doit, doit now!

It’s been four days since the levee broke and New Orleans was destroyed. That’s four days of 90-degree weather, no food, no water, murder, looting, disease and death, and meanwhile Congress has been talking about ending their recess a few days early (hey, the life of a Congressman is rough, they need vacations, too). Four Senators, two Democrats and two Republicans, managed to pass a bill for $10 billion aid for FEMA and finally, an hour or two ago, some House membbers finally sauntered in to the Capitol and passed their version. Bush will finally get around to signing it tonight.

So much for a “Culture of Life.” It’s convenient to say that to get the support of the Religious Rong, but when it comes time to save the living it’s apparently only for clusters of cells in a womb. If there is one good thing that could come out of this it might be that the pendulum will swing away from lies, fear, deceit, and death, and back towards human rights, progress, truth, and life.

Meanwhile National Guard troops have finally started bringing in supplies to the people of New Orleans. There are estimates that 50,000 people are stranded on rooftops alone, which is to say nothing of those at the Convention Center and elsewhere.

The conditions there are just heartwrenching.

This account of what the conditions are like on the ground in New Orleans is simply staggering. Armed soldiers herding people like cattle, pointing guns at them when they try to approach, others dropping supplies from such a height that they break when they land… What is going on down there? This is unbelievable.

May God have mercy on the people of the South. And may she have mercy on the souls of our “leaders.”

I keep finding myself near tears when watching the news reports of these poor people in New Orleans. This is really unthinkable. The tragedy keeps reminding me of living as close as I did to the Twin Towers (below Houston Street!) when they fell and how overwhelming and confusing and heartbreaking it was. My heart really goes out to these people — I can’t imagine what it might be like to actually be down there right now.

It also reminds me that California, much like New Orleans, quite literally exists because of the levees controlling the Sacramento River Delta. If a quake on the Hayward fault was to rupture those levees it would essentially poison the state’s water supply with saltwater and could quite possibly lead to the evacuation of the entire state south of Bay Area, which is to say nothing of the devastation that would occur in the Bay Area itself. (A quake on the San Andreas would work too, but the quake would have to be much larger in order to affect the Delta). Don’t believe me? It happened last year in June to only one levee, causing 270 people to be evacuated and state water officials to go crazy trying to prevent water contamination. It also happened just by itself with no natural disasters to prod it. An earthquake with enough force would take out far more than one levee and spill into the Central Valley Project, which would ruin farmland and leave LA and San Diego with only the relative trickle of water that they get from the Colorado River. Marc Reisner’s A Dangerous Place talks about this risk in great detail if you want more info.

Some people might be complaining about people living in areas that are disaster prone and spewing bullshit about our tax dollars being used to subsidize people who “chose to live in the area.” First off, I would much rather have my tax dollars subsidizing people in the United States in genuine need than in some foreign war that we were lied to about and that has only made us as a country less safe and killed tens of thousands of innocent people in the process. Second off, there is no place in the US that is immune to natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and other ilk. Not. One. Place. This sort of tragedy is precisely why I think we have a federal government and exactly where I think tax dollars should be going. These people are in desperate need of help.

I am not only happy to have my tax dollars going to that assistance rather than the evil war our disgusting leaders have us in, I am happy to give even more than my tax dollars voluntarily. I even looked into volunteering down on the Gulf but most agencies are requiring a minimum of a week stay and my clients would quite literally kill me if I did that at the moment. In the mean time, donating is the best thing for anyone to do. The Red Cross is the most logical place, and is where I donated. You can donate anything now, even $5, on your credit card or debit card. Don’t think about it. Just click that link and do it. You can afford something. There will come a time when you need other people to do the same, either for you or for someone you love.

Doit. Doit now.