Posted on 09/06/2005 9:20:50 AM PDT by Osage Orange
Northeast Oklahoma relief team is stung by rejection
By Sheila Stogsdill
State Correspondent
MIAMI, OK - A Hurricane Katrina relief team from northeast Oklahoma was stunned when its offer to bus 10 single mothers and their children staying at Houston's Astrodome was rejected.
"I am stunned, but I am not giving up," said Dee Dee Cox, Woman Crisis Center director for Craig, Ottawa and Delaware counties.
Cox had spearheaded a hurricane relief project over Labor Day weekend to bring single mothers and children to live in women's shelters in Grove and Miami.
Cox arrived in Houston around 4:30 p.m. Sunday in a 55-passenger air-conditioned motor coach, filled with water, food and children's toys. Hours earlier, a four-member volunteer team had left Miami to take care of any loose ends and secure any special needs the women might have.
The women and children were to stay in security staffed women's shelters in Grove and Miami. Clothing and meals were to be provided as well as transportation back to New Orleans.
But when the time came to leave, the women changed their minds.
They didn't give a reason for not wanting to leave Houston, Cox said.
"We didn't know what to do. We wanted to make life easier for these people and the community has come together, rising to the occasion," said Earl Shero, Community Crisis Center board director.
While in Houston, the volunteer team heard countless gut-wrenching stories of pain and heartache.
One woman, identified as 53-year-old Gwendolyn, told Cindy Shero of sleeping outside the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans.
Shero said she comforted the crying woman and prayed with her as she told how thugs took over the dome, people were shot, children were raped and human waste was everywhere.
Gunfire was so constant that she and others would crawl on the ground to avoid being hit, Gwendolyn said.
When they learned no one was coming back to stay in the Grove or Miami shelters, Cox contacted the American Red Cross to offer room at the shelter for evacuees.
The communities already have collected many supplies for the evacuees.
So placing them in luxury RV's, Cruise ships, Is cheaper?
Any way you look at it, it's costing us taxpayers.
Just as power companies and utilities are scrambling to re-establish networks and connections, you can bet the drug lords and gansta bosses are doing the same thing . . . all those consumers being dispersed around the country . . . and behind much of this "refusal" to be evacuated (and perhaps behind Mayor Nagin's mysterious lack of quality time in N.O.?) is because so many of these druggies fear being cut loose from their supply chains . . .
I saw some of this very thing happening yesterday. People wanted to stay at the Astrodome. I'm afraid Houston "has a problem" with these folks--they're not going to leave willingly.
LOL. Marie actually lives about four blocks from me.
Mark my words, those ships will burn if allowed to be used.
While mutiny would not be a result their destroying the ships as they did the Super Dome definitely would be.
BINGO!!
She actually grew up to be quite attractive.
Clear the hubby thinks so, too -- 9 kids?
Yes, low class is going to be exposed as well as 'poor'. More often than not the two are synonimous and, as the old saying goes, 'class will tell'. Sorry to be so blunt.
BTW - I'm waiting for the town of Berkeley, CA to take in a couple of hundred families of 'refugees'. Anyone heard if this has happened yet?
No, not shocked, not all of them. More like, looking for their best offer. The ones in shock are accepting the help and are grateful--but note that many of these people are not folks who want to go out and get a job and build a new life. They've lived on welfare all their lives, and are likely only the most recent generation in a long line to have done so. Like the lady on GMA this morning, they "want my new house." (Yes, some woman got on camera and actually asked, "Where's my new house?")
Wow, what a story.
The citizens of Oklahoma and Utah ought to be grateful that these "people" won't come to their state. They would never get rid of them.
That's shocking. My mom always told me "beggars can't be choosers." They are offered security, food, clothing, shelter, transportation...and they said NO????
There are a lot of truly decent people who call NO home, but please remember that (in my estimation) most of them evacuated the city ahead of the hurricane. I have no idea what percentage--but a lot of what was left were not the best of citizens. These are the ones fanning out into other states. I have NO doubt that among them are the looters/murderers/rapers we heard about, who just melted into the crowds and got on some buses with everyone else.
I think Texes and the US is forming its own resistance simlar to the PLO.
Seems to be a new freeper. Or maybe just someone trying to make bad matters worse. Comparing this to how cattle are treated reminds me a lot of how Jesse Jackson says the helicopters, etc. are like the hull of a "slave ship."
Just sitting around all day, fretting and worrying is very VERY bad for your mental health after such a traumatizing event. Give them a place to go, a job to do, and let them get on with their lives.
Beggars can't be choosers. . . .
Poor people have poor ways. . . .
You can take people out of the slum, but you can't take the slum out of the people . . . .
So many aphorisms, so little time.
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