Standing in the Muck
By Harambee Member Dacia RayMy heart is saddened today and not with the destruction by the forces of God, but by the issues that have so divided our country that we cannot extend a hand. A hand to those whose homes have been ravaged. A hand to those who have lost everything and are fighting for their lives.
A black woman held three children in her arms and told of how they hadn’t eaten in three days; the children stared at the camera with the drunkenness that comes with heat, dehydration, no food, and squalor conditions. A white woman flashed next, holding her infant whose head was dripping with sweat. She wailed as I’ve seen Israeli women and Iraqi women wail in grief; he was so overheated he would not rouse.
The feet of a Louisiana man stepped in the feces, urine, and rain that had accumulated over an inch high on so-called dry land outside the Superdome as he spoke to an NBC camera; he didn’t know where his relatives where, the only possessions he had left in this world had been stolen after arriving.
One man jumped out the top of the stadium – his life was ruined; he had nothing else to live for. Women and children are being raped in the darkness. There are no lights at night, just the hollow blackness, fear the only pervading sense. The dead, of which we cannot begin to count, float bloated in the floodwaters.
I wonder if you can imagine the stench. I wonder if you can hear the children cry. I wonder if you could live like an animal. We, consumers, are so disillusioned and so preoccupied with our self, I wonder if we can imagine ourselves in New Orleans.
It is easy for us to change the channel when the impoverished fill the screen – their dirty faces, their shriveled spirits; it’s not our country, not our problem. But I fear that our channel changing has outgrown the TV. We drop food and water to Afghanis, Iraqis, and Somalis – where the hell are the supplies? Where the hell are the helicopters? Where the hell are the national guardsmen?
These are our countrymen.
There is no excuse for what has happened to the city of jazz. Not one. For three years standing, the city of New Orleans has been turned down for funding to improve the levees. Scientists for years have said that a storm of this nature is unavoidable because the
water in the Gulf of Mexico gets hotter with each passing year. Thirty percent of the city’s people are impoverished; they had no transportation out of there. This is our fault, ours.
Our neighbors stranded in the city should not be there. And they should not be without food or water or proper shelter. I am disgraced by the actions of our government. I am furious and heartbroken.
This is American soil. These are American lives. This is American soil. These are American lives. Why aren’t we doing anything?
Dacia Ray
**I have sent this letter to my Washington and New
York state senators, the White House, and the Seattle
and NY Times op-ed. Please pass it along.
Dacia Ray is a member of Harambee Church who wrote this letter after hearing the tragic news that three days had passed and still no help arrived for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.You can contact her at: daciaray@yahoo.com