I don’t do well with large scale tragedies, or even small scale ones, so I haven’t written about Katrina yet.  So much about it infuriates me, the way life is only valued when it’s unborn, or on a feeding tube, and white.  How the poor are once again left to swim in their own shit, while the wealthier gassed up their SUVs and headed off to safety, and are now complaining about the cost to fill their tank.  How when white people take food from a store without paying for it, they "found it" but when blacks do the same thing, they’re looting.  How the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing, how the government thought the hospitals had been evacuated, but they were wrong.  How there are denials of problems at the convention center, despite their being footage of those problems coming from every major news network.  How Bush can smirk while telling us to send money to the Red Cross while people are trying to keep their babies, their NEWBORNS alive on an overpass without food or water. 

Because so much in my head is painted with a pregnancy brush, even before my positive test, one of my thoughts was wondering about the pregnant women in these areas, or the NICUs.  They had a NICU on ABC, where they were preapring to hand-crank lifesaving machines.  One man held up a 3 week old baby downtown, screaming "No formula! No water! My baby is STARVING!"  And on the same station, a live interview with Bush, where, when asked "What about the people looting that are just trying to feed their children?" he answered "We will have zero tolerance for lawbreakers."  Oh, fuck you.

The LA governor was on this morning making an important distinction when an interviewer asked about arresting looters, she said "Not looters, people intending harm.  People intending harm are impeding the resuce effort."  AB-SO-FUCKING-LUTELY.  First of all, every store and business in New Orleans is going to have insurance cover the losses. If they are a mom and pop, maybe they don’t but for sure most of their inventory is crap anyway. And food? Let them eat! Steal the food! No person would sit back and NOT TAKE FOOD AND WATER if their family was starving.  No one. Not even the most conservative, law abiding, Bush-fan would sit on their hands and wait.  As far as the other stuff, I imagine most of it is ending up under water anyway. What can you do with a new tv when there’s no power and no house to take it to?  Don’t SHOOT some black kid over a TV. Conversely, don’t shoot some poor national guardsman that’s been deputized to protect the Foot Locker at all costs, either.  BUT, how about getting that guardsman in a bass boat, to sweep around and pick up whoever he can? Or behind the wheel of a transport vehicle?

Everyone lauded Bush for his 9/11 response, but back then, there was an ‘enemy.’  With this, his approval rating is the lowest EVER.  He can’t ask Canada to be on the lookout for Category 4 bitch named Katrina. 

I wish this would bring attention to the issue of poverty, but I fear that it will become a racial issue.  This is not about black people, this is about poor people. Poor people that COULDN’T evacuate, thanks, because they have no car, no money for the bus, (and even then, the buses and trains stopped running before the mandatory evac order), no choice but to sit and wait and see.  And now, they don’t even have WATER. Not even WATER.  It is too frustrating to think about for too long, and if you have family there I am so sorry.  My thoughts are with you.