I’m confused .. how can 2 million blacks get into Washington DC in sub zero temps in 1 day when 200,000 couldn’t get out of New Orleans at 85 degrees with four days notice.
Now why did you have to go making sense? LOL
Nominee for "Quote of the Year Award"
Answer- Motivation in the first case. Credit cards and bussing to the site of the canonization.
Second case- lets get something straight. We did NOT HAVE 4 days notice for Katrina. As late as Saturday morning local weather people were saying we’d be on the ‘good’ side of the storm and have ‘tropical storm’ force winds and ‘blustery’ weather! That’s a day and a half before Katrina hit- and a mandatory evacuation had not been ordered at that time either. Katrina was NOT a publicly announced threat to N.O. 4 days out. This was the Twilight Zone. Every other news broadcast in the country was taking it seriously and knew we were gonna get smacked- but NOT the local media!
ALSO- It was a weekend- many people pay NO attention whatever to the news on the weekend. Most black people of my acquaintance( including relatives) didn’t even KNOW there was a hurricane approaching- as of Saturday before the Monday hit! They don’t watch the news and they rarely read the paper. You underestimate the number of people who just don’t pay attention.
Poverty was a factor too- many did not have cars that would make a long road trip- AND there was no city plan to get people out. Despite the YEARS of warning about the ‘Big One’.
There WAS planning to get the maximum amount of black people to Washington for the ‘history making’ moment. THAT news they DID pay attention to!
No need to be confused, those who went to the inauguration didn't have just 1 day to get to Washington DC., they had 2 months and 16 days to make travel and hotel arrangements. They also had the advantage of knowing that the inauguration was actually going to be in Washington DC on a given date, at a given time and not change location at the last minute and take place in say......Baltimore. You can't really think that this hurricane analogy really hangs together, can you?
FWIW, I am not black, and I evacuated for Katrina (and Gustave), but I can understand how for some people doing so might be an impossibility. Four days might seem like a lot of time, but when you have to secure several family homes against a storm, make sure that you have all of your 90 year old mother-in-law's prescriptions, clean out refrigerators, try to find a hotel with vacancies within a reasonable driving distance that also takes pets (we were able find hotel rooms in Birmingham approx.360 miles from our home - keep in mind that New Orleans was not the only area that was evacuating),four days isn't much time at all. And there's no getting away from the fact that evacuating takes money. Many don't have the wherewithal to spend several days away from home, let alone nearly a month as was the case in the Katrina aftermath.
Buses. They had nice Greyhounds going into DC.
Motivation.