Thursday, September 01, 2005

Give Them Shelter... Katrina, the Gulf Coast and Image

This week I was going to write on politics and art… but instead I have another, more pressing topic disgorge upon…

This morning I was in a meeting. The devastation along the Gulf Coast became the topic. Someone said: “Can you believe that people would loot under conditions like that? People are dying. Don’t they have any humanity? Where are the lines?”

I replied, “New Orleans is one of the poorest cities in the country. It is one of the most violent. It’s been on the edge for along time and this has pushed it over. Many people there depend on tourism and service jobs and they can’t make a living wage because the people higher up the food chain think it will make the place too expensive to visit… and then after 9/11 their economy took a major hit…”

D. said, “The images they’re focusing on are vilifying the black population. You’re not hearing, in the same kind of way, about the folks risking their own lives to save others. Why aren’t they talking about the private boats that have come in to rescue people?”

Then Dr. O. , “Poverty dehumanizes. How do we expect people to act. We live in a culture of capitalism where everybody gets theirs. We value profit by any means. These people are just using the means available to them.”

(all paraphrased of course…)

I keep thinking… Why is it taking so long to get water to these people? Why, if after 9/11 we put all these systems in place to respond to a crisis at a moments notice, is it taking so long to get organized? Where were those buses before the storm? We could see it coming… the storm was massive. Too many of the people who stayed behind did so because they had no means of leaving. Why aren’t there trucks and trucks of U.S. troops on the ground right now with fresh water and ready to eat meals?

And what, after all, do we expect of people living in poverty and left to face a disaster of such magnitude without means of escape or the resources to cope?

We live in a culture where surface is too often valued over substance and the American Dream has become a reality show.

We live in a country that does not value the children of its poor enough to imbue them with promise. We live in a country that values quantity over quality, new over old, and we value too little those ideals we say are important to us… We live in a country of the extreme makeovers and Paris Hilton… In our culture to have, to own lots of things, makes you a person worthy of position and prestige… yet the means to garner these things are limited to those with the capital to acquire them; limited as well by capital is the access to healthcare, education, transportation, and decent housing. Is it surprising that in a country where we fail to see… where the impoverished are made to understand that they are without value… that the status of things would be acquired by any means necessary? There is only so long a person can live without standing in their culture. The emptied value of the self must be replaced by the value of objects.

As Mel says, “It’s a great country, for some.”

Relief Organizations and Donation Info

• Red Cross: 1-800-HELP-NOW or 1-800-257-7575 (Spanish) or 1-800-220-4095 (TDD Operator)

• Episcopal Relief & Development 1-800-334-7626

• United Methodist Committee on Relief

• Salvation Army 1-800-SAL-ARMY

• Catholic Charities 1-800-919-9338

• Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

• Second Harvest Food Bank

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