Monday, June 26, 2006

Tsunami workers shocked by Ninth Ward

I missed this incredible story on WWL-TV on Friday.

Tsunami relief workers shocked by 9th Ward tour,
say they expected more signs of recovery
Two leaders of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights who have spent the last 18-months helping victims of last year’s Tsunami took a walk through the Lower Ninth Ward Friday.

Their reaction was one of shock, because they said they expected to see more signs of recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

“We think of America as being this fabulous, powerful superpower, and it’s exactly like Third World situations,” said [tsunami relief worker] Tom Kerr...


I haven't pitched Friday's or Saturday's Times-Picayune, but if this didn't make the paper and move on the national wires, then someone has dropped the ball. Or was told not to play with this dangerous ball in public. A quick check of Google News finds that this story was picked up by the Gulf Times of Qatar. And no one else.

As the central government's national holiday celebrating freedom from remote incompetence and tyranny approaches, I'm frustrated to think how, or why, I would want to celebrate. Vicksburg MS fell to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant on July 4, 1863. The city did not observe the Fourth of July as a holiday again until 1945. I wonder how long it will be before New Orleans forgives and forgets?

Props to LiveJournal blogger fivecats for calling this one out.


Comments:
::::::::sigh::::::::well this is truly outrageous.

But I have a sign of this here in my own home. My daughter and grandson moved here. We registered him for school, and with great luck, have him in a wonderful school, Mc 15, now a KIPP Charter school in the Quarter a couple blocks from our home. As we're registering him, we get to table 3 or whatever, and there is a teacher with another form to fill out. It is full of questions like: Is there any mold in your home? Does your child have any post-Katrina trauma? Was your home destroyed?

My daughter, from Ohio lately, who saw the Ninth Ward when she visited during Mardi Gras, was pissed off as I answered no to the questions, feeling I was usurping her as a parent I guess. Finally I said to the teacher, that my daughter doesn't understand the level of mold, etc. here. What astonished me was that she didn't GET that there WERE kids for whom these questions were overwhelmingly important and that there is still so much suffering here. This is the daughter of someone who has been writing about this since September and she doesn't get it.

I can only imagine how many people who saw it on the news in August have now put Katrina in the same box as Vietnam or maybe 911. It happened, it was horrible, it's done, let's go to Applebee's.

This should have been carried by every damn news station in town, and of course, the TP. Shameful that it wasn't.

Back to Ashley's Sinn Fein looks like to me.

Meanwhile, my grandson found some Hot Wheels that we salvaged from storage (don't ask me why we bothered!). He keeps them in a special container and tells me every day that those cars "made it through Kantrina", as he pronounces it. He gets it.
 
Phenomenal! I heard they were in town, but missed this delicious little tidbit.

I was talking to an expert on the San Francisco earthquake a few months ago who was shocked that people hadn't yet returned to the city. San Francisco was totally destroyed -- as much by fire as the earthquake, but there were tent cities set up to accomodate people, and tellingly, four years later, the tent cities were no longer necessary.

I wonder what we can expect in four years time.
 
I'll probably spend the Fourth packing. Next 4th I'll fly the Fleur de Lis flag.

But what date should we pick to celebrate the independence of the Orleans Free State? January 8 would work (Battle of New Orleans) except that coming on the heels of Christmas and New Years and Twelfth Night nobody would notice.

Yom Ha'Shoah d'Orleans is clearly August 29.

We need a whole new calendar, where President's Day is a work day but St. Patrick's and St. Joseph's day are paid days off.
 
Isn't this the whole point? Slate was right. It's nothing less than outrageous. America's face to the world as the benevolent righter of wrongs has been revealed for the lie that it is. None of us are safe. Should tragedy or disaster befall us, whether by nature or acts of war or by errors of man, forseen or unforseen, we are on our own. You have every right and reason to fly the Fleur de Lis and cry Sinn Fein. It's a national disgrace.
 
If you dont mind, I've cut and pasted your entire post onto my blog, try to keep this story circulating. If I have offended, please let me know, and I'll just mention the story and link to your site.
 
Steve, you're good. Thanks for the clear credit. And you have a digitized version of the photo that I saw in the TP of the gentleman with the rescue mark superimposed, for which I am eternally grately
 
Thanks for the nod my way, but I need to pass it along to AQyart on Democratic Underground (http://www.democraticunderground.com) who posted the story in an email to my wife.

I have images from my tour through the flood damages areas of New Orleans as well as various commentary at my blog -- http://fivecats.livejournal.com -- and welcome any additional comments from you and your readers on this subject.

My time in NOLA was such an eye-opening series of revelations that I'm still trying to piece it all together.

...
 
:) LOL!
 
I can suggest to come on a site on which there are many articles on this question.
 
Post a Comment



<< Home

"And when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcome, but when we are silent we are still afraid. So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive." -- Audie Lorde

Any copyrighted material presented here is done so for the purposes of news reporting and comment consistent with USC 17 Chapter 1 Title 107.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?