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I slept in until 3:30 on Sunday. Imagine that! it’s the latest I’ve ever slept, except for the time I got back from germany in highschool and slept for almost 24 hours. I was sleepy.

I had a great weekend, but I’m sad to report that the hold’em pokers found me again. so sad. I get little alerts in my email, you see, saying there’s a comment that needs approved (shout out pittsburgh!). And then it turns out that it’s not one of my incredibly fun, with-it, and rock’n’roll friends, nor is it someone from the internets who is full pithy commentary, but is, in fact, an internet spammer. OOOH. I hate the spammers. If they were a food they’d be like soured milk: you are happy that you have milk, and maybe its a pleasent surprise to find it in your fridge, but then you find it all curdly and sour in your mouth and are not only grossed out, but hugely disappointed.

The question of why people think the government should help them out pre, post, and during katrina has come up in a few different places. One of my very good internet friends posted the following at a crafty chat board:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

“…this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Gettysburg Address, respectively. Emphasis is, of course, mine.

she is so right.

my stepmom and I have been bouncing back and forth ideas about the government and its role in this horrible mess. I am sure I’ve been less than eloquent about things, but as usual, our founding fathers and good old Abe Lincoln say it very beautifully. Regardless of how much we pay the Government to do these things, they ought to do them because that is why WE created it.

Bush: ‘I take responsibility’ for U.S. failures

Tuesday, September 13, 2005; Posted: 12:43 p.m. EDT (16:43 GMT)

“Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government and to the extent the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, I take responsibility,” Bush said during a joint news conference with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

from cnn.com.

now, let’s not all be too gracious about this, ok? Because to the extent that people died in the gulf coast region, I think TALKING about responsibility and TAKING responsibility are two very different birds.

props to joy for pointing me to this survivor-on-the-street article describing how hard people tried to leave, and how they were prevented with force and guns and pure hostility and meanness from doing so.

and also, another reason why people didn’t leave: being poor. Too right.

I was on the train next to the two angriest (potentially drunkest) people ever, who were absolutely lighting into each other. The ‘gentleman’ had a fine grasp of a number of blame the victim statements, while the ‘lady’ was absolutely upset at white people and christians. She was, I think, of Southeast Asian or Indian decent. It was a mess.

I’m getting more and more gloomy about the Katrina situation. First of off, just becasue “blame game” rhymes doesn’t make it a valid talking point, GWB and Fox News. Secondly, at what point do we stop backpedaling and actually start with ACCOUNTABILITY? the points I’ve seen raised recently are all valid, and most particularly this one: if terrorists or even hurricaine ophelia were to attack us tomorrow, would we be prepared? I really don’t think so. Maybe it comes of being a civil engineer, and BIG BROTHER THIS IS NOT A WARNING SIGN, but I see opportunities for large scale acts of violence against the United States in a lot of places. I do NOT want them to happen, and I don’t think they will, but there are so many ways to cripple a large metropolis. And after NOLA was crippled, the United States was unable to help her citizens. At this point I’m thinking if there were a terrorist attack at the beginning of August, before all of this, there would have been a terrible response and thousands dead.

But then, that brings up a term I learned today: structural violence.

Structural violence, a term which was first used in the 1970s and which has commonly been ascribed to Johan Galtung, denotes a form of violence which corresponds with the systematic ways in which a given social structure or social institution prevents individuals from achieving their full potential. Institutionalized elitism, ethnocentricism, classism, racism, sexism, nationalism, patriotism, stateism and ageism are just some examples of this.

I’ve been using the term “white priviledge” a lot to foster conversation and dialogue about all the hidden racism that drives our society today. But structural violence describes exactly what happend in NOLA, the gulf coast, and why they didn’t receive any help. Exactly.

A friend of mine said today: at what point do we stop shaking our heads and saying “oh, it’s so sad” while basically enforcing the status quo, and start saying “that didn’t have to happen. how can we keep this from happening again?” As long as people are terrified of accountability, and as long as the people in power are the ones who implement social violence with a heavy hand, well, I don’t know if we’ll be able to. But we need to start demanding answers, and to start recognizing the flaws in our culture, and to stop blaming the victim.

A friend of mine got out of NOLA after surviving in the Bywater neighborhood until September 3rd. It broke my heart when she and another friend in CA had this exchange (my emphasis):

Friend in CA: i just pray that all of the survivors know that there are people throughout the country who care, even if the government didn’t.

Friend from NOLA: I know. I didn’t know how much everyone cared until I got out of that place. But now I do. And I am more thankful than I will ever be able to express.

I am playing catchup!

I cannot believe I have been so slow with the CSA posting! and also, my travails with the PE exam! and my poor little car!

here goes…

OK, after several days, a political response to the NOLA situation. It’s strongly worded, but for all I know only my mom is reading this blog so maybe there won’t be any response.

I was OK with the Bush Administration hating women. Sure, that’s fine. It’s not GOOD, by any means, but I understand how it can happen and at least they’re pretty upfront about how unimportant we are and how our needs should be subsumed not only for by children, but also the country as a whole. see also: women in Iraq, women in Afghanistan, women in africa. I don’t even want to get to the whole “yes, that’s YOUR morality I’m keeping safe between my legs, thank you very much” issue.

But the massive failure of the ‘relief’ ‘effort’ in NOLA has really made me face up to the fact that the Bush Administration hates poor people, and also, black people. How else can you excuse the chronology? The Louisiana Gov. requested federal help on August 28, BEFORE the levees broke. I can’t believe he pulled a “my pet goat” again allowed himself an extra night on vacation, and only today is touring the area. I can’t believe that Condi, you know, our secretary of state, spent yesterday in Manhattan buying thousands of dollars in shoes. Girl’s from MISSISSIPPI! I can’t believe it took until YESTERDAY, you know THURSDAY, for congress to reassemble in an emergency session. While the scale of the storm is massively larger than anything ever seen before, I really truly honestly believe that the federal government has been exceptionally slow to react to a very serious and important problem.

I know that NOLA will be ok eventually. But the fact that 1/3 of NOLAs residents are below the poverty level? the fact that tens of thousands of people were UNABLE to leave the city? the fact that they don’t have fresh food or water, that the local law enforcement system, which is, you know, under the same stresses as the rest of the city, and in some precints is entirely underwater was forced to cope by itself for so long before getting any serious backup? The fact that 35% of the LA National Guard is serving in Iraq currently, and nearly everyone that is helping in NOLA has been to Iraq and has returned? Seriously, the tragic situation in NOLA exemplifies nearly everything that I see as wrong with the Bush Administration. It’s insane, horrifying, and I hope it opens a dialogue. It is unacceptable that in America ANY PERSON should have to go through this kind of hell. Unacceptable.