NOLA = New Orleans, LA

I started to write a piece on the pathetic reveal that is the outcome of Katrina. I didn't get too far, but I'll post here what I started.

The reason I've stopped is not that I don't care, it's that there are so many other, better sources to pass on. Watching the cable news reports about the aftermath is not enough. FOX and CNN are way to hyped about it. MSNBC is better, but it's still a very small cross-section from a safe, dry spot. I've been reading the accounts on BoingBoing.net. They have a smattering of other news, but much of the content on the site has been devoted to the Katrina aftermath mess. If you only read one article on the BoingBoing site, read this post, "Katrina: a cameraman's journal in NOLA".

The stories on BoingBoing could be "made up liberal media bias bullcrap", but somehow, I don't think that they are. They are stories of individuals who are on the scene documenting what they see and doing what they can. I can't imagine having the job of reporting on this; the idea of taking pictures and writing stories amidst the chaos and death is appalling. Yet, it is important and must be done.

Please go to the web and other non-mainstream media to find out more.



Here is the entry I started writing:

Hurricane Katrina reveals a lot

Not only does it show us that building and maintaining a city below sea level, yet near a major river and the Gulf of Mexico, is a Bad Idea, it also shows the ugly side of capitalism and the trickle down economy.

Forget for a moment the race issue with those who were left behind. The vast majority of people who "toughed it out" when the evacuation orders were given stayed behind because there was no place for them to go and no way to get there.

It occurs to me that the bombing of the World Trade Center towers effected a lot of Middle Class folks. Sure there were some very rich folks and some very poor effected, but I'd bet that the economic data would most likely end up with a fairly classic bell curve. Katrina's impact seems to be much more weighted to one side. The poor side.

Do you suppose that there are *any* millionaires who died in their attics or were trapped in the Superdome with backed up toilets and little water? What are the odds that a CEO (or CFO or CIO or VP) of a Fortune 500 company is lying dead and bloated on the street while his family tries desperately to flag down a police officer to help them get the body to a more dignified place?

Trent Lott lost his mansion with it's view of the gulf, but he wasn't trapped in it with his broken down car outside and no bus service. He says he looks forward to sitting on his new porch when the mansion is rebuilt.

Do the folks in the low rent tenements have a chance to rebuild? What do you suppose their month-to-month rent was? What will the rent will be in the gleaming new Haliburton rebuilt ghettos?

If you had survived the hurricane and flooding and managed to still have a roof over your head, and the $57 dollars from your last paycheck, would you want to leave all of your belongings to move to a shelter? So what if the ground floor is still under four feet of water, it stank before the hurricane because the landlord never fixed anything worth a damn anyway.

Pardon the poetic license. I have no idea what the people staying behind are really thinking. I'm just pissed off that such conditions exist anywhere in the world, much less in the same country where if a teenager going off to college doesn't have an iPod, they throw a fit.

Some people have said that the areas effected by Katrina are "like a third world country", but I think that they are wrong. The ugly poor side of the devastation that has been revealed is more akin to pulling down the curtain behind a magician. Suddenly the magic is revealed as a sham. That lady is not floating, she's being held up by clever mechinsims! In a third world country (pick one) you are less likely to see a Mercedes drive past. You are less likely to have to catch three buses to work as a busboy in a restaurant that serves $30 Gumbo with $50 bottles of wine.

Katrina didn't create the people we are seeing, it shined a light on them and kicked them in the head on while everyone was watching.

It is contrast. It's more than Black and White, it's have and have not.