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Katrina Proves War (on poverty) is a Quagmire
DC Examiner .pdf file. Page forward to page 6. The Author, one Leslie Milk, titled her opus "Where to Place the Shame"Like many Washingtonians, I spent a lot of time last week sitting in my air-conditioned house watching people in New Orleans suffering and dying in the aftermath of a hurricane and a flood. So you just seethed, Leslie? And like lots of Washingtonians, I was horrified by what I saw. Federal officials absolved themselves by blaming everything on Mother Nature. But only the Federal officials, Leslie? You didn't hear about the Mayor, or the Governor? When all else fails, blame your mother! cute. Some of them blamed the victims â why hadnât they left when ordered to evacuate? Some chose not to go. They chose poorly. Never mind that most of those left in the city were either too sick or too poor to go anywhere. Some were supposed to be rescued by the city where they lived, and protected by the State where they lived. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff even blamed the media. The nerve! In an interview on public radio, Chertoff said that rumormongers were spreading lies about crowds of desperate people at the convention center. Never mind that CNN and Fox were at the convention center showing the very scene Chertoff denied. Killings, rapings, throat-slashings, eating the dead? Iâll bet a Chertoff briefer was chewed out about that! Last week, our government was exposed as the callous, class-conscious operation it really is. Ahhh, now we come to the real 'meat' of the editorial! While Congress handed out tax breaks to the rich, they let the walls come crumbling down in cities like New Orleans. I sure hope the Jack Welches and the Ken Lays are donating their tax refunds to disaster relief! When did you contribute, Ms. Milk? Let them think of it as enlightened self-interest. As part of the war on terror, President Bush has hired his buddy Karen Hughes to run a multimillion-dollar campaign to improve the U.S. image abroad. This is a bad thing?Thatâs going to be tough now that the world watched America abandon thousands of its own starving and suffering people of color. Did you turn your TV off last week, or just shut down your brain? You must have missed the rescues, the six-year old kid who led five other younger kids to safety, the other towns where chaos did not reign, selfless people helping others, not just whining about poverty. But enough about our loathsome leaders. Who did you vote for again? Maybe if you appointed our leaders, you wouldn't find them so "loathsome". What about us? Why did it take a cataclysmic event for us to see the other America? How could we be so blind to the grinding poverty in our own country? Because the War on Poverty is a quagmire, Leslie! 40 years and six presidents, three of them Democrats. Closer to home, why are we so blind to poor people in Washington? Because we donât see them. What do you want to do, Ms. Milk? Got an idea that hasn't been tried for 40 years? Years ago, we had an exchange student from Finland living with us for a year. So will you take in a poor person from New Orleans? This was back when Washington had gained international notoriety as the âMurder Capitalâ of the country. Since replaced by New Orleans, in that place of shame, no doubt due to the loathsome Federal officials. âDonât worry,â we told her parents in Finland. âThatâs not happening where we live.â We explained the geography of the city, the great divides of Rock Creek Park and the Anacostia River. No drive-by shootings and young men killing each other in our neighborhood. That was the other Washington. And you are ashamed of that, Ms. Milk? Moving to the other side of the River to DO something about it? We have invented a whole vocabulary to shield ourselves from poor people. They are âdisadvantagedâ or âinner city.â Who makes up the PC words, Leslie? We certainly donât talk about race â even though in Washington, as in New Orleans, the face of poverty is most often black. We pride ourselves on being colorblind when, in fact, we are just plain blind. If the federal government doesnât admit its mistakes and commit itself to serving the poor as well as the rich, shame on it. See above. 40 years, etc. If we donât admit our own callous disregard for the poor people around here and do more to help them, shame on us. E-mail Leslie Milk at lmilk@washingtonian.com. I will! Posted by: Bobby 2005-09-07 |
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