Postcards from the Imagination

"What I’m hearing is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality...And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this -- this is working very well for them." Former First Lady, Barbara Bush on NPR (via Editor & Publisher)

In the coming days, weeks, and months people will be reluctant to admit that race or economic class had anything to do with the government's failures vis-a-vis Katrina. I'd like people to read this quote, and remember that this is the sort of family in which our current President was raised. This is what was running through the minds of Washington's elite as they watched the same news reports we all watched earlier in the week.

I don't think they saw working people who lost their homes, and jobs, and loved ones. I think they saw people who, to their minds at least, were accustomed to public assistance and sub-standard living conditions. And because they thought of them as not having fallen terribly far, they were not shocked into action as they should have been.

Moreover, the director of FEMA, Michael Brown told CNN on Thursday night, "Unfortunately, [the death toll]'s going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings,...I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans..."  Had he been watching CNN on Sunday morning he would have seen the interviews with those underprivileged residents of New Orleans who wanted to evacuate but had no money and/or no transportation to do so. One young woman held her infant son in her lap and told the reporter she'd do ANYTHING to protect him, but since she didn't have anywhere to go, or any money to get there, they were going to have to ride it out.

Katrina's victims need as much emergency assistance as they can get RIGHT NOW, but they will need more than mere subsistence in the weeks and months to come. They will need real homes, real jobs, and real counseling going forward. Unfortunately, I do not believe this government will tend to those needs unless forced to do so by sustained public pressure. That means us, the American public, keeping one eye on Washington, one on the Gulf Coast, and demanding our fellow citizens be treated with as much dignity as would we would expect to be treated with ourselves.