New Orleans

I can’t help but feel that when looking at the images coming out of New Orleans, that it appears eerily similar to chaos in areas such as Liberia and other third world nations. Helicopters swooping in to drop off bottles of water, food, medicine and other emergency supplies, abandoned bodies laying in the street, roving gangs of looters, and no visible structure of leadership and command. And this taking place in the richest country on earth. Television images magnify the grim reality that the main group of people suffering in this growing disaster are poor African-Americans. I dread the thought of how this might affect race relations throughout the country. Hopefully it will highlight the gap between rich and poor and that guilt will somehow help improve the reality of the situation.

We are a nation that can afford to quickly send money and supplies to Tsunami survivors, yet cannot manage to get emergency aid to those in desparate need in our own country. Many of the personnel needed to help are over 7,000 miles away in Iraq, and not close by to help our own. What does that say about a country’s priorities when it leaves its most needy to completely fend for themselves while fighting a $200+ billion war abroad and giving away trillions of dollars in tax cuts and giveaways? Republican dogma stipulates that government is the problem, not the solution. Perhaps they are finally right. Government IS the problem, and this must be fixed. With Republicans completely in control, there’s no where to point blame anymore.

The failure of the country’s top leadership to act swiftly enough, or to even take an immediate stand of the situation shows a complete disconnect from those people at the very top and the vast amounts of poor at the bottom. If the government won’t help, who will? The private sector is not enough to help the growing numbers of poor, leaving the government as the only entity that these poor can turn to. If this administration won’t step in to do the job, which it clearly hasn’t, the country needs one that will care not mostly for those at the top.