katrina scapegoating in houston -- good report today

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-5/113972803522690.xml


a good report by trymaine lee at nola.com/new orleans times-picayune called "haven and hell" abt new orleans evacuees being falsely accused for crime problem in houston:

The 15-year-old girl told police the men who raped her had New Orleans accents. No mistaking it. She said she recognized it the moment one of them jammed a gun in her face that day in mid-January and barked an order: Get in the van. She told police they drove her to a secluded area in southeast Houston and raped her until the sun came up.
Her story seemed to burst like a napalm bomb over a city already seething with months of tension since more than 150,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees arrived.

Radio and television programs were jammed with angry callers lambasting evacuees. Police tore through neighborhoods filled with New Orleanians, questioning innocent Katrina survivors while looking for the men the girl had described -- one with dreadlocks and three teardrop tattoos under his left eye, the other with a single braid stemming from his goatee. Thousands of fliers featured police sketches and a reward.

But a week after her story shocked the city, police said it was all a lie -- a cover for a consensual rendezvous with a man she met on the Internet.

when you hear people making up excuses for rushing people back to new orleans to neighborhoods where there is no electric, no hospital services, no housing, in some places where the houses still standing are shells that may look good to the photographer from california who doesn't have to live inside a rainy structure that could collapse at any time -- please remember this article

because when all the excuses are made, that's what a lot of the hysteria and scapegoating is all abt in my humble opinion, chasing people back out of their new locations because of the costs a sudden spurt in population puts on police services, roads, housing etc.

if i am cynical, if i sometimes feel "right of return" is being used as code for "right to throw people who have lost everything back in the ocean," then think of this article and maybe you can understand my cynicism a bit, as i think we are being manipulated w. false reports from both sides of the political spectrum

the article is very long, but read the whole thing

it is not all gloom and doom and the war of human against human, altho there is plenty of that, there is also a cute story of a police officer called out to check on a gathering of evacuees at 2 a.m. to discover they were having a gumbo boil :-)

:hug: How are things going for you now?

it just takes time but there is good progress on my street, most have their new roofs now although we still have a few waiting for their turn in line

the situation is much worse in many parts of orleans and st. bernard where people can't even begin to rebuild because FEMA won't release the new flood maps to tell them high hell they must elevate, those who are rebuilding anyway such as the vietnamese community in new orleans east may find they have invested their $$$ and efforts in an area that is not going to receive levee protection or that may need to be mitigated

in the "if you didn't laugh you'd cry" territory, friends in lakeview who decided to try to start rebuilding got their house zapped by the tornado the other day, you wonder sometimes how people keep such a good attitude but mostly they do stay strong!

strength, but I am glad that you do.

The media never showed much coverage of the elderly, the families, even the white families in their coverage. Out of the hundreds of thousands of people they could have shown, all the media kept showing was the looting and scenes of young black men just sitting around, demanding assistance, demanding handouts and using obscene language to do so and there you go. The entire nation has based their opinion of ALL the victims on a small percentage out of the whole picture. People like themselves, like their friends and families, good people were in the majority I'm sure of it although I cannot show you proof of it. On NPR I'll hear a different story from a different family or person everyday. They're not asking for money or handouts, just for a job which is understandable and for their families to have a home again. No gift cards, no free FEMA trailers, no checks, just a normal life again is the message I get if I turn the TV off and listen or look elsewhere.

a huge, huge HUGE proportion of those who could not evacuate by car were elderly people too old to drive or unable to drive at night (saturday night was the best time to evacuate to avoid traffic) or unable to drive in bad weather

yet the media focus again and again on the minority of young people who look as if they might be street or gangs or whatever, what's funny is all this "get a job" crap launched at drug addicts or the mentally ill, like all the people doing this yelling about "get a job" would ever dream of hiring a drug addict or a severely mentally ill person in their place of business, many of the people who yell the loudest wouldn't even hire a minority if we didn't have discrimination laws, yet everybody is supposed to just "get a job"

I know it won't help you much today but maybe a little smile. I just made a DU donation in your name so you can see a bright shining star next to your name and know when you see it that the people here are still thinking about you.

thank you :blush:

that is so kind

Consider it a gift from all of us :grouphug: