sick

Posted September 2nd, 2005 by Michelle

It’s not often that I feel like I come from a place of authority, on anything, really- most of the time I have a little bit of information that I try to make sense in the larger picture. But this time it’s different.

I was down in the pit of World Trade Center site, this time a few days after the event and without any of the friends and family who had accompanied me on the first trip down. I was down there with the Salvation Army, but my staging ground was running smoothly so I took off to find out where I could help. I ran back and forth to six or seven different staging grounds, other Salvation Army folks, Red Cross, police, and everyone needed something from other groups- simple things like clothes, and, I remember, strangely, milk. But each time I went back to each group, they needed something else, or I’d been told the wrong thing, and I was in this ugly merry-go-round of trying to create solutions when the problems themselves were unknown. It was bad, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the first time I was down there and one fire crew was shoveling debris off a huge pile without knowing that they were raining their debris down on another fire crew that was shoveling a pile below. Those first few days, it seemed no one was in charge, but everyone just threw their backs into the work and figured they’d at least *do something*.

I guess my question is: what the fork else has to happen in this country for us to actually be *prepared*? I understand that we just had no system in place, neither in our EMS services nor in our minds, to deal with 9/11 when it happened. But we KNEW Katrina was coming. We KNEW that New Orleans is below sea level. We KNEW how many counties could be horribly affected. Why, in all that is holy, did we wait? Why didn’t GW call back at least a handful of our absent National Guard? They could have made it home in time. But why did we wait? Why wasn’t every single helicopter and every single bus in this country moved to safe states nearby the day before, so the day after the storm they would be ready and waiting? Could it truly, truly be that it’s because it’s a bunch of terribly poor black people? Could that really be? Could our government really not only not care about them, but also have the audacity to basically admit their racism and hatred and fear? And if not, WHY DID WE WAIT?

Is this going to be it? Is this country now going to realize that we have someone totally incompetent in charge? Or is it going to roll along, as it has for the past five years, and the blame will ONCE AGAIN be assigned elsewhere? And what more has to happen for us to learn that bad shit happens here on the home front, that people are suffering right here in this country? And what kind of message are we sending to the world that we don’t have enough National Guard here at home to deal with a natural catastrophe, let alone more attacks?

I cannot sit idly by. Those of you who protested my going to the Peace Corps because it was so far away I hope will support me doing something here at home.