Recipe for a Third World Nation
There is so much to be said about the aftermath of Katrina; fortunately a lot of other people have been saying it while I have been overwhelmed.
This hurricane and its aftermath has reduced a major city in the richest nation in the world to the conditions of a Third World nation: people are hungry, desperate, living in streets and cemeteries and public buildings, begging and stealing food to survive, facing violence from the uncontrolled worst element, health care reduced to the bare minimums that can be provided without electricity or sanitation. Now, as the survivors are finally being removed to somewhat better conditions (they still have no homes or belongings, but there's electricity and the chance of a meal for those who made it to Houston and elsewhere), there is still the problem of how you find shelter and work and other resources for a city-sized displaced population, a population that was, not incidentally, poorer overall (especially in the rural communities in Mississippi, which haven't gotten nearly the attention that the mayhem in New Orleans commanded) than much of the rest of this nation.
So how do you make a Third World society? Start with a natural disaster whose consequences were so much more severe than they might have been, thanks to denied requests for funding to improve the levees. How about an evacuation that didn't provide for the people who didn't have their own transportation, creating a de facto segregation by economic class. (Noticed that most of the people in the video of New Orleans are black, have you? Yes, race and class are inextricably intertwined in our nation, Condi Rice's expensive shoes notwithstanding.) Okay, so you've removed most of the wealthy and middle-class people; that's a good start on re-creating the Third World. Oh, and housing and the means to survive for the remaining poor people--that's gone, too. Okay, poor people: check. Lack of housing: check. Let's not bring in any civil authority to organize disaster relief until people have experienced severe privation, too, and then when the authorities show up, order them to shoot people who are taking things, thereby making them a source of fear rather than help. Yep, that sounds like a Third World nation. Especially when the hungry and desperate people at the convention center broke into the kitchen, where there was food, and were chased away by armed Guardsmen. If you heard about starving people trying to get to unused food, and the military driving them out, yeah, you'd think it was Darfur or somewhere. Voila. We have the Third World, right here at home.
Now maybe we'll solve these problems here, and if we're really lucky, learn enough from the experience to do the same in the other places in the world where these kind of conditions exist.
A girl can dream, right?
This hurricane and its aftermath has reduced a major city in the richest nation in the world to the conditions of a Third World nation: people are hungry, desperate, living in streets and cemeteries and public buildings, begging and stealing food to survive, facing violence from the uncontrolled worst element, health care reduced to the bare minimums that can be provided without electricity or sanitation. Now, as the survivors are finally being removed to somewhat better conditions (they still have no homes or belongings, but there's electricity and the chance of a meal for those who made it to Houston and elsewhere), there is still the problem of how you find shelter and work and other resources for a city-sized displaced population, a population that was, not incidentally, poorer overall (especially in the rural communities in Mississippi, which haven't gotten nearly the attention that the mayhem in New Orleans commanded) than much of the rest of this nation.
So how do you make a Third World society? Start with a natural disaster whose consequences were so much more severe than they might have been, thanks to denied requests for funding to improve the levees. How about an evacuation that didn't provide for the people who didn't have their own transportation, creating a de facto segregation by economic class. (Noticed that most of the people in the video of New Orleans are black, have you? Yes, race and class are inextricably intertwined in our nation, Condi Rice's expensive shoes notwithstanding.) Okay, so you've removed most of the wealthy and middle-class people; that's a good start on re-creating the Third World. Oh, and housing and the means to survive for the remaining poor people--that's gone, too. Okay, poor people: check. Lack of housing: check. Let's not bring in any civil authority to organize disaster relief until people have experienced severe privation, too, and then when the authorities show up, order them to shoot people who are taking things, thereby making them a source of fear rather than help. Yep, that sounds like a Third World nation. Especially when the hungry and desperate people at the convention center broke into the kitchen, where there was food, and were chased away by armed Guardsmen. If you heard about starving people trying to get to unused food, and the military driving them out, yeah, you'd think it was Darfur or somewhere. Voila. We have the Third World, right here at home.
Now maybe we'll solve these problems here, and if we're really lucky, learn enough from the experience to do the same in the other places in the world where these kind of conditions exist.
A girl can dream, right?
posted by Maines at 8:26 PM
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