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This comment on Sally McKay's page I want to pass along as a reality check to the Republican spin of "New Orleans residents didn't heed warnings and/or they deserve their fate." (The current variation on the sliming of Cindy Sheehan by a right desperate to shore up the fading image of their klutzy poster boy.)
my cousin (who's also an artist who was teaching at loyala university before the hurricane) lives(-s +ed) in new orleans. she evacuated to my uncles house in florida just before the hurricane hit. she has since gone back to the bayou, with a generator and other supplies she bought in texas, and headed to her partners parents house which apparently is still standing about an hour outside new orleans. she was telling my mom that this is the third time in a span of a few months they have been told to evacuate. so thinking that nothing too horrible was going to happen, because she was getting so used to the routine, she didn't pack much stuff and thought of it as a visit to my uncles before the new school year. which i think is an important thing that people are leaving out when they're blaming people for not heeding the warnings about getting out. the desire to heed warnings fades with repetition, and repeated costs of fleeing. she was indeed lucky/privledged, because she had the means to leave, and a place to go. she lost only her house and job. (big onlys but given the horrible stories, it's not that much) when i first started hearing about looting, i thought, that's not looting, that's stock that could be put to good use in this emergency. i read tons of knee jerk posts on craigslist new orleans, where people were getting angry at "looters" and saying crap like "i'll help when they stop looting!!" i'm thinking, what is so hard to comprehend? their immediate world is ending, they have nothing. and some media accounts are acting all righteous like it's a greedy capitalism thing. maybe some of it is but really, who cares. the city's decimated, so's the stock. i mean, so what if people are taking things to make their situation more endurable, to survive, to help people. it's such a dumb thing to focus on. i mean, bush, whatever - like we needed more evidence for his idiocy but he keeps providing it. blah.
--myfanwy