a word on New Orleans

It's been a while since I have written, and so much has happened, I do not know where to begin. But I don't feel right writing anything about myself without a slice of my thoughts on New Orleans.

I am so angry, sad and frustrated about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and these feelings well up when I see the images on the television, read the horror stories and open debate with anyone willing to bat the issues around.

Here are some of my thoughts, disjointed as they may be.

This shouldn't have happened. This many people shouldn't have been left behind, overlooked, unaccounted for when the storm hit and when the flooding began days later. I understand there will be plenty of time to see what went wrong, but my guess is so many things were wrong on so many levels.

The state government didn't do enough to make sure these people had the means to evacuate. There was not a strong plan in place - which, by the way, is inexcusable this long after Sept. 11 and in a city that pretty much knew this was going to happen eventually.

That said, I do appreciate that you don't build for the worst case scenario. You build (you being the Army Corps of Engineers in this case) for probable scenarios. Money doesn't permit us to prepare for the worst, and the worst will change the second a disaster happens. So they knew the levees were likely not up for handling a storm like this. But here is where there should have been some plan, some way to deal with the possibility of such a disaster.

Then, the feds took their time getting down there to rescue people. Why? Perhaps because the National Guard are halfway across the world fighting George Bush's absurd war in Iraq. Perhaps because the people were those that we as a country have so readily ignored anyway - poor and black.

There is no escaping that this is a class story. The people who could not get out, and perhaps that did not want to leave behind the homes they have lived in all their lives with the possessions they worked so hard to get, were at the bottom of the economic ladder. They didn't have the gassed up SUV in the driveway ready to pack and cruise up to relatives' houses farther North. They couldn't leave and many didn't want to.

But in America, it's rarely a class issue without being a race issue. Who knows whether the feds would have responded quicker if the Superdome had been packed with white people. The fact is it wasn't. In a city that is mostly black, and the blacks are mostly poor, the reality was they were the ones who were trapped and dying. And our federal government were the ones slow to help.

Here are just a few things that make my blood boil and bring tears to my eyes with this story:

- Barbara Bush's comment that many of the people sheltered at the Houston Astrodome were poor folks who had nothing before and are better off here than there.

- Michael Brown as the head of FEMA. Who the fuck thought for a second that he was qualified for the job with a resume that recently had him heading some Arabian Horse association? Oh, right, Bush did. Because he was a friend of a friend, no doubt.

- Bush failing to visit the Superdome on his first visit there. He has no idea the devastation. The day after Sept. 11, he was standing on a mound at Ground Zero. Where is he when there is a greater loss of life and land but there isn't an enemy to shake his fist at?

- The thought that an entire city was destroyed; entire communities that were built around this city with a social fabric stretching decades are now dispersed across the country, never to be reconnected in the same way again.

I know all these thoughts aren't new. We have been yelling and crying over it for more than a week. I just wanted to give my two cents. As someone who grew up in Alabama, the poor black South was indirectly an influencing piece of my childhood and a part of me now that I find myself feeling strong connections to.