Hurricane

I'm sending the money I can. The immediacy and desperation of the situation in the wake of the hurricane is so acute, so broad, making so much suffering for so many people.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune is posting wrenching stories. purejuice linked to this one.

songquake linked to this one from The Washington Post about destroying FEMA by removing its role in national emergency preparedness in order to focus only on what the Bush administration calls the war on terrorism. The brutality of those priorities and those policies in this country as well as around the world is becoming more and more clear.

I'm thinking about scottynola, docbrite and others who have had to leave their homes and have their worlds thrown into chaos. I made a donation to the Red Cross. (And Coinstar machines are accepting donations of spare change for the Red Cross, too -- I know that there's one of those machines at my local grocery store.)

And I signed a petition against the current move to cut the estate tax, which would benefit the country's wealthiest with the burden being carried, once again, by people who can't afford to do things like find a way out of a city when it's in the path of a terrible storm.

Racism is so active in the ways that struggles to are survive being reported, perceived and experienced.

And this from Democracy Now! Emmanuel looked comprehensively at storm data since the mid-1970s and concluded the destructive power of hurricanes has nearly doubled over the past 30 years, at least partially because of global warming.

And I'm thinking about Jose Saramago's novel, Blindness.