They Just Washed Away

They Just Washed Away 
Katrina a Man-made Disaster: Before, During, and After

(See Laura Flanders GRITv , Democracy Now!, and Brother Lefty Videos below)

Hurricane Katrina Takes Aim on the Gulf Coast

It still breaks my heart to cast my mind's eye on the Horror that swept through New Orleans in August of 2005.

Sometimes I still come to tears as I attempt to sing "Washed Away." The song wrote me ten years ago as I was apartment sitting for a friend in Queens, NY.   Choked with pain and anger, appalled at what was I was seeing on TV and the web, it was, and still is, difficult to accept that what transpired in New Orleans could happen in the wealthiest nation on earth.

 (Click for lyrics)

Made in the U.S.A.

Although Hurricane Katrina, the ferocious vortex that was born over the Atlantic Ocean during the sultry days of late August that year was a "natural" phenomenon, what happened a decade ago was not. It was, from beginning to end, a man-made disaster, a glaring example of the continued institutional racism of the neo-liberal era.

In line for evacuation buses at the Superdome

The catastrophic series of events that decimated New Orleans, killing 1836 people (nearly a 1000 of them in the City itself), and displacing a million and a half others in the region, had been predicted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Officials at FEMA knew that the 100 year old system of levees and flood control protecting the half a million residents of the City, nearly 70% of whom were Black, couldn't withstand the force of a hurricane of that magnitude.  They had reported repeatedly that there was no adequate system in place to evacuate the people at risk.

Then, the buck was passed -- or the bucks, rather.  In a glaring example of Crony Capitalism at it's worst, FEMA privatized New Orlean's Disaster Planning in 2004!

This is all a matter of public record.  It's there in black and white. 

Those in charge knew.  Many of the career government service professionals were on record, trying to address the problem.

In fact, just three months before Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Agency responsible for flood control, had issued another warning to the Bush Administration which had not yet acted to implement a flood control plan involving extensive construction they had proposed years earlier.
(READ MORE)

Busted, Booked -- and Back on the Streets.

"I was a stranger, but you did not welcome me, and I was naked, but you did not give me any clothes to wear.
I was sick and in jail, but you did not take care of me."-- Jesus Christ

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,
and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

-- The First Amendment to the U.S Constitution

On Tuesday, August 28, at approximately 12:30, I was arrested for trespass on the Greenfield Town Commons where I was meditating as I’ve done for a half hour most days since the fall of 2011.

For almost seven years now, through good weather and bad, sometimes through rain and snow, three of us have participated in #OMG!, a noon meditation vigil that emerged as the energy of #Occupy Wall Street! swept the nation. Although I’ve participated in many forms of organized political action over the years, it was my first formal act of Civil Disobedience.

It was an Act of Conscience.

As best as I can tell, we are called to love our neighbors, not threaten them with arrest for finding a safe place to sleep. When push comes to shove, I believe the City’s treatment of our Homeless Neighbors has been immoral. There is a Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that says it is  unconstitutional as well.

Sometimes you just have to take a stand – although, in my case I was Sitting in Silent Mediation before I was confronted and yanked to my feet by the two police officers, handcuffed, and put in the plastic shell that serves as a backseat in a police cruiser. I now know what it feels like to be shackled and led down a corridor to holding cell and back, to not know exactly what I would face from moment to moment.

Thankfully, almost all of the uniformed officers I encountered treated me with respect, patience and kindness.  I am an old coot after all. I was a bit dazed and confused at times on a 95 degree day. I guess being in the Cooler was okay in that regard. LOL

I'm a relatively free man again today and intend to return to the Town Commons at noon for the #OMG! Noon Meditation Vigil. I'll probably "Sit this one out" -- outside the barriers and yellow tape -- while I talk this over with others and figure out the best way forward.
You're welcome to join me in Silence 12:00 -12:30.
(Ya don't have to Sit to Be Present!)
One Love,
Brother Lefty

Our 15 Minutes of Flame?

The count down continues!



 

To say that a lot is riding on the elections on November 6 is an understatement.  What happens that day will dramatically impact the nature of American Democracy and the fate of this planet with it's myriad species of animals, plants, and other beings.

Although the focal point of much of our attention, ire, and dismay has been Trumpasaurus Wrecks and his Unholy Crew in the Executive Branch, the damage that he is able to do has been possible only because the Retrograde Republican Congress continues to further the agenda of the far right wing that has taken control of  the Republican Party.

These folks, bankrolled by reactionary elements of the Billionaire class, have had their sites set on dismantling the achievements of the New Deal, on gutting Social Security, Medicare, and destroying  our nation's collective attempts to curtail the damage caused by the racism, sexism, and unbridled capitalism that lies in the belly of our nation's culture.

Like Bernie and a whole bunch of us, it burns me up!

100 days isn't a lot of time.  There is no doubt about it.  It's time to get our butts in gear. The clock is running out.

As of today, the Koch brothers' net worth is about $100, 000, 000, 000.   If you lost track of the zero's, that's a freakin' hundred billion dollars!  That's an insane amount of money to possess.  Especially when they use a whole bunch of their loot to hire legions of highly paid professional operatives out there using state of the technologies to warp our collective reality across the web, the airwaves, and in print.  

As of today, I have about $20 in my bank account. 

What's a poor boy to do?  What each and every one of us can do.  A whole bunch of us better roll up our sleeves and get to work.  If we don't, it could spell doom -- at least for the foreseeable future, if not forever.

I'm Making a Pledge to Take the Pledge.
(READ MORE) 

Suffer the Little Children

"A person's dignity does not depend on them being a citizen, a migrant, or a refugee. 

Saving the life of someone fleeing war and poverty is an act of humanity."

-- Pope Francis, affirming the 

US Council of Bishops' statement that 

Trump's border policy

is "immoral."

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."
-- Emma Lazarus

from "The New Colossus"

It's enough to make a grown man cry.  

I've come to tears a number of times these past few days observing the results of the Trump Administration's "zero tolerance" border policy on countless refugee families.

The stark reality of innocent children being separated from their parents and siblings to then be put into cages is nothing less than a freakin' abomination.  It's senseless and cruel -- and a violation of the tenets of the UN Convention on refugees.   

It's also immoral.  

Lest my lack of credentials other than that of being the founding S.O.B.* makes that claim a bit presumptuous, Pope Francis, the US Catholic Council of Bishops, and numerous other clergy worldwide, with the appropriate certificates hanging on their walls, agree with me.  Can you imagine it otherwise? After all, in what bizarre parallel universe would Jesus of Nazareth sanction the lack of decency that would allow Trump and his lackey Jeff Sessions to edit the plaque on the Statute of Liberty to read: 
                                             "Give me your tired, your poor,
                                                Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
                                                 -- and I will separate the children from their parents
                                                 and throw them all in jail!?"

If the Prince of Peace were in the flesh today, He'd be much more likely to hustle His ass into DC and turn the tables on this crew of miscreants.  He's been known to do such things back in the day.  Self-styled Christian VP Mike Pence would be the first to get a hypocrite's heave ho into the fiery pit. 

(Of course, as always, if these guys would finally come to their senses to see that Satan has hoodwinked them, their sins would be forgiven.  Sadly, I'm not holding my breath here. )

Besides the moral outrage I feel, I take this one personally.  

As a 12-year-old boy, having been abandoned with my younger brother and sister in a train station in East St. Louis, Illinois, I spent several days in a detention center.  Although my mother had been swept away by her own's demons, leaving me as the oldest child to protect my siblings, I was treated with compassion and respect by the police officer charged with sweeping me up into his arms and carrying me off.  Kicking and screaming all the way, at one point I bit his arm.  Without flinching, he responded gently and kindly in a language that I could understand, "It's going to be alright, son."

I can only imagine the terror being experienced by the estimated 3500 refugee children, most who don't even speak English, some of who have been injected with anti-psychotics for resisting their imprisonment, as they have been forcibly separated from their parents.  In my case, it was a matter of days before my father was contacted and we were freed to become part of the American Dream.  In those days, he readily found another union factory job and moved us out of Chicago into what was then an idyllic small town near the Wisconsin border.  

Today after decades of decline, both economically and morally, these poor kids face an American Nightmare instead.  Even when and if they are re-united with their parents, they face the probability of long-term incarceration -- for under the leadership of the misanthropes, militarists and materialists of the Republican Right we have become a nation that imprisons refugees! 

This is a crying shame.  

It's time for all people of good will to cry "shame on you" and let Trumposaurus Wrecks and the Republican-controlled Congress know that we won't sit idly by and allow this to continue.   

This is not the America we grew up with -- and this is not the America we wish to be today. 

Don't sit idly by.  Take a stand.

An Action to Consider:  
Find an Event Near You*

 

https://front.moveon.org/

*Greenfield Local Action:

Families Belong Together Rally

Saturday, June 30 at 1:30 p.m.
Hosted by Trystan and Arjuna G.
Greenfield Town Common
Greenfield, MA 01301

Rally on the Town Common in support of immigrants and asylum seekers, and to protest the Trump administration's cruel policies. 

Families Belong Together! 1-2:30 pm

SIGN UP TO ATTEND