[Vision2020] Foot in mouth disease (was federal response to Katrina, etc.)

[Pat Kraut]

Ah but silly me! I thought we were pouring money into a welfare system and a war on poverty that was supposed to 'fix' some of these issues. So, I guess you are saying to me that all those billions of dollars are not being spent on actually helping people!? On making the changes that we would all hope for them? I am aware of all the problems I just would like to see them actually get some real changes in their lives and stop throwing money at them. One of the things that Katrina points out is how futile some of the 'good' work has been! 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Joan Opyr 
  To: Vision2020 Moscow 
  Sent: Monday, September 12, 2005 11:07 PM
  Subject: [Vision2020] Foot in mouth disease (was federal response to Katrina, etc.)


  Pat Kraut writes:


    I too have wondered if any of the squawkers are aware of the massive
    problem. It wasn't perfect but it wasn't as bad as some would like us to
    believe. The black leadership is only accusing Bush of racism because they
    have failed their people so badly.Why were all those people, of any color,
    some of the poorest in the city, living so close to the problem? The whole
    area is run by democrats so the black leadership is desperately trying to
    blame anyone but them.


  Woman, if you keep your foot in your mouth much longer, you're going to have to have your tongue re-soled. Why were poor black people living so close to the problem? I don't know . . . because they were poor? Because they were black? Because they were poor and black? I understand that you are from Idaho, one of the whitest states in America, and, what's more, that you are from rural Northern Idaho. I know this, and I make allowances for your lack of first-hand knowledge about urban demographics, but surely -- surely -- even you must know that the poor always live on the wrong side of the tracks, or, in this case, the wrong side of the levees. The poor never occupy the high ground ANYWHERE. And who are the poor? In New Orleans, as in the rest of the South, the poor are predominantly black. Further, New Orleans, like most Southern cities, is still segregated. The South is no longer legally segregated, but it is an unfortunate political and economic reality that black people and white people do not live in the same neighborhoods. There are a few token African-Americans in a few upscale white neighborhoods, but I can assure you, there's a tipping point. When a neighborhood gets "too black," house prices drop and white flight begins. 

  It's also the case that rich black people and poor black people don't live in the same neighborhoods, anymore than rich white people and poor white people do. Poor people of all colors live in the worst locations and in the greatest danger, always. Think back to when Paradise Creek here in Moscow flooded some years ago. Whose living rooms were drowned, the folks up in the $300,000 houses in Fort Russell and Indian Hills, or those in the more modest homes down on Blaine and Maybelle?

  As for your criticizing the black leadership of New Orleans and determining that "those people" have failed "their people" and thus are just hunting around now for scapegoats, do you really want to go there, Pat? I might argue (with some justification) that you yourself are desperately seeking some black Democrats to blame so that you can protect your white Republican idol, George Bush. A whole hell of a lot went wrong in New Orleans, things that didn't go wrong in North Carolina and South Carolina when hurricanes Hugo and Andrew hit. FEMA was run back then by a highly competent Clinton appointee; Hugo and Andrew came far inland and hit the economically prosperous, not just the coastal or river-dwelling poor; white people suffered in those hurricanes, not just poor black people -- white people with a sense of entitlement and the privileged expectation that their needs would be met. If you don't think that any of that might have accounted for the faster, more satisfactory federal response, then you don't live in the same world I do.

  I suggested yesterday that Donovan board a bus for Kansas. Might I offer you a trip to Biloxi? No, wait -- no need to go quite that far. Why don't I just drop you off on Sprague Avenue in Spokane? I'll come back and pick you up -- just as soon as I've sold enough plasma to pay for the gas. 

  Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
  www.auntie-establishment.com



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