I don’t even need to specify why, do I? We’re all feeling it. I just want to go down there, get a few busloads of people, and start moving them into my and my friends’ houses…but of course that’s impractical for any number of reasons. I don’t know what to do or send or feel…we’ve let a major U.S. city turn into the Third World, and I’m sitting here in my empty apartment on my warm dry bed, with food in the fridge and a job and money and a cool, clean, functional city that’s not underwater, and I don’t know how to spread these riches out to the people who need them so badly right now. I’m starting to paralyze, and that’s no good for anyone.
Q: What are you doing? What should I do?
3 responses so far ↓
1 Martini-Corona // Sep 4, 2005 at 8:45 pm
I was swamped at work and swamped with moving roommates in/out last week, so although my workmates were buzzing I didn’t have a chance do to more than flip through the still pictures on washingtonpost.com. I didn’t do any serious TV watching until Thursday night and was aghast. I gave money to the Red Cross and my company matches charitable donations (so my donation will be less piddly), but now that I think about it, the Red Cross is probably swamped with donations. What people really need is long-term help. I should, like, donate directly to the State of Louisiana. Or does anyone have a better idea?
(The other thing I’m worried about is that the focus on the hurricane will shift focus away from other humanitarian disasters. Maybe I should send my donations towards rebuilding Afghanistan? Or Iraq? But then I get overwhelmed and paralyzed — it’s all just a drop in the bucket. Maybe the best I can do is focus on applying to grad schools so that I can become part of some sort of long-term solution to the world’s ills…?)
2 Arun // Sep 4, 2005 at 10:42 pm
I feel both helpless and incredibly angry. People should go to jail for this. Criminally negligent homicide, 10,000+ consecutive sentences.
Sorry. I feel incredibly helpless. I’m discussing with my housemates whether we can put up 2 or 3 people for a while. I don’t know what else to do.
In many ways, this is worse than the tsunami (though, overall, that was much worse) in the sense that much of this was preventable.
3 Aatish // Sep 5, 2005 at 10:51 am
I called the Red Cross and gave them blood and then money. I asked them if I could go. The lady said that unless I was a chopper pilot, a doctor or an EMT, I had best stay away. I feel utterly useless, frustrated and angry. I can’t help but feel that if there is nothing I can personally do at a time like this, then what really is the point of anything I can do.
At work , my boss came in with the same dark circles under his eyes that I had. We spent the morning combing through mental and virtual stack of data on the companies in the NanoBusiness Alliance and the products they had that might be able to help. We wrote an appeal to Motorola to send their new solar powered (photovoltaic nanocarbons in the solar cells) communication devices and to Dow to send over their new portable water filtration systems and the nano-iodine purification tablets they’ve been prototyping. We got calls back from junior execs at both companies, someone listened and they will try. That felt good.
I tried to explain to someone why I felt so strongly about this one - why a life of being rootless makes you always hungry for the soil you’re on, why people like that fall in love with cities and how real the threat of being homeless overnight is to an immigrant to the U.S. living in the shadows of the Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security. I think I just come across sounding nuts.
Beneath the helpless, trapped, sadness is a growing pool of very cold rage. I’m glad the Department of Homeland Security spends its time and resources protecting the country from people like me, Canadian research librarian and Brazilian ecologist who spends most of her life trying to preserve rainforests. Real dangerous characters we. Their response to this situtation has been criminally negligent. There is a very special kind of prison in my mind for Chertoff, Blanco and Brown. What if terrorists had blown up those levees, would that have made them move faster?
Someone should give Ray Nagin a medal. He’s the only real voice in a sewer of political CYA. I truly hope that guy comes out on top of this.
*sigh* All right. End o’ rant.
Leave a Comment