California burning... we've probly all watched that news; 300,000 people evacuated in the nick of time to a super dome, homes destroyed, insurance companies talking their talk; and that's about the end of the resemblance to Katrina & the Gulf Coast. The relieved, grateful, rescued people aren't characterized as "refugees". They were, for the most part, rescued in the nick of time. There are medical personnel roving around the superdome, distributing fresh water and particle masks. Many of them had private fire insurance- and their hired firefighters were on the scene before the public safety guys. They talk about just being patient while the insurers rebuild. I saw two people of color in the displaced crowd footage. As my Father said when I returned from a trip to Idaho with the news that I'd seen only two black people the whole time I'd been there, "Wow, you were lucky! there're only two black people living there!"
So much for the obvious dis-parrallels. We see that a co-ordinated rescue effort is really possible when we set our minds to it.
And so much for what we think we personally can or cannot do in the direct recovery efforts in SoCal & Gulf Coast- we can certainly work on our own reflexive actions, attitudes that made the hell of Katrina recovery possible in the first place. For one thing, we know that "pulling the race card" is deeply offensive to many white liberals- "how dare you call me predjudiced!", while our own attitudes towards poverty and class remain almost invisible to many of us. How often do we actually look at a "homeless" person's face? ,
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