<p>This is just a thread for anything about Katrina, the relief (or lack of thereof..), the problems in rebuliding, the fact that all the students will have to be relocated to different states, the infectous water, the destroyed homes, families lives...</p>
<p>My heart goes out to them all and all those affected by the disaster.</p>
<p>I could go on...but what do you all think?</p>
<p>My heart goes out to anybody who was affected by Katrina... It's such horror watching all those people on tv looking for things left from their house and sleeping in shelters etc.. My family is trying to help with relief efforts by opening up houses in my community over christmas, if it will work, to reunite family members who have lost everything. I'm hoping it will work, but I'm not sure if my dad's going to have the time to do it. </p>
<p>I think that relief efforts should have started sooner, instead relief happened like 3,4 days after the hurricane hit. I think that the military should have been there right after the hurricane hit (I know it may be impossible, but it could have happened). I just feels o and for everyone who doesn't have a home anymore. Good luck to anyone affected by Katrina, and God bless you all.</p>
<p>"or lack of thereof."</p>
<p>Their is so much aid the logistics of it is almost unmanagable.</p>
<p>I can't even begin to imagine what the people affected by Hurricane Katrina are going through; living in the prairies my entire life, we deal with droughts more than floods.</p>
<p>One thing I was surprised to hear, was that a Vancouver (BC) Rescue Squad arrived in St. Bernard Parish (40km east of New Orleans) 5 days before the American military arrived. I suppose it's because they didn't have to deal with the legal issues that the military did. Still, I found it surprising.</p>
<p>(FYI: Llama = Scotch = Verripicone (something like that) )</p>
<p>I heard about the vancouvers coming faster too.. good on you!
My heart goes out to the families too.. I don't like watching it on the news because they always show parents and children looking for eachother, crying and stuff :( just makes me sad</p>
<p>Don't care, screw FEMA.</p>
<p>The third problem exacerbating poverty is what some call racism. Others argue the word is too inflammatory for a more subtle but no less debilitating effect.</p>
<p>Racism was clearly present in the aftermath of Katrina. Readers of Yahoo News noticed it when a pair of waterlogged whites were described in a caption as "carrying" food while another picture (from a different wire service) of blacks holding food described them as "looters." White suburban police closed at least one bridge to keep a group of blacks from fleeing to white areas. Over the course of two days, a white river-taxi operator from hard-hit St. Bernard Parish rescued scores of people from flooded areas and ferried them to safety. All were white. "A n--ger is a n--ger is a n--ger," he told a NEWSWEEK reporter. Then he said it again.</p>
<p>Was the slowness of Washington's rescue efforts also a racial thing? In 2004, Bush moved huge resources into Florida immediately following hurricanes there. No one was stranded. The salient difference was not race but politics. Those hurricanes came just before an election.</p>
<p>Obama, the only African-American in the U.S. Senate, says "the ineptitude was colorblind." But he argues that whilecontrary to rapper Kanye West's attack on Bushthere was no "active malice," the federal response to Katrina represented "a continuation of passive indifference" on the part of the government. It reflected an unthinking assumption that every American "has the capacity to load up their family in an SUV, fill it up with $100 worth of gasoline, stick some bottled water in the trunk and use a credit card to check into a hotel on safe ground." When they did focus on race in the aftermath, many Louisianans let their fears take over. Lines at gun stores in Baton Rouge, La., snaked out the door. Obama stops short of calling this a sign of racism. For some, he says, it's a product of "sober concern" after the violence in the city; for others, it's closer to "racial stereotyping."</p>
<p>Harvard's Loury argued in a 2002 book, "The Anatomy of Racial Inequality," that it's this stereotyping and "racial stigma," more than overt racism, that helps hold blacks in poverty. Loury explains a destructive cycle of "self-reinforcing stereotypes" at school and work. A white employer, for instance, may make a judgment based on prior experience that the young black men he hires are likely to be absent or late for work. So he supervises them more closely. Resenting the scrutiny, the African-Americans figure that they're being disrespected for no good reason, so they might as well act out, which in turn reinforces their boss's stereotype. Everybody goes away angry.</p>
<p>Such problems are often less about race than class, which has become a huge factor within the black community, too. It's hard for studious young African-Americans to brave the taunts that they're "acting white." The only answer to that is a redoubled effort within the black community to respect academic achievement and a commitment by white institutions to use affirmative action not just for middle-class minorities but for the poor it was originally designed to help.</p>
<p>Beyond the thousands of individual efforts necessary to save New Orleans and ease poverty lie some big political choices. Until Katrina intervened, the top priority for the GOP when Congress reconvened was permanent repeal of the estate tax, which applies to far less than 1 percent of taxpayers. (IRS figures show that only 1,607 wealthy people in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi even pay the tax, out of more than 4 million taxpayersone twenty-fifth of 1 percent.) Repeal would cost the government $24 billion a year. Meanwhile, House GOP leaders are set to slash food stamps by billions in order to protect subsidies to wealthy farmers. But Katrina could change the climate. The aftermath was not a good omen for the Grover Norquists of the world, who want to slash taxes more and shrink government to the size where it can be "strangled in the bathtub."</p>
<p>What kind of president does George W. Bush want to be? He can limit his legacy to Iraq, the war on terror and tax cuts for the richor, if he seizes the moment, he could undertake a midcourse correction that might materially change the lives of millions. Katrina gives Bush an only-Nixon-could-go-to-China opportunity, if he wants it.</p>
<p>Margaret Schuber, who evacuated to Atlanta, was a middle-school principal in Jefferson Parish before retiring recently. "I have lived in the city all my life and I didn't realize there were so many people suffering socioeconomically. If you believe in the idea of community, then we all bear responsibility." Schuber is concerned that so many energetic young people aren't planning to return. She's going back to volunteer in the schools. "We all need to do what we can to turn things around," she says.</p>
<p>America was built and saved by the Margaret Schubers of the world. Now we need them again, not just in the midst of an emergency but for the hard work of redemption.</p>
<p>what was the date of the issue of this article by Newsweek and who was it by?</p>
<p>this doesn't make any sense: "I know it may be impossible, but it could have happened"</p>
<p>You have to understand that these things take time. You cannot snap your fingers and have Navy ships teleported across the world / brought from Naval bases. You cannot snap your fingers and have unlimited helicopters flying rescue missions 24 hours a day. You cannot drive trucks of supplies where there are no longer roads. And you cannot preposition food and supplies because they all would have been destroyed.</p>
<p>Vancouver should probably be worrying about this right now: <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050914.wxtremor14/BNStory/National%5B/url%5D">http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050914.wxtremor14/BNStory/National</a></p>
<p>Think about the disaster in Holland, when the North See flooded a quarter of the country. People behaved with discipline, order and a sense of community, and this happened when Holland was 99% white.</p>
<p>Now what happen with New Orleans? Yes, Big Bad Bush didn't send any help because well, wasn't the national guard overseas when it should of been here? But besides that, when you have 3rd generation welfare minorities running around, **** happens.</p>
<p>Please help Dillard and Xavier<br>
Please contribute generously to the United Negro College Fund to save Xavier and Dillard Universities. My school is initiating a major fund raising effort to help Dillard and also we have taken in several students. Please give what you can and encourage your friends and colleagues to do something really positive.</p>
<p>check the thread on parents cafe, there are several address and links to contribute to these colleges. Send a check for as much as you can or see if your college will match what funds you raise, or see if you can organize some relief dor dillard and Xavier. Tulane is not the only college in New Orleans.</p>