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Sep. 1st, 2005 11:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckI have a lot of things to say about Delia, but this entry's not going to be about that. All those stories will have to wait another day or week or whatever. This is something else entirely.
As some of you may know, I have family in Louisiana. My mother and step-father are in Baton Rouge, so they're fine. Their house is still standing. They have power. Katrina just barely brushed them, at least physically.
Because Baton Rouge is physically intact, a lot of the people being evacuated from New Orleans get dumped there. My step-father is working at one of the triage centers. (I found this out because his cell phone accidentally called mine late last night. This morning I called my mother to be sure everything was fine, that it was actually an accident.) I don't know exactly what he's doing, but he's giving all the time that he physically able to sustain. He's a tenured professor of social work at LSU, and he's got years of clinical experience working with children under the age of five (and yeah, from that much information, you can probably figure out who he is if you want to bother. I don't care right now). I doubt, though, that that's the work he's doing just now. There isn't time yet.
Right now, the focus is on treating physical injuries, finding housing (my mother says that everybody who has an intact house is taking in refugees and that everyone knows that their stay will be indefinitely long. There's nowhere for them to go), finding clean clothing, food, water, reuniting families. Somehow, knowing that my parents are doing this work makes it feel more immediate for me.
At the moment, there's not a lot that I can do but give money. I will be sending some of Delia's outgrown clothes to my mother for her to pass on, but that's a tiny thing (not to mention that I expect it'll take a while for that package to arrive). She seems to think it's a good idea. She commented that the refugees literally have only the clothes on their backs and that most of those clothes aren't currently wearable. She told me that there's a desperate need for shoes because, while clothes can be laundered, the water and all of the nastiness floating in it destroyed shoes past all hope of salvage.
The shoes somehow make things feel very real for me. Just a prosaic comment from my mother bringing home the scope of this. It's not enough to get people out of the disaster zones or to provide them with medical care, food and water. All of that has to be done, but it's not all that those people (who could very easily be any of us given different circumstances) need. Once they survive today and tomorrow, they're going to have to worry about next week, next month, next year. What they've lost, family members, homes, possessions, jobs, whatever, isn't coming back.
I find myself wondering what people like me, living a long way from the places hit by Katrina, can do in the long term. Is there any way that I can help a family or an individual find a place to live in a new community? Find a job there? Deal with the stresses of being in an utterly new place? I don't know. It seems like a job for a community of people. I've heard of churches sponsoring refugee families from other countries. Will that happen here and now? I hope so. It's not something that will change the world or fix everything that's currently broken, but it would make a lot of difference for the individuals involved.
As some of you may know, I have family in Louisiana. My mother and step-father are in Baton Rouge, so they're fine. Their house is still standing. They have power. Katrina just barely brushed them, at least physically.
Because Baton Rouge is physically intact, a lot of the people being evacuated from New Orleans get dumped there. My step-father is working at one of the triage centers. (I found this out because his cell phone accidentally called mine late last night. This morning I called my mother to be sure everything was fine, that it was actually an accident.) I don't know exactly what he's doing, but he's giving all the time that he physically able to sustain. He's a tenured professor of social work at LSU, and he's got years of clinical experience working with children under the age of five (and yeah, from that much information, you can probably figure out who he is if you want to bother. I don't care right now). I doubt, though, that that's the work he's doing just now. There isn't time yet.
Right now, the focus is on treating physical injuries, finding housing (my mother says that everybody who has an intact house is taking in refugees and that everyone knows that their stay will be indefinitely long. There's nowhere for them to go), finding clean clothing, food, water, reuniting families. Somehow, knowing that my parents are doing this work makes it feel more immediate for me.
At the moment, there's not a lot that I can do but give money. I will be sending some of Delia's outgrown clothes to my mother for her to pass on, but that's a tiny thing (not to mention that I expect it'll take a while for that package to arrive). She seems to think it's a good idea. She commented that the refugees literally have only the clothes on their backs and that most of those clothes aren't currently wearable. She told me that there's a desperate need for shoes because, while clothes can be laundered, the water and all of the nastiness floating in it destroyed shoes past all hope of salvage.
The shoes somehow make things feel very real for me. Just a prosaic comment from my mother bringing home the scope of this. It's not enough to get people out of the disaster zones or to provide them with medical care, food and water. All of that has to be done, but it's not all that those people (who could very easily be any of us given different circumstances) need. Once they survive today and tomorrow, they're going to have to worry about next week, next month, next year. What they've lost, family members, homes, possessions, jobs, whatever, isn't coming back.
I find myself wondering what people like me, living a long way from the places hit by Katrina, can do in the long term. Is there any way that I can help a family or an individual find a place to live in a new community? Find a job there? Deal with the stresses of being in an utterly new place? I don't know. It seems like a job for a community of people. I've heard of churches sponsoring refugee families from other countries. Will that happen here and now? I hope so. It's not something that will change the world or fix everything that's currently broken, but it would make a lot of difference for the individuals involved.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-01 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-01 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-02 12:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-02 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-01 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-02 12:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-02 02:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-01 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-02 12:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-01 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-02 12:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-02 12:53 am (UTC)::sighs:: Perhaps I'm too cynical. I just suspect that our government will think it has better things to do with its money than to spend it on the destitute (after all, it seems to have better things to do with that money than to spend it on the merely poor...). These people have *nothing* left, and if they're not lucky enough to have family and/or friends elsewhere who can take them in, they have nowhere to go.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-02 01:58 am (UTC)I don't think sending shoes and the like isn't an option for me because of the postage cost, so I've donated online to the Red Cross instead. I'd rather spend all of my donation on those who need it rather than half of it on postage!
*Big hugs to you*
no subject
Date: 2005-09-03 10:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-02 01:14 pm (UTC)