Sheila Lennon, over at Subterranean Homepage News, tells a moving story of a call she received from her old friend Bob. Bob has a chronic illness and, at age 60, he had been living in a Nursing Home in Harvey, LA, just across the river from New Orleans. When the nursing home was evacuated, Bob stayed behind because he was able to get around and felt that he would be OK. When his generator ran out of fuel, he walked a couple of miles to a pickup shelter.
When the buses arrived Saturday to evacuate them all and the throng pressed forward, Bob hung back. “I said to myself,” he told me, “If Buddha can be the last one to achieve nirvana, I can be the last one on the bus.” He ended up getting one of three seats in a helicopter to New Orleans International Airport, and eventually found himself on a plane to Texas.
In mid-flight, the passengers were told they were going to Corpus Christi.
“When we arrived at the shelter, people applauded and welcomed us like heroes,” he said. “They’re treating us like we were gold: Three hot meals — not sandwiches, home-cooked meals. The amount of clothing people have donated is incredible. Social-security tables were set up today, and the food-stamp people are coming tomorrow.”
But he doesn’t know what’s next.
Sheila points out a truth that everyone knows but no one is talking about much. The disaster relief laws are written for homeowners and small businesses. “Lawmakers hadn’t written the laws for disasters so total that people can’t go back, have no where to go back to, and own little but what they could carry away on foot.”
With Congress back in session, there’s a chance to change that. Bill Clinton knows the truth; he’s the one Sheila heard it from. Do the other Dems know? Do they care? And if they don’t, who will?
bill | 06-Sep-05 at 12:13 pm | Permalink
Richard,
Sunday afternoon, at a meeting to plan support strategies, someone told about the reaction of a little boy who was among those transferred from New Orleans’ Superdome to the Dallas convention center. As workers were handing out clothes and essentials to the families there, the little boy said “this is more t-shirts than I ever had.â€? Just how many new t-shirts do you think he was given, that would number more than he had at home? Four? Three? Or just Two?
As overwhelmingly generous as we are now, most of us will have gone on to other interests, several weeks from now, when many of these folk have their immediate needs met but must begin putting their lives back together. As you pointed out, Disaster Relief programs really have no provisions for the poor who had nothing to be rebuilt and now, as before, lack the tools to build a life from scratch.
We can learn a lot while responding to this disaster. One person, of a discussion panel on PBS’ News Hour, remarked that this disaster made visible (I think “stark reliefâ€? were her words) the invisible poor. This reminded me of the description that Paul Fussell uses in his book “Class: A guide Through the American Status System.â€? Fussell identifies 9 classes which include, on the very top, the Top out-of-site. And on the bottom, the Bottom out-of-site. The second level up is the Destitute. We are now seeing people who were previously invisible.
bill
richard | 06-Sep-05 at 1:23 pm | Permalink
Bill, I hope that you’re right about seeing the previously invisible. We also have to be wary of how we are seeing them; a lot of the media attention has been presenting them as scofflaws, thugs, or worse. Many news accounts about how people refused to leave, or stayed behind to collect their welfare checks, fall into the “blaming the victim” category. Desperate people morph pretty readily into desperados, and our law-and-order society isn’t ready to make fine distinctions.
I found your reference to Fussell’s book fascinating, especially his definition of a Top out-of-site class. That’s another one that needs to be made visible. In fact, that may be more important than removing the cloak of invisibility from the Bottom out-of-site. The phantoms at the top are true outlaws, stealing billions from the public treasury, destroying the environment, corrupting the political process, and manipulating public discourse to cynical ends. And it’s going to take something more unexpected and more powerful than a category 4 hurricane to blow their cover.
Richard