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To: Arizona Carolyn

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/opinion/04rice.html?ei=5090&en=ce2f33f8719dba9c&ex=1283486400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

September 4, 2005
Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans?
By ANNE RICE


5,786 posted on 09/03/2005 8:28:03 PM PDT by RDTF
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To: RDTF

Yeah right, Anne. And even you should know it takes 3-5 days to deal with a medium emergency. And so it has been.

Instant gratification fixes hath made fools of us all.

I love that city as much if not more than she does, and I labored in the fields, so to say, helping people who were the children of poverty and ignorance take their first steps out of that morass.

The people are people I love - the smells and the fears and the insularness, and the lack of vision sometimes, but good people who have made life in a difficult place.

I was one of those working poor. I was one who for years had no car, who probably would have been trapped if this storm had come before 1993.

But the blame-game is a no winner. The city, by not declaring the emergency a day earlier, let its own people down.

The city, by not devising ways the large number of poor couldn't ge transported to safety let its people down.

The governor, by freezing, let more people down.

Fema freaked as well, but who ever had to deal with an emergency at this scale?

But besides all of that, the fact is that it takes time to set up, time to get people on the ground, and time to get things heading in the right direction.

Blame yourself, Anne, for not lobbying the leaders of your beloved city to do more for emergency help. Blame yourself, Anne, for not lobbying for better hurricane protection, when people have been virtually screaming it out for a decade or more that New Orleans had inadequate protection against a really bad storm.

Anger, pointing fingers, stirring the pot with blame does not get clothes on the back of the naked, food in the stomach, shelter for the homeless. Instead of spending time pointing fingers, why aren't you there helping?


5,815 posted on 09/03/2005 8:39:34 PM PDT by Knitting A Conundrum (Act Justly, Love Mercy, and Walk Humbly With God Micah 6:8)
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To: RDTF
I read it on Drudge. Was going pretty well till I got to the blame game part... and yes, she and Richard Simmons, and John Goodman and Nicolas Cage, etc., were all powerful enough names they could have made a difference in the cesspool they allowed to grow and abscess... and I think she is wrong, I think a whole lot will never move back to LA once they get a sense of another world.

Personally, I think they should take one of the closed military bases and turn it into a new, small, city for all the displaced citizens... it would certainly be cleaner and nicer than what many of them have been living in.

5,871 posted on 09/03/2005 8:59:49 PM PDT by Arizona Carolyn
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