Thirtysomething

People First

I was wrong. I'm woman enough to admit when I'm wrong, so I'll say it again: I was wrong. I lambasted people for staying in New Orleans last week, putting themselves at risk for Katrina's destruction, calling them dumb. And no doubt there probably were people who could have and should have left, if all the cars floating around are any indicator. However, there are tens of thousands of others that had no means to leave. The poorest, whom the government failed on the local, state and federal levels. It frustrates me beyond belief and that frustration ran rampant on my blog last week. I still don't have time for the loots, and I don't mean the ones who were taking food, water or Pampers. I don't have patience for the violence that erupted. And the police, who abandoned their posts? Whatever. But I digress....

People before processes. Some "expert" said that on TV one day. The more I think about it, the more true it seems. People should come before processes. In instances like this one, I'm not sure people knew the proper processes, but it seems evident that the processes stood in the way of things getting done. Governor Blanco has admitted that she wasn't clear enough in asking for help and specific enough about the kind of help she needed. Mayor Nagin's office had to raid an Office Max for satellite phones because it never occurred to them that there wouldn't be phone lines up and running during and after a hurricane? I understand that the federal government can't just send troops into states to take over when they haven't been asked. But, then again, this situation was largely unlike anything else that's happened in the United States. At what point does the federal government say, "We don't care that the exact process of being asked for help hasn't played out, people need help and we're going in"?

I don't have all the answers.

I ran across a blog the other day written by a British dude who was blasting the U.S. for accepting monetary help from other countries to assist with the aftermath of Katrina. He was critical that the U.S. , the richest country in the world, would take money from other countries and that we ignore our own poor.

Well, in a way, he has a point. I'm ashamed that we are taking money from Sri Lanka (actually they offered, I'm not sure that we took it). As the richest country in the world we SHOULD be able to take care of our own poor. It made me think about larger, systemic issues: why do we have poor people? Why do we have those who are homeless? Shouldn't the United States, more so than any other country, be in a position to take care of its own? I know a capitalist economy feeds into this somewhere but who cares?

Eliminating poverty takes a lot of money. Probably ALL our money. And what if we couldn't help other countries then? What if we only looked out for our own and didn't help others? How much would we be criticized then?

I think, in the coming weeks and months, there will be a focus on the poverty issue in this country. Because what's obvious in the aftermath of Katrina is how miserably we failed our poor. The ones whom need our government the most. The ones who need the most help.

We are better than this, don't you think?

posted by DJ Heavy D @ 6:19 AM