New West Network

Katrina Makes Us Remember

By Contributing Writer, New West Unfiltered 9-14-05

Where is the show of humanity?
-By Alex Loeb

Where is the show of humanity? The uplifting silver lining of disaster that gives society heroes. That shows, despite death and hardship, our ideology and moral fabric that make up our society has stood strong once more. It was lost, or never was, in the filthy drying streets on New Orleans, and it took a hurricane to show America what was already gone before the waters came.

It is not a shock that after the flooding, people were left abandoned. It just took a hurricane for America to remember how forgotten the ghetto and its poor are. The streets of New Orleans were already crippled and laid helpless before Katrina. As the disaster struck police abandoned their jobs and duties much to the contrast of the rescue efforts just years earlier at the World Trade Center. There, threats to valuable lives encouraged heroes to rush into the disaster. Heroes were made, people were saved, and the nation, however briefly, came together. However, the Ghetto has had few such heroes.

“The Storm didn’t discriminate,� and neither did the rescuers said President Bush. However, discrimination is largely to fault for the lack original preparation and evacuation. The overwhelmingly black majority among the poor were given no means to leave the city or enough places to go or enough attention to prepare for the effects of the hurricane. To neglect a portion of society, in the case of New Orleans, the people in poverty, is discrimination. Addressing issues of discrimination for the delayed rescue efforts is much too late.

What are left to save are lives and their futures. But this is no ordinary American disaster story. These livelihoods may be much harder to save. The social fabric had already come apart for many of these Americans before the hurricane. But to fix these problems and to stitch back together the lives these people once knew is going to take a renewed sense of humanity.

Alex Loeb is a student at the University of Montana. Watch the U-Blog for more updates!