philly

Red Cross is Fucked Up

I don't give much money to charities, I just don't have that much to give. But I do when I can. And it doesn't go to the American Red Cross. After 9/11, they fucked up so much of the money they got, I didn't think they'd be able to bounce back, but they did. So much of the money donated to the ARC didn't get to where it needed/was intended to go, it was appalling.

And then last year's hurricane season in the Gulf Coast region was just horrendous. Their response, or lack thereof was and continues to be a discrace.

And now, there's a report on how the ARC spent half a million dollars in the last three years pitching it's brand to Hollywood and reinforcing that brand as the recently ousted CEO Marsha J. Evans who fell lock step in line with the W administration's tactic of blaming the local officials instead of FEMA who had the sole responsibility of authority in the region.

There are tons of other great charities to donate money too. There's a list towards the top of the right pane of this blog. But the ARC is the only large outfit that I know of which organized blood drives; correct me if I'm wrong on that one.

Fact-Finding Tour of the South

The crew from Philly IMC are in the middle of a fortnight of traveling through the South to see for themselves exactly what is going on in the Gulf Coast region post-Katrina. Philly IMC is traveling with the Poverty Initiative and seeing things that the rest of us haven't seen. Telling us what the MSM aren't telling. Trying to help where the Fed has forgotten or turned away.

An excerpt from Day 5:

At an update stop at a nearby café, we interviewed an activist-academic from Texas who is studying the needs, stories and conditions of Latino day laborers in the Gulf. The stories he told were frightening. He said that contractors are recruiting many day laborers from Texas cities like Austin and Houston. These workers are from Mexico, El Salvador, Ecuador, and other countries in Central and South America. Contractors lure them to the Gulf Coast with promises of high pay and housing, and for many men, who have families to support, lucrative employment is hard to find; the offer is irresistible. Yet when they arrive in the Gulf, many laborers find themselves in a highly precarious situation. Contractors reduce pay by deducting fees for housing, food, and transportation. Or, they may pay them late or not at all. Many men are provided nowhere to stay, so they sleep on the streets or anywhere they can. Workplace conditions for the workers are often very unsafe and they are not provided the protective gear they need for cleaning up toxic debris. Also, many contractors prohibit workers from seeing doctors if they become sick or injured, insisting that their workers only see doctors employed by the contractors themselves. These men have basically no bargaining power and are mostly at the mercy of their employers. Of course, you don't really hear anything about this in the mainstream media, which often portrays the cleanup effort with scenes of professional cleanup crews exiting homes wearing masks and those white protective suits.

The PhillyIMC is doing some great reporting.

Gloomy Outlook for New Orleans

Frank points out a somber editorial from yesterday's NY Times titled: "Death of an American City" which starts:

We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum.

We said this wouldn't happen. President Bush said it wouldn't happen. He stood in Jackson Square and said, "There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans." But it has been over three months since Hurricane Katrina struck and the city is in complete shambles.

There are costs of rebuilding, but spread out over many years, it can be done, but W and the Republican majority of the Congress haven't done jack shit in three months.

The price tag for protection against a Category 5 hurricane, which would involve not just stronger and higher levees but also new drainage canals and environmental restoration, would very likely run to well over $32 billion. That is a lot of money. But that starting point represents just 1.2 percent of this year's estimated $2.6 trillion in federal spending, which actually overstates the case, since the cost would be spread over many years. And it is barely one-third the cost of the $95 billion in tax cuts passed just last week by the House of Representatives.

Total allocations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror have topped $300 billion. All that money has been appropriated as the cost of protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. But what was the worst possible case we fought to prevent?

Losing a major American city.

I don't recall hearing W speak of the Gulf Coast region in many many weeks.

BellSouth Withdraws Building Donation

I read over at Audio Activism that BellSouth has withdrawn a donation of a building to the City of New Orleans as reported by WaPo. The building would've housed the new police HQ.

From the article:

Hours after New Orleans officials announced Tuesday that they would deploy a city-owned, wireless Internet network in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, regional phone giant BellSouth Corp. withdrew an offer to donate one of its damaged buildings that would have housed new police headquarters, city officials said yesterday.

...

City officials said BellSouth was upset about the plan to bring high-speed Internet access for free to homes and businesses to help stimulate resettlement and relocation to the devastated city. Around the country, large telephone companies have aggressively lobbied against localities launching their own Internet networks, arguing that they amount to taxpayer-funded competition. Some states have laws prohibiting them.

Brian Russell at Audio Activism had this to say:

Let me preface my comments with a technical explanation. A municipal network can provide wired and wireless access to the Internet and Intranets. WiFi networks are usually created to provide wireless access to EVERYTHING you can get to via the Internet. The term free WiFi describes the cost of the service at the time of use. Not the actual cost of the WiFi to all citizens or the Town. Dispersing or delaying the cost of access to the Internet can really help people like the working poor.

Here in Chapel Hill, NC fear of angering local businesses and large corporations is preventing a municipal network from being created by the Town. See how Bell South treats suffering New Orleans? Remember what Verizon did to Philadelphia? Imagine what big bad business will do to Chapel Hill if we dare give something to those in need!

Based on their actions and inactions many local citizens are against a free town WiFi network. I think they believe it’s wrong for the government to provide free services. They CLAIM free WiFi will unfairly compete with and disrupt businesses. This fear is incredibly short cited. The potential for other money making possibilities if the Internet is available to all is HUGE. The evidence is all over the place! Just look at how much money some business could make building the WiFi network and providing the network access. Somebody has to pay for this. Someone will profit from it. [...]

And the struggle continues as cities strive to keep up with the times and provide a service that is becoming closer to a utility than anyone had ever thought. Doing so as a municipality does muddle things a bit, but to recall a donation of a building to a hurricane ravaged city like New Orleans, I think that's a pretty low blow. A BellSouth rep had this to say:

"Our willingness to work with the mayor and the city is still on the table," Battcher [the rep] said. "We've been working for over two months on this building . . . we are a little surprised by these comments."

Well color me surprised at the rescinding of a donated building.

Wilma

Hurricane Wilma is now the "most intense Atlantic storm ever recorded"

But Wilma wasn't expected to keep its record strength for long, as higher disruptive atmospheric winds in the Gulf of Mexico around the hurricane should weaken it before landfall, said Hugh Cobb, a meteorologist at the hurricane center.

But you can't really predict what a hurricane will or will not do.

20 Questions with Danie Greenwell

I just posted an interview I did with friend, fellow Philadelphian and Gulf Coast relief volunteer, Danie Greenwell over on Philly Future. Take a click on over there and take a read. It starts...

Albert/Philly Future [PF]: Why did you decide to go to the Gulf Coast? Who did you go with? How did you find the group? How long were you there for?

Danie: An email was sent out by Eric Loeb of Good Works PAC trying to get a group of volunteers to commit to a week in the Gulf Coast. When I saw it my thought was "I wish I could do something like that, that's so cool" and my next thought was "oh, yeah, you actually can" so I emailed Eric and signed up for a week of work with 3 days travel time. In reality, that became 5 days travel time and a little less work time.

A Quick Note

A quick note to the Media - 'Hurricane' Rita is not a hurricane anymore and you need not cover it with the frenzy you did with Katrina. However, 250,000 - 500,000 peope did converge on Washington, DC yesterday in protest of the war in Iraq.

Blanco's Advice

From this AP story about the waters rising in New Orleans with the rain brought on by Rita, Gov. Blanco has some advice for those who didn't want to leave this time around

As for those who refuse to leave, Gov. Kathleen Blanco advised: "Perhaps they should write their Social Security numbers on their arms with indelible ink."

Now that's leadership.

Galveston's Faithful

So, this NY Times story paints the 100 or so out of the 60,000 residents of Galveston to be mostly those of faith.

The Lord doesn't want us going. He wants me carrying this flag.
...
I told him I was staying right here, not running to some big expensive hotel. I have faith in God.

And another one staying put was a surfer. Another a grocery store owner who didn't want his store looted stating I'm not leaving anything to chance. We saw what happened in New Orleans.

But it ends with a man who lost his brother to Katrina just outside of New Orleans:

Choking back tears, Mr. Christian said his brother, who lived just outside New Orleans, fell victim to Hurricane Katrina. "I done seen my brother in a body bag, and I don't want to be in one," he said. "Katrina got him being stupid like me."

"It's either get out of here or get packed in a body bag."

It seems as if most of Galveston's empty. But many of them could be stuck on the day-long traffic jams clogging up the routes out of southeast Texas. Someone in the office was just talking about how he heard people moving eleven miles in eleven hours on the highways now. I wonder if people biked or are biking inland.

Evacuee Bus Explosion

I'm going to assume that the explosions on the bus that caught fire while sitting in traffic getting out of Houston was caused by oxygen tanks. It was a bus full of nursing home patients. There were forty-three passengers on the bus; deputies estimate the fatalities at almost twenty. I don't get the estimate though, there were only forty-three people to count up.

I thought that this evacuation was going oh so smoothly. All I see is lines of cars literally parked on the highways. Have both sides of the highway been opened to head north?

And the shit is hitting the fan so hard that W will be heading to Texas today ahead of Rita.