Driste

Rise Up

I was talking to The Good yesterday about ideals and beliefs. She is extremely passionate in her political views, but realized this weekend that she never takes any action beyond discussion and anger. I would put myself in that category as well. It’s so easy to let ourselves believe that we’re just little people in this great big world, and how much difference can our personal actions make?

My favorite quote was spoken by Gandhi. “Be the change you want to see in the world.” But is that enough?

Something to ponder.

The other night we watched OutFoxed, a documentary about Fox News and Rupert Murdoch. Scary stuff. Very scary stuff. However, should be inspiring to those folks who think, "how much difference can one person make?" Rupert Murdoch is just one person. His skewed, conservative "journalistic" media holdings reach billions of people all over the globe. And his influences with the Fox News network basically gave Bush the 2000 election, which in turn changed the course of American history forever. Not exactly what I would consider to be a good change in any sense of the word, but others would disagree with me.....

vacation

If everyone in America gave up just one day  to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina (not the same day because that would just be chaotic)..... well, just think about what could be achieved in a small amount of time.

I've been thinking a lot about what I can do. Monetarily, I don't have much to give, but I gave what I could to a friend whose company was matching employee donations then doubling the match. For every $100 an employee would give, the company would give $200. I don't have any more vacation time for the year and can't afford to take much time off, but maybe come January 1st I could volunteer to help build some houses for Habitat for Humanity. I'm pretty handy with a hammer and nail. I can hear Tay sniggering at the thought somewhere out there.

And PEOPLE! The Red Cross has received over 80% of all donations. Never before has one disaster relief charity received such a large percentage of donations. Wonderful, but The Red Cross can only do so much. Diversify your donations! Give to Noah's Wish to help the thousands of abandoned pets, Habitat for Humanity for rebuilding efforts, Direct Relief for medical aid. There are other worthy charities to investigate as well.

Outrage

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.  From anger to outrage.

From CNN, Sept. 1st:

FEMA chief: Victims bear some responsibility
Brown pleased with effort: 'Things are going relatively well'

(CNN) -- The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday those New Orleans residents who chose not to heed warnings to evacuate before Hurricane Katrina bear some responsibility for their fates.

Michael Brown also agreed with other public officials that the death toll in the city could reach into the thousands.

"Unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings," Brown told CNN.

"I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans," he said.

"And to find people still there is just heart-wrenching to me because, you know, the mayor did everything he could to get them out of there.

"So, we've got to figure out some way to convince people that whenever warnings go out it's for their own good," Brown said. "Now, I don't want to second guess why they did that. My job now is to get relief to them."

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin have both predicted the death toll could be in the thousands.

Nagin issued a "desperate SOS" Thursday as violence disrupted efforts to rescue people still trapped in the flooded city and evacuate thousands of displaced residents living amid corpses and human waste. (Full story)

Residents expressed growing frustration with the disorder evident on the streets, raising questions about the coordination and timeliness of relief efforts.

Sniper fire prevented Charity Hospital from evacuating its patients Thursday. The hospital has no electricity or water, food consists of a few cans of vegetables, and the patients had to be moved to upper floors because of looters.

Brown was upbeat in his assessment of the relief effort so far, ticking off a list of accomplishments: more than 30,000 National Guard troops will be in the city within three days, the hospitals are being evacuated and search and rescue missions are continuing.

"Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans -- virtually a city that has been destroyed -- that things are going relatively well," Brown said.

Nevertheless, he said he could "empathize with those in miserable conditions."

Asked later on CNN how he could blame the victims, many of whom could not flee the storm because they had no transportation or were too frail to evacuate on their own, Brown said he was not blaming anyone.

"Now is not the time to be blaming," Brown said. "Now is the time to recognize that whether they chose to evacuate or chose not to evacuate, we have to help them."

Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, whose father was a longtime New Orleans mayor, said there was "plenty of blame to go around," citing underinvestement by federal authorities over many years "despite pleas and warnings by officials."

Earlier on CNN, Brown was asked why authorities had not prepared for just such a catastrophe -- given that the levees were designed to withstand only a Category 3 hurricane and Katrina was stronger than that.

"Government officials and engineers will debate that and figure that out," he replied. "Right now, I'm trying to focus on saving lives. I think we should have that debate, but at an appropriate time."

Brown said Katrina was unlike other hurricanes in which the magnitude of the disaster typically subsides after the initial blow. That was not the case Monday, when the Category 4 storm blew ashore.

"What we had in New Orleans is a growing disaster: The hurricane hit, that was one disaster; then the levees broke, that was another disaster; then the floods came; that became a third disaster."

Brown said he had to be careful about getting rescue teams to the site earlier.

"Otherwise, we would have faced an even higher death toll," he said.