There are a lot of people out there who are saying that those who stayed behind in New Orleans in spite of the warnings to leave before Katrina hit are “stupid” and deserved their fate.
I have two words for those saying this:
Shut up.
The reason I am saying this is that had I been in New Orleans when Katrina hit the likelihood is, I would be dead right now.
There are a few things some people probably know about me from my time online:
First, I don’t drive. I don’t own a car. I don’t even have a driver’s license. So, had the order come to evacuate, I would have had to rely on public transportation. Just like the vast majority of people in the Superdome and the Convention Center. Now those blaming the victims may think that makes me stupid, but there’s no way I would try to prove that hypothesis by trying to walk out of the path of a hurricane the width of the state of Washington.
Take a plane out? I’d have had to use public transportation to get to the airport. Hire a cab? It’s public transportation. Bus? Train? There’s a reason these are called public transportation. It’s because the public uses them. I’d have been fighting everyone else in New Orleans for a seat on one of these conveyances. The odds are not good.
Second, I have diabetes. It’s type II diabetes, regulated through a combination of insulin, oral medication and diet. Those who have diabetes know it’s a balancing act. You let any of that combination of factors get out of balance, and you run the risk of hyperglycemia on the one hand and diabetic shock on the other. It’s not a pretty picture. Plus, with no electricity and no refrigeration in the steambath that is New Orleans on the best of summer’s days, there’s no telling how long the insulin would stay effective.
Third, I can’t swim. Enough said about that.
Fourth, I don’t own a gun. I have a vague idea how to use them, and I have other weapons, but they’re not range weapons. They wouldn’t do well against someone at a distance firing a rifle at me.
Fifth, the medication I have been taking lately has made me gain weight and made it hard for me to move in the best of circumstances. There is at least one report of a resident of a medical facility who was euthanized because they could not evacuate him due to his weight.
So the odds are good that I would not have survived five days past the hurricane in rising flood water, with no food, no potable water, and uncertainty as to the effects of my medicine.
So anyone who dares to say that anyone who stayed behind brought this upon themselves — especially if they did so on the orders of government officials who told people to evacuate to higher ground at the Superdome or the Convention Center — is looking for an earful.
Cross posted at My Left Wing
The Conservative approach to problems is — “Deal with it yourself”. Its a wonderful approach when combined with psuedo-religious beliefs that God wants you Rich, and the more godly you are, the richer you will become.
Now, the truth is the last 6000+ years of human experience has proven that simply doesn’t work. But, its so damn gratifying to those who have as much as they feel they need. It means they’re done — take care of yourself and the rest is someone elses problem — all they need to is enjoy themselves, guilt free.
Its a bankrupt philosophy which gives the illusion its working only in the best of times.
Well, here we are. Its far from the best of times. The illusion is broken.
The majority of people feel the urge to help. They all wonder why our govt isn’t or hasn’t done more.
The Republicans at the top tried to make them feel it was okay, that the people deserved their fates, or that it wasn’t the Govt’s responsibility. Now they’re telling us its all better now, they’ve got the situation under control. They tried to get us all to go back to sleep, to rejoin their silly dream version of reality.
But we’re better than that.
Still, the Conservatives won’t give up so easily.
They haven’t the capacity or life experience to know what you live with.
Further, I think that it’s covertly racist and classist to say that people should have gotten out …
I.e., they believe (but can’t state it for the sake of modern custom) that if people haven’t the means, they deserve their fate.
E.g., your not driving is no excuse … where’s your chauffeur?!
had the opportunity, yes opportunity, to work in the inner city and get to know people and their stories.
I worked with hundreds of people in the ghettoes of Philly in the last election. I hired them, trained them, payed them, fired them, promoted them, disciplined them, learned from them, made lifelong friendships, made deadly enemies.
Out of those hundreds of people I never met one that had both a car and all the legal requirements that go with a car (license, registration, insurance). In fact, I only met a handful with a car at all.
Nearly everyone person I worked with was stone-cold broke the day I payed them.
Therefore, almost all of them would be stranded in Philly if it had to evacuated.
They don’t have opportunities, there are no upwardly mobile jobs. They are good people. And I’m tired of people implying that they somehow deserve their poverty.
There are a lot of people who bus or walk to get where they’re going because they can, and because it’s cheaper to do so. Some, like me, don’t have cars; others can’t afford to run them much.
I have no direct experience to support this, but I believe it to be true. Corroborations or refutations would be most welcome.
This is why I think two years of compulsory national service would be beneficial to many people. A lot of Americans are very insular and don’t know what’s going on in other parts of their country, much less the world. It’d do us some good to get out a little bit.
Then they might realize that not everyone is blessed with the ability to drive, even if like me they are white and solidly middle class. My refusal to own a car has as much to do with not wanting to kill myself because I’m not an attentive driver as it does with anything having to do with pollution or oil.
I used to work in a homeless shelter as an addictions counsellor. There is absolutely no way people such as my former clients could have evacuated in such circumstances.
I probably wouldn’t have made it either, considering that I don’t have a car, am poor with no emergency funds, probably would have run out of meds – throwing me into painful withdrawal (Paxil) not to mention running out of the flipping pain meds I take that don’t work anyway (ES Tylenol), the fact that I have multiple illnesses (fibromyalgia, lupus and PTSD) etc etc. I’m one tough cookie, but I don’t know if I’d have the will to survive such a thing.
I too am sick and tired of reporters asking people why they or their relatives didn’t leave. Get over it! Just help them! The focus has to be on their survival – reality.
that the only thing I might have had going for me in the Katrina debacle is the fact that I’m white. But frankly, I think that’s going a bit too far, and I didn’t want to play the race card. It’s bad enough without bring race into it.
No car, no credit cards, and several cats to transport. Most rental car companies don’t accept debit cards–and if they do, they place a hold on funds in your account for double the cost of the reservation.
For crap sake, so very many people live in cities because they rely on public transportation and need to live close to where they work. They don’t pack up the SUV every weekend for a nice jaunt to the country–they spend their lives inside the city limits. Why can’t the McMansion morons in their comfy gated communities get that?
and we can’t have that, now can we?
It’s that simple. They don’t think about anyone but themselves and the others in their social and economic stratum. I’ve stated before that the difference between conservatives in general and liberals in general is the difference between me and mine vs. us and ours. New Orleans has done nothing to disabuse me of this notion.
I heard a man from Jordan discribing the scene in NO on NPR – Tuesday, I think. He had been visiting a friend. When asked (snidely) why he didn’t leave ahead of the hurricane, he said he’d had flight reservations for Saturday evening but the airlines had cancelled all of their flights in the afternoon.
Separately, I heard the LA governor mention she had been “very disappointed” that the airlines hadn’t continued operating Sunday morning and early afternoon – no mention of the previous day – and I thought, “She was disappointed?! Disappointed?”
Darn it. Heck. Jiminy Christmas. Holy shucks. Was she also disappointed to learn about the school buses (for a district of over 110,000 students) that didn’t move all weekend long? (I imagine Brown & Cherk-off will be disappointed if they ever find out.)
I never thought I’d be moved to quote David Brooks, but he captured the essence of the week in today’s Sunday Times:
“Leaving the poor in New Orleans was the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield.”
Amen. Swiftboat that, Mr. Rove. And then maybe you can do that trick for us again, where you tell the country how Bush & the other compassionectomy survivors are doing God’s work?
I read something yesterday about how the UK government is concerned about some British citizens who are trapped in NOLA and hadn’t been rescued at that point.
I’d provide a citation but frankly, the stories are all starting to get jumbled together.
Oh well now- let’s blame the poor- it’s their own fucking fault ,ya know, damm welfare chislers- excuse me while I RAGE
All this crap is going to change shortly- when gas prices go through the roof and city living looks better to suburbanites.Then all the soccer moms who voted for Bu$hie- poo will be back-pedaling in fifth gear. And good luck to them- I gotta house that just tripled in value. For sale to people with some common damn sense!
had I been in New Orleans when Katrina hit the likelihood is, I would be dead right now.
Me too