> Ever driven a school bus (which is what was available
No, that's not all that was available. How many Greyhound and smaller, regional bus companies operate in the South? Any civilized country . . . well, any civilized country would have had the public transportation infrastructure that Wojtek and others are talking about, but in the "work with what you have" mode, any competent federal government would have immediately commandeered every vehicle of such kind throughout the South, not to mention every remaining Humvee or what-have-you on every military base. They then would have banned any private vehicle traffic in automobiles carrying fewer than four persons. For the people who were still left behind, they would have prioritized evacuating as many people as possible and delivering food and water to those left behind, particularly the people who went to places like the Superdome ON THE ORDERS of the government itself. You are insane if you do not see something incongruous in the fact that the government can drop food packets (not to mention bombs!) in Afghanistan, but cannot do that in fucking New Orleans, Louisiana, for days on end. The Cubans used amphibious tanks to evacuate hurricane victims, for fuck's sake. How many more ambphibious tanks does the United States have compared to Cuba?
This issue is just NOT complicated. It is indicative of BOTH massive structural injustice and criminally negligent racism in the government's immediate response. The spectacle of government officials appealing for volunteers and donations to the Red Cross and so on is sickening beyond words for any decent person, when clearly it was the government's responsibility to get on this immediately. I'm having a hard time comprehending how anyone can react to all of this without the incandescent rage and hatred that this criminal spectacle ought to provoke.
- - - - - - - - - - John Lacny http://www.johnlacny.com
Tell no lies, claim no easy victories