U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters: Rescue delay shows "class division"
Saturday, Sept. 3, 2005 8:00 p.m.
U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, arrived in Baton Rouge on Saturday with one message to President Bush and federal rescue agencies:
"Get it done," Waters said. "I thought I'd seen a lot. Don't forget, I'm from Los Angeles," where there has been a documented history of rioting. "But nothing like this. To see dead bodies on the street just unnerves me."
Waters said she came in response to the vast scope of the catastrophe, and was flanked by her friend State Sen. Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge. At about 4 p.m. on Saturday, Waters said she was leaving to ride a bus with evacuees from New Orleans. "To give them water, to give them comfort," she said at the Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge.
Waters said the delay in rescuing the stranded masses of people in the New Orleans region shows "a class division."
"There are a lot of naïve people," Waters said. "This is America. This should be illuminating about what we need in terms of dealing with poverty."
The poorest of the poor make up so many of the people stranded in New Orleans and the outlying areas, she added. "The United States has just been seen in a light that many people in the world never thought they'd see."
They are the voters who elected Maxine.
She needs a sock in it.
Everyone on earth knows the poor finish last in any kind of emergency. They lack resources to get out, some lack adaptablity to get out, some don't listen, some are too burdened to get out.
Everywhere, every culture, every country, every damn place on earth it happens. And it isn't racism. It is the reality of life here on earth.
I once saw her name spelled MaRxine here on FR, which fits her a little better.