MESSAGE IN A BROKEN BOTTLE

The other day I rambled on about the plight of those stranded in New Orleans and stopped just short of universally justifying the pillaging that’s going on down there. The context of the situation continues to play a huge role in the behavior we’ve been witnessing day after heartbreaking day. For more on the power of context, I recommend Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point. He discusses how small changes in environment can have an enormous influence on attitudes and behavior. Then try to imagine the impact MASSIVE changes in environment might have.

Watching the television reports, I’ve noticed a lot of blame being passed around like a bowl of beets at the Thanksgiving table. Everyone’s willing to dish it out, but nobody wants that shit on their plate. There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned tragedy to bring out the “not my fault” in people. Remember 9/11? Same story there – everybody rushed to blame somebody else. The government. The “authorities.” The border patrol. The president. Airline security. The Koran. International policy. The CIA. The list goes on and on. How has the absolution of all wrongdoing become so central to our existence as sentient beings? What’s so hard about admitting we made a mistake? I just can’t imagine it – but then, I’ve never made one. And neither have you, right? *wink*

Leggo my ego!

While well-intended folks are busy pointing fingers, frustration swells like the salty Gulf. Does it really matter who’s to blame when babies are dying on a bed of asphalt, children are being raped, and the people sent in to rescue them are being shot at?

Here’s an article I found at blacknews.com discussing George Bush’s handling of poverty as a major cause for the turmoil down south. Poverty is no one administration’s fault – but certainly a scourge worth addressing. The push against Bush is a stretch, but some of the more salient facts cannot be ignored. (http://www.blacknews.com/pr/looting101.html)

For example, one of New Orleans’ dirty little secrets is that nearly a third of the population lived at or below the poverty level. Yes, that IS a lot. The national average is 12.7%. Some politicians, including members of the National Black Caucus, have defaulted to the race card. It was only a matter of time, I suppose, as it would be impossible to ignore the fact that nearly all of the people stranded – at least visibly – are African American. I must admit, it forced me to wonder: Where are all the poor WHITE people? Were they shuttled out of the city in a massive evacuation operation? Doubtful. Were poor white people somehow better able to leave town…or were they simply more willing? Is there more to the cultural welfare dependency argument than we would like to believe, or is simply asking the question inherently racist? I have a hard time stomaching the notion that these people have been abandoned BECAUSE they are black. Yet that’s what’s been suggested by a number of high-profile public figures and servants.

It’s an argument, I believe, born of emotion. Looking at it rationally, I’d say local authorities definitely dropped the ball here. How can you tell a population so poor and so large it must leave an area in so short a window of time…without at the very least providing it with SOME means to do so? Not even the writers of the X-Files could have dreamt up a scheme to transport a crowd that size overnight. How do you tell all these people they have to leave town without providing access to transportation of some kind? Were they supposed to just start walking? How did they, or anyone else for that matter, know it was going to go down like this? If Nostradamus didn’t predict it, how the hell were a bunch of armchair weathermen down in the bayou supposed to?

There are a lot of factors at play in this disaster, the most influential of all, perhaps, being the fact that no one EXPECTED this to happen. On the family tree of psychological awareness, Expectations are the mother of Disappointment, and the wicked stepmother to Ruin. More on expectation to come…

This brings me to a final point on responsibility, which I hope to make without pointing fingers. Pointing fingers, after all, is rude. After the storm surge exceeded everyone’s expectations. After the levees broke and pumps failed. After the bridges snapped and the roads were blocked. After the power and plumbing failed. After everything that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong, there were still people left in the city. Whose responsibility is it to get those people out?

My first thought was that, ultimately, we as individuals have to be responsible for ourselves. What do refugees in other countries do when faced with catastrophes of this magnitude? Genocide. Famine. Tsunami. They walk. They move. It’s not pretty, but they get on the road and they seek higher ground. They seek shelter. They seek food. Why didn’t that happen here? Or did it?

Thousands of people sought refuge in the Louisiana Superdome and the Convention Center EXPECTING they would be clothed, fed, nursed, and protected. By who? The government? Which government? The local government? The state government? The federal government? But government isn’t an actionable entity in itself. It’s not an omniscient caregiver capable of kissing our wounds to make them feel better. Government is run by people – people who left town because there was a hurricane coming. Some might argue that there simply wasn’t anyone left to help.

That being said, there are a lot of things that could have been done after the fact that weren’t. Those still stranded down there need a lot of things – but at the very LEAST, what they need is information. Information. Information. Expectations are managed through communication. There’s been zero communication down there. How can we blame these people for being angry? They don’t see the news every night like we do. They can’t comprehend the challenges. They don’t realize the extent of the destruction. All they know is they’re hungry, homeless, and running out of time. At what point do you say “fuck this” and start walking?

Anger always precedes acceptance. If these people were just a click away from up-to-the minute updates and information like you and I are, maybe they’d be more accepting of the situation. Maybe then they’d be able to get past the fury that drains them. It takes a lot of energy being angry. What is the function of government? Is it to provide safety for people? Is it to attend to the welfare of each and every citizen? Is it to provide medical care? Is it to provide food? There’s a lot of room for debate here – I’m just asking the questions.

My solution? It’s tongue-in-cheek, but you would expect no more (or less) from me. Get Donald Trump in charge and run this evacuation like an episode of the Apprentice. We need some highly motivated people with can-do attitudes and out-of-the-bowl ideas in charge so something gets done. How long would it take to type up some informational leaflets and airdrop them over those crowds? A few hours?

Think about how far a little information would go. Tell them what we already know and take for granted. Give them instructions – something constructive to do. They need direction. Right now there’s a mob with no direction, no information, and dwindling hope. Of course they’re going to be angry. Expectations have not been properly managed, and it’s resulted in utter mayhem.

They need to know what the plan is. They need to know what the timeline is. They need to know that women, children, sick, and elderly are going first. They need to know where they are going and what will be waiting for them there. They need to know that New Orleans will be off limits for at least 2 months and possibly 2 years. They need information like this to quell the anxiety that’s got them bursting at the seams.

They’ve been sending out an S.O.S. for almost a week now. Will someone please let them know that someone got their message in a bottle?