Rich,
I will be happy to answer your questions. Remember my perspective is that of a home health nurse, who works with the disadvantaged poor in my own city. I often make the determination with patients whether they will recieve home care services. I can spot a leech a mile away, and react on a visceral level to them. Seeing (and having been at one time) the honorable poor and humble has given me a hatred for the leeches.
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From your experience, were most of the people you helped simple welfare criminals, or fellow citizens caught in a bad place?
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The people I saw and assisted either could not evacuate due to finances, family, or other commitments. They were gambling that Katrina was going to pass them by like other hurricaines have for centuries. They were right. Then the levee broke. Quite a few of these people have one or two family matriarchs or patriarchs that work several jobs to help the family survive. They have infirm elders who are not easily moved living at home. They have many children. These are not the quinesential 2 kids and a dog family. These are large extended families on the model of the Waltons. They do not dump their elders into nursing homes. They care for them at home. You will note that there are plenty of submerged cars in the NOLA pics. These matriachs and patriarchs could have evacuated. However, to do so, they would have to leave grandma, grandpa and several of the kids behind. A car will only hold so many people. They refused to do this, and decided instead to ride out the storm as a complete family. You may have seen Leroy on the roof waving a sheet. He had four or five kids with him. Meanwhile, Grandma was dead in the attic. Grandpa could not make it out the hole in the roof.
Many of these people had friends sheltered with them. They had a community spirit that made sure the old and infirm would not ride out the hurricaine alone.
I find the term welfare criminal intriging. The welfare criminals evacuated prior to the storm IMHO. These are the leeches that fake disability and mental illness for a government check. The people who stayed behind were honorable Americans who chose their large extended family over themselves.
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Was a significant portion of the population acting like third world savages.... raping, looting and pillaging wholesale?
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I do not doubt that this was bad. I believe the majority of the rapes occured at the Superdome or other gathering points. Same for murder. As far as looting, hell, I don't think anyone stayed crime free enough to kiss J Edgar Hoover's ring. Our own party was siphoning gas out of cars, and finding food where we could. If we had a mother and her kids in our boat, and we saw something they could use on the way to a drop off point, we got it. I'm sorry if some would say that's breaking the law, in the eyes of the uninitiated, it would be.
The looting that made the news apeared to be on Canal Street. Frankly, I'm surprised there was not more. I have a great deal of pride for many of the young black men who rose to the challenge and protected their families, as well as helped others. Once again 100 looters and drug dealers make headlines while good people practice quite heroism.
Now here's the kicker....at first I felt this did not matter, and I did not say because I did not want to dinigrate the men. I will now say. Dennis and Donald are from the 9th Ward. They are black. They were in their twenties/thirties. They work for a living, I think one is a mechanic, the other a butcher. They took their families to the Superdome and went back to their neighborhood to go to work. They were working when we got there. They were working when we left. We exchanged addresses, and will stay in touch. These were not highly educated men, but they were intelligent, and a hell of a lot more honorable than thousands of talking heads sitting on their asses wringing their hads over racism in New Orleans. How in God's name can a journalist justify riding into this situation to get a story, and not bring along a single bottle of water to ease the suffering, or take out a single person when he leaves? And then they want to sanctimoniously stand up in front of a camera and say RACE is an issue? Race is not the issue! To many people not giving a damn about other people in trouble is the issue here!
The D&D Krewe was not the only group of young black men out there performing heroic actions evacuating people or protecting their families. Painting these noble and honorable men with the same brush that should be applied to the animals setting fires and stealing sneakers is a grave disservice. If you want to turn a man to crime, take the good and wonderful things he has done and demonize them. He will eventually turn to crime because it does not make a difference anymore. Then you can sit back and smuggly say you knew all along he was a beast, never acknowledging he is a beast of your own making.
Some are saying this disaster lays bare the racism in our society. I suppose it does. A lot of people are seeing skin color and not actions. Then they think they have a right to render judgement because they saw it on TV. This disaster is not laying bare the racism in NOLA, it's laying bare the racism all across our country. How dare the news media and race mongers strip away the courage and commitment shown by family after family of poor disadvantaged black people and then paint them with a criminal brush?
I've got to close, I could continue for an hour. Rich, I'm sorry for any expletives or inappropriate speech. I will edit cheerfully if you ask, but I think my point will be diminished if I do. Sometimes an expletive is the only suitable word available to the language deficient, and there is just not words to describe some of my feelings on this issue.