The scenes from New Orleans are heartbreaking and bring back horrible memories of New York on September 11. But where that tragedy was an instant shock, the full toll from Hurricane Katrina is only slowly sinking in, and the situation in the affected area only seems to be getting worse every day. Our hearts go out to everyone affected. Relief is badly needed — not least because the government seems to be absolutely unprepared — anyone with the means, if you haven’t done so already, please donate to the Red Cross, the American Friends Service Committee, or America’s Second Harvest, and anyone in the Southeast or Gulf Coast can open their doors to refugees through HurricaneHousing.org. Please recommend further ways to help in the comments, or drop us a line at visual.resistance[at]gmail.com
UPDATE: Here’s a list of grassroots organizations doing Katrina relief.
Pure Horror
September 1, 2005
Citgo, the Vezuelan Petrol Company is giving a million dollars to relief organizations. And Chavez, the Venezuelan president, offered to send relief workers to the South, after criticising the delay of George Bush’s response to the disaster. This is coming from a supposed adversary of the US government, as a result of their nationalistic reforms of many of their industries, including oil.
The Washington Post reports that there are “so many contaminants that it will poison the region of the Gulf of Mexico for more than a decade!”
An Environmental Protection Agency spokesperson said there “is not enough money in the GNP of the United States to dispose of the hazardous material”
gleaned from Democracy Now!’s reporting today, read/listen/watch here
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/01/146226
Another aspect to this disaster is the deployment of National Guard to quell the uprisings, or looting, that will deplete the potential of those people being deployed to Iraq.
It is thought that one aspect to the USA military’s weaknesses during the Vietnam War, was the deployment of National Guardsmen to areas of violent uprisings, or riots, in cities all around the USA, like Los Angeles, for instance.
The impacts of this disaster will be felt in every aspect of the policies of the USA government.
Democracy Now also reported that gas prices are higher than the greatest peaks, in 1981, and are over $5, in Atlanta, Georgia.
Related to my last comment, there is an area of the Mississippi River upstream from New Orleans called “Cancer Alley.” I am exetremely concerned with the imapacts of the hurricane on those plastics and oil refineries in the area, and hope that they are minimal. If not, some of the areas experiencing the most blantant forms of environmental racism, will be even more polluted.
check out the neworleans.craigslist.org site for housing offers.
people can offer housing to hurricane victims here.
So, I was listening to the news on the radio this morning…and they said that the national
guardsmen have orders to “shoot to kill” looters. F*ck!
friggin scary.
my buddy anomalous has been taking fotos of folks in the Lower East Side with a message for people struggling to deal with the current events in New Orleans, “I am thinking of you”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anomalous/sets/872121/
9/11 and Hurricane Katrina had one thing in common – powers that be knew both were coming!
>Please recommend further ways to help in the comments, or drop us a line at >visual.resistance[at]gmail.com
my heart goes out to all affected and even i do think this is NOT the time for the age old blame-game, some things cannot and must not be forgotten – in order to prevent something like this happening again. Because there will be another hurricane, another 9/11, another Iraq war etc. Let’s try to learn something from it.
http://hammeroftruth.com/
http://www.katrinamistakelist.com/
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002485.html
“There was a striking dicrepancy between the CNN International report on the Bush visit to the New Orleans disaster zone, yesterday, and reports of the same event by German TV. ZDF News reported that the president’s visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of ‘news people’ had left and that others which
were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time.
The people in the area were once again left to fend for themselves, said ZDF.”
Corto