9 September 2005

Oxfam America Launches Largest U.S. Relief Effort

(Oxfam Press Release)

In response to inadequate government coordination and delivery of aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina, Oxfam America has launched, for the first time in its 35-year history, a relief effort within the United States. While we have conducted relief operations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America for decades, we learned from our local partner organizations in the Gulf Coast region that they were not getting the help they needed. As a result, we are now distributing food, supplies, and electric generators to some of the hardest-hit residents of Biloxi, Mississippi, and are also providing emergency grants to local organizations in the region.

A major obstacle has been the lack of centralized coordination. “In many of the chaotic overseas emergencies in which we’ve worked, we’ve had a much better idea of who was doing what than we do right now, and a better sense of what the government’s response was likely to be,” Mr. Offenheiser said.

To date, Oxfam America’s response to Hurricane Katrina’s devastation includes:

• Working with local congregations in Biloxi to provide up to 1,000 meals a day and sheltering up to 150 people a night.
• Granting $30,000 to Vision of Hope, a local social service group, which will enable homeowners to obtain $200 vouchers to buy materials needed to make their homes watertight before another storm passes through.
• Providing $25,000 grants to each of three organizations working in the Gulf region that support rural agricultural and fishing communities.

As with the South Asian tsunami, poor people have been hit the hardest. They had limited resources and few choices for escape from the storm’s path. The hurricane ripped roofs off houses, knocked out power, blocked roads, and flattened farmers’ fields, leaving already-marginalized people homeless and with no means to support themselves.

Oxfam America has been asked by several partner organizations with whom it has worked to focus its emergency response on marginalized communities. In addition, Oxfam America will explore new partnerships with other organizations working in the region. In the meantime, Oxfam America welcomes contributions to its Hurricane Katrina Response and Recovery Fund.

7 September 2005

New Orleans Mayor Nagin orders manditory evacuation (guardian)

New Orleans authorities today began to forcibly evacuate the 10,000 residents refusing to move more than a week after Hurricane Katrina flooded 80% of the city.

Mayor Ray Nagin yesterday gave orders that only relief workers could remain behind for the clean-up, and 5,000 paratroopers were dispatched in small boats to find and rescue anyone still left behind.

Gas leaks and disease carried by the floodwaters could carry a serious risk to anyone remaining in the city, Nagin said in a radio message to remai

5 September 2005

A makeshift tomb at a New Orleans street corner conceals a body that had been lying on the sidewalk for days in the wake of Hurricane Katrina on Sunday, Sept. 4, 2005. Elvira Smith was killed Monday by a hit and run driver as she walked to a store to find food after Hurricane Katrina came ashore. Her body lay on the sidewalk for 5 days until eventually a passerby entombed her body. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we’re going to make it right."

Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.

Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It’s accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.

How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.

Despite the city’s multiple points of entry, our nation’s bureaucrats spent days after last week’s hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city’s stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.

Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.

Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.

We’re angry, Mr. President, and we’ll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That’s to the government’s shame.

Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don’t know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city’s death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.

It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren’t they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn’t suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?

State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn’t have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!" Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."

Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You’re doing a heck of a job."

That’s unbelievable.

There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.

We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We’re no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn’t be reached.

Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.

When you do, we will be the first to applaud.

9 September 2005

FEMA Leaders lacking disaster experience (Washington Post)

Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

FEMA's top three leaders -- Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler -- arrived with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation, according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are filled by a former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska and a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative.

Green Party ripe for special election in Philadelphia next Tuesday (Philadelphia Daily News)

It's a low-turnout race in one of the most liberal areas of the city, Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill. Marlene Santoyo, a Democratic committeewoman with a long record as a progressive activist, is carrying the Green banner.

7 September 2005

The Real Rehnquist (The Nation)

"In recent years, there has been no other Supreme Court justice who had a personal history so loaded with racism. "

Hugo's Helping Hand (AlterNet)

Katrina hit and Chávez, who claims President Bush has plans to assassinate him and invade Venezuela, had a public relations softball.

He was the first foreign leader to offer aid workers, food and fuel. Citgo soon offered a $1 million donation and yesterday the company announced it would sell an additional 1 million barrels of oil to offset losses from the hurricane.

Thus the pickle: the Bush Administration, which accuses Chávez of using oil money to feed populist revolutions in America's "back door," is watching it come through the front in humanitarian envelopes.

California legislature passes gay marriage law - Governator may veto it (washington post)

California is already one of the most gay-friendly states in the nation. Its domestic partnership legislation grants same-sex couples most of the benefits of married couples except a few, such as the right to jointly file income tax returns, the right to bring a foreign partner into the United States and right to pass Social Security benefits on to a spouse. So far, more than 30,000 same-sex couples are registered in California as domestic partners.

5 September 2005

Bill Clinton: Government failed people (CNN)

"Our government failed those people in the beginning, and I take it now there is no dispute about it," Clinton told CNN. "One hundred percent of the people recognize that -- that it was a failure."

Rehnquist dead, controversial Roberts tapped to replace him (CNN)

"It is fitting that a great chief justice be followed in office by a person who shared his deep reverence for the Constitution, his profound respect for the Supreme Court and his complete devotion to the cause of justice," Bush said from the White House, with the judge by his side.

Galloway and Fonda Forge a Fighting Pact (UK Sunday Times, via Common Dreams)

Galloway, the British member of Parliament who blew our minds away with his testimony before Congress (ripping Norm Coleman a new poo-hole in the process) and Republican Lighting Rod Jane Fonda are bringing their tour to Madison, WI on September 18. -babblemur

4 September 2005

Do You Know What it Means to Lose New Orleans? (by Anne Rice, NY Times via Common Dreams)

"What do people really know about New Orleans?

"Do they take away with them an awareness that it has always been not only a great white metropolis but also a great black city, a city where African-Americans have come together again and again to form the strongest African-American culture in the land?"

3 September 2005

Ohio Recount Lawsuit Set for Trial; Election Workers Indicted

"On Tuesday, August 30, a federal district judge set a trial date for the Green Party’s Ohio Recount lawsuit and indictments were handed down against two Cuyahoga County elections officials for their roles in the bungled election audit. The timing was coincidental; the two actions are not related though they both stem from charges that the recount was conducted in violation of state and federal law."

1 September 2005

Greens Rally to Assist Hurricane Victims; Call Katrina a Predictable Symptom of Global Warming

"Green Party leaders asserted that the Katrina disaster raises some urgent questions about the environmental, safety, and public health priorities of the Bush Administration, as well as state and local governments in the region affected by Katrina"