This sentiment has been repeated elsewhere, but I felt I had to weigh in too. The overwhelming majority of those who are suffering the worst in the Katrina disaster are those too poor to have packed things up and evacuated in cars, bought bus tickets, or paid long-distance taxi fares. What’s going on in New Orleans is a situation of unequal impact based on class.

Poor Americans will be disproportionately hit in the wake of peak oil unless there is a focused effort to reach out and offer folks information, community and resources. I know others who disagree with me, who will say every person for him/herself, but I’ll admit - it’s simply not ok with me to let poor people disproportionately suffer and what we’re seeing in the Southeast right now is deeply saddening.

Poor people can’t as easily just “pick up and move” because the area they live in is in the path of trouble. The people who got out of New Orleans in time weren’t necessarily smarter or more reasonable - they simply had more access to resources. Here’s an excerpt from a particularly cogent article that articulates what I’m trying to say:

Look at the reporters who are “incensed” by the rampant looting. Look at the smugness from those distant from the situation who chastise the dumb southerners for not evacuating when they had the chance. It blows their minds how many idiots stayed to wait it out. It makes them shake their heads and make “tsk-tsk” noises into their shiny microphones.

Well, fuck the lot of them.

New Orleans and Biloxi are not rich cities. They are poor southern cities disproportionately filled with poor southern people — people who may not have reliable transportation, people who live hand-to-mouth, people who have nowhere else to go, even if they had the means to get there.

And the evacuation was little more than a vague order to get the hell out — under your own power and at your own expense. If you have, at your immediate disposal, reliable transportation, money for gas, and either distant family OR money for shelter, then this isn’t a big deal. Of course you leave. You pack up everything you can and you head for higher ground. But it is somewhat less easy to do if you are lacking any one of these things, AND you have been informed that what little earthly lot you may claim is about to be destroyed. Do you hang on and try to save what you can? Do you let it go and return to less than nothing?

What the hell do you do?
- Source

There’s a remarkable lesson in this for all of us because a whole lot of shit is going to hit the fan in the next few years. I think in the wake of peak oil and inveitable future suffering, it would behoove those of us “in the know” to reach out and offer support and resources rather than assuming they just weren’t taking “obvious” reasonable steps. Nature always bats last, but it is humans who have created an unfair playing field of who gets to live and die based on class.

Friday, September 2nd, 2005 at 9:39 pm.
Filed under Social/Cultural.
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