TheBanyanTree: The Underbelly

[Glo~ee]

 In response to Margaret's post about America's underbelly ~

You are NOT alone with your thoughts!  Everybody I have talked to, and
I mean everybody, shares your thoughts.  Shoot, I even shared your
thought about packing up and heading down there to do something,
anything!  I've lost my patience with bureaucracy.  I'm writing to let
you know that you can resume news watching today.  You'll hear about
the help that's there and the mass of help that's on the way.  Canada
has ships on the way.  You'll see semi loads of food/water/etc. headed
South; driven by volunteers that don't belong to any formal
organization.  Supplies donated by people like us.  Oh, maybe you
won't see that on the news, but we should.  It's happening.  :-)

I'll add to your thoughts with these.  Every single day there are
Americans that will die due to lack of food, water or health care.  I
have never understood why we tolerate that.  We are numb as a people. 
95% of the world's wealth is held by 5% of the people.  The underbelly
will continue to grow. To say the least, it's maddening to people like
me.  All we need is someone to TELL us what to do.  We need a
country-wide plan to change the status quo.  That someone should be
the President and those that work with him.  I'd rather they tell me
what to do than continue to ignore the problem.  Actually we need a
world-wide plan... dream big!

In light of my thoughts, I'm trying to see the news about the
underbelly in the South as a positive thing.  Wake the sleeping
Americans!  Let them see how others live day to day.  Certainly all
can't be foolish enough to think people only live under these
conditions after a catastrophe?  Maybe they'll see the everyday
non-catastrophe news for what it is.

Another positive about reporting the horrible situation is that we are
all learning.  We're learning that should a catastrophe happen
anywhere in America and if we happen to be there; remember New Orleans
and hang on to the belief that help is on its way.  Might take several
days, but someone will come.  Ya never know, it might help us in the
future.

Surely those that are in high places of control are also learning much
about our resources, or lack thereof.  It won't go unnoticed.  Whether
they can fix it or not, remains to be seen.  Whether they look ahead
and update the infrastructure that warrants their attention also
remains to be seen.  "Costs too much" be damned!

It's a learning experience for all.  Don't give up; don't stop
thinking about.  Work for change.  "If you want to change the world,
you need to change the way you see it."  Can't remember where I
learned that.  Doesn't matter I guess.  I'm just glad that I have
remembered it at all.

Dreamer...always dreamin' of a kinder, gentler world for ALL



On 9/3/05, Margaret R. Kramer <margaretkramer at comcast.net> wrote:
> I finally stopped watching the news.  I skimmed through the articles in the
> paper yesterday.  I had to pull myself away from the hurricane coverage,
> because I was getting too mad and upset.  I could drive down there and find
> some volunteer organization to hook up with and help out and show myself
> than I can be a better person than the one who will stay at home, go back to
> work on Tuesday, and continue to pay her mortgage and her bills.  Take care
> of my interests first, and then I'll worry about other people's problems is
> what I usually do.  So it's kind of silly that I get so emotional over
> something I won't do anything about anyway.
> 
> Ray and I watched TV incessantly after 9/11.  We watched and watched and
> cried and cried.  And then, after about a week, one day we just turned the
> TV off and went to a movie.  Then 9/11's horror began to fade away.  I
> imagine Katrina's will, too.
> 
> I think Katrina exposed America's underbelly.  We are reluctant to help
> people who are poor and have dark skins.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist
> to figure out that the people who stayed in New Orleans to ride out the
> storm were most likely the poorest and the ones who sick or disabled.
> Somehow, in our convoluted thinking, they deserve to die, because they
> couldn't leave.
> 
> We don't like dark skinned people having weapons.  Nothing scares white
> people more than blacks carrying guns.  The Bush administration spent a lot
> of energy pointing the finger at the "looters" instead of sending help
> (because they couldn't blame Katrina on the Al-Quaeda terrorists).  There
> will always be looters in these situations, because that's the way some
> people react to a crisis that they're powerless to change.  And not all the
> "looters" with weapons were blacks.  I'm sure a few white people were
> violent, too.  Deal with it, but focus on the vast majority of people who
> are helping each other and need help, too.  A news broadcast showed the
> difference between how a black couple was labeled in a story; they were
> "looters" versus a white couple who were "taking needed supplies" from a
> store.
> 
> We also have seen the "slow as molasses" response from all levels of
> government.  First, there was a lack in preparation, even though everybody
> and their brother knew that Katrina was a force to be reckoned with.  There
> was a lack of coordination.  There was a lack of money, because it's more
> important to send to money to that worthless war in Iraq, where the USA has
> dismantled and destroyed a country, than to give ourselves help here.  And
> let's remember 9/11.  Where were the vast majority of the terrorists from?
> Iraq?  No, I think most of them were from Saudi Arabia.  So, let's attack a
> country just for the sake of revenge, even though that country had nothing
> to do with 9/11 or had weapons of mass destruction.  Remember, Bush doesn't
> lie, right?
> 
> And the gas prices are rising.  Don't tell me that it's due to Katrina.  Isn
> 't it Labor Day weekend?  Don't the gas prices always rise before a holiday
> weekend?  And now the oil executives have the wonderful windfall of Katrina
> as another excuse to raise prices.  Watch, they'll drop back just after the
> Labor Day weekend so all of us dumbo Americans can continue to buy our gas
> guzzling SUVs.
> 
> The underbelly of our country . . . we're fat and out of shape, almost 25%
> of us are considered not to be just overweight, but obese.  How many people
> do you think died because they were too heavy or out of shape to get out of
> the World Trade Center towers on 9/11?  We sit on our butts and watch mind
> numbing shows like Fear Factor and Survivor and CSI.  Academically, we can't
> even compete with the rest of world anymore.  We vote for politicians
> because they look good on TV and not whether they have any intelligence.
> Our top executives have taken millions of dollars from pension funds and we
> just give them a slap on the wrist.  The underbelly of America just keeps
> getting bigger and bigger, just like all the beer bellies we see parading on
> the street.
> 
> OK, I'm done ranting now.  Some of us will use Katrina as a lesson, to try
> to improve ourselves, and for others, the horror will fade away, and we'll
> go back to the greedy, fat, and gas guzzling people we always were.
> 
> Margaret R. Kramer
> margaretkramer at comcast.net
> 
> http://www.bpwmn.org
> Business and Professional Women of Minnesota
> 
> I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.  ~Mark Twain
> 
>