The Forgotten
Have you forgotten about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina?
Chocolate city - we are here to stay
dropping knowledge shot Chocolate City »we are here to stay« in New Orleans on January 31, 2006, 155 days after Katrina hit. Residents of the Lower Ninth Ward and Chalmette, two destroyed areas, tell how they have survived without promised help from the U.S. government. Chocolate City features the Common Ground Collective, an NGO in the Ninth Ward that provides relief and organizes against government efforts to take over homes, especially in Black-owned areas.
I wanted to actually PUT the video in my blog [HERE] but I seem to have failed on understanding the coding when it comes to a movie that isn’t a wmv file, which is the only snippet of code I’ve got. In spite of the fact that I have looked and looked for code for QT (will play all of the links below) it just doesn’t seem to be happening and I’m tired. So please follow the link and view the film. You will be horrified.
Hurricane season is again upon us, and New Orleans still lies in ruins. Most of the city is deserted, the hardy who stay there fit a daily battle to make a living and to continue with their lives. Many people see this and become outraged that this is happening in the States. For me, I am just outraged that this can be ignored anywhere on the planet. Yes, it is different here, and just like friends of mine who insist that 911 should never have happened on American soil, we seem to assume that we have the divine right to avoid all the natural and unnatural acts that face the rest of the world everyday. But certainly, Shrub and company see fit to just quietly ignore the terrible tragedy going on.
Do you realize that there were close to ONE MILLION people in New Orleans pre Katrina? Those people lived there all there lives, many of them in houses that had been passed down for generations. My own ex (#1) was born and raised there and until just a short time ago, his entire extended family still lived on the same block where his mother (now in her late 60s) grew up. That entire neighborhood had lived together for years and years. The same was true all over the city.
What people don’t realize, or maybe are so willing to forget is that this was worse than 911. These folks lost not only their work, and many of them their lives (last count was over 1000 in New Orleans alone so it’s approaching the scale simply by a count of the dead). But the real tragedy was that it isn’t just their lives, or work. They lost their homes, their neighborhoods, their schools, their surroundings, all of their belongings, beloved pets, family treasures. Then they lived for weeks in a hell that had no boundaries.
Help if you can:
Emergency Communities
Katrina and Rita Aid
Katrina Help Info
Habitat for Humanity Work
Another bunch of organization links
Is this any more tragic then what happens every day in other parts of the world? No. It’s not. But it serves a reminder that our government doesn’t distinguish between the poor in other countries and the poor here at home. After watching this film, can you truly sit by and do nothing else? To remain like a quiet sheep, going to work, coming home, eating your supper, and feeling like we’re cleansing the world of a horrible evil?
Or maybe instead of war we should be tending to the millions and millions of people who live tragedy every day. Who are so shell shocked they can no longer function, or if they do it is a mechanical will to live, without joy or meaning.
If you can’t at least help to make a change by exercising what the government claims to be fighting for. Our right to make choices about who leads us. I don’t like where they are leading… Do you?
Technorati Tags: Disasters, Katrina, Tragedy, Chocolate City
