I knew from the moment I saw the devastation on television of Hurricane Katrina that once they displayed the throng of Black people, the racial mud was going to start slinging. I knew someone was going to play the race card. Hurricane Katrina is and will always be a disaster.
The saddest thing is that people keep saying why the people didn’t leave, well, it’s not as simple as that. I know because I live in the same situation; being poor without any form of transportation. I don’t remember which hurricane it was but when I used to live on 32nd street, most the people in my neighborhood did not have cars; especially the elderly who did not have anyone to look after them. So what some random person in the neighborhood did was took his van to pick those sick, elderly and without transportation and rode them to a local shelter. Not everyone has access to things like that. I bet when its all said and done, they will find most of the bodies floating around to be the sick and elderly who had no one to move them. The problem is that the areas hit were homes of the poor and those in poverty in which many lived in poor housing anyway so of course those house would snap like twigs.
I read the story of a family of four from this area that had moved to Waveland, MS … all four of them died because their car would not make it to a safe shelter so they tried to ride out the storm.
This hurricane has really broken my heart to think of all the people who suffered in something that is nothing like the US has ever seen at its own backdoor. Katrina was all about the haves and have-nots and I think this is something that should be written about. I have to write a research paper in English about a controverisal subject and this is going to be what I write on. It won’t be necessarily about the hurricane but it will be about the poor in America.
I have not contributed anything yet because I don’t have the money so I will give what I can on my payday next week. I am very skeptical about giving to the Red Cross though because I know that when you donate to them, not all of my money will go toward the Hurricane disaster. This organization has racked in $93 million as of two days ago on this disaster but people won’t see all of it. When donating to them, the money gets spread across their administration fees, all of their organizations and projects, not just the Hurricane disaster so I am really wavering about giving to them.