is so easy. Imagine it in NY. Horrors.
It's sickening. I can't believe the situation at the superdome - dead bodies lying around, buses going nowhere, no food. Shocking and disgusting, how it's being handled.
hideous hideous hideous.
The Times' editorial doesn't hold back:
George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/opinion/01thu1.html
UNBELIEVABLE!! Condi is such a C U Next Tuesday.
It is really sad. Although I don't begrudge the rich people who could afford to get out...the fact that the poor are left to fend for themselves is awful.
I can't take it. It's unreal. I want to get in a car and go get people myself, it's better than just reading about them starving and freaking out and dying. How the hell is Bush going to get punished for this negligence?
i agree anonymous. do i know you anonymous? are you an fbi spy?
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