Katrina’s aftermath

First and foremost my sincerest condolences goes out to all the familes & victims affected by the devastation caused in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. Below are some links that may prove worthwhile for those that want to help in the diaster relief effort:

Red Cross + Network For Good

Now of course hindsight is always 20-20 as they say, but it’s just absolutely abhorring to me that the federal government & FEMA dragged it’s feet for so long in sending relief & aid to help alleviate the damage caused in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. A close second on the “boo” list is the local government & media in Louisiana, as well as the surrounding states, which did a piss-poor job of properly evacuating people and alerting it’s citizens to the seriousness of the threat posed by Katrina. The levees in New Orleans could only withstand a category 3 hurricane and were exposed for it’s outdated condition.

But hands down, of all the bullshit I heard this past week regarding the coverage of Katrina the following quote just sent shock waves of disgust throughout my system:

“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this — this [she chuckles slightly] is working very well for them.”
— Barbara Bush as quoted on American Public Radio’s Marketplace program, on New Orleans residents evacuated and re-located to the Astrodome in Houston.

Hmmmm…..that attitude might help explain why the effort to send aid & relief has been so slow, because I guess when you have a population of mostly poor black folks it just doesn’t seem as high of a priorty to organize diaster assistance than, say, for some well-to-do white families out in Orange County, CA. Certainly, at a minimum, it’s more important than financing an illegal oil war overseas??? If we could organize aid & relief in a timely fashion for the viticms of the Sri Lanka/Micro-Asia Tsunami back in December, which was half a world away, then why can’t we provide aid much faster to our own people right here at home!?

This is yet another, and very tragic, example of how full of shit the U.S. government is at times and it shows clearly how much further we have to go as a society and nation to completely eradicate racism & prejudice here in the “land of the free”. In the meantime, I just pray for a speedy recovery for the both the city and good people of New Orleans as well as the impacted surrounding region that was afflicted.

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