The Gulf Coast
Wednesday, August 31st, 2005I have always had a special fondness for the Gulf Coast. My Dad and I went on a few trips together to Biloxi and had a really great time. My brother and I even spread some of his ashes in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico whilst standing on the beach in Gulfport.
The news of the devastation there makes me want to cry.
There is other news, horrible news, that is coming from the region that makes me angry. Horribly, horribly angry. I’ve tried to think of ways to put this that aren’t blunt and aren’t so in-your-face, but I just can’t. So here it is:
They left the black people to die. Period. To evacuate you had to have money to get out and personal transportation. The average, for god’s sakes average, black person in New Orleans earns $13,000 a year. So many had to stay just because they had no other options.
That makes me just plain sick to my stomach.
And why in the hell did the levees break? Maybe because George Antichrist Bush had better things to do with the money that was being used to fix them.
It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.
– Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004.
So they left them to die in a city that could have had adequate protections. And when the survivors try to get some food, they get called looters. The white people “find food”, the black people are “looters”.
Makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it? No matter what happens, you can always find ways to reinforce the idea that people with alot of melanin are bad, bad, bad.
Give to the American Red Cross. Let’s try to be part of the solution, rather than exacerbating the problems.
****UPDATE: Do me a favor and donate through the Kung Fu Monkey blog. John will match your donation. I don’t know how much money he has got, but if he wants to match, by god let’s let him. I’ve already emptied my PayPal account to help. Your turn.****