Outrage of the day

[naomikritzer]

Visitor to evacuee housing in Oklahoma is told that evacuees won't be allowed to leave -- not even to go to church. Also, there are kitchens at the site, but the evacuees won't be allowed to use them -- they'll be fed MREs twice a day. Can the church that donated the site send volunteers in to cook for people? Nope.

Can we all agree -- liberal and conservative alike -- that it is not okay to treat poor evacuees like criminals? We are Americans. It is not okay to herd people into actual ghettos where they will be kept prisoner, where help is being prevented from reaching them, where they are fed an inadequate diet, where there is nothing around but trees and hills so they are prevented from starting a new life. Etc., etc., etc.

I'm not going to use a Nazi comparison because first of all, I wouldn't want to invoke Godwin's Law but also because there are some important differences; we will be feeding them, at least. But I will say that this is all the dystopian YA novels of my childhood springing to life, right here.

Also, apparently Michael Brown described himself as an "assistant city manager" when actually he was sort of an intern with no oversight of anything.

Comments

[jimhines.livejournal.com]

That kind of fits with the whole "Shoot them if they try to walk out of New Orleans" mentality I was reading about. FEMA et al appear to be so scared of these people they're going to try to control every possible detail of their lives. Now what does this remind me of...?

Oh yes. "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

Which leaves FEMA and our friend Mister Brown in the roles of...

[jimhines.livejournal.com]

I hate to be a cynic here, but do you have another source or reference for this that isn't hosted on a site that also does "The Truth about UFO" articles? I'm not saying I don't believe it, but I could see people being very skeptical about the story simply given its context...

[naomikritzer]

Yeah, the site itself is a bit dodgy. This is a message board post by someone who is clearly a regular poster on those boards. It's a first-person narrative with no external corroboration.

However, she took a ton of photos; these would be difficult to fake, I think. It sounds to me like she really was there. This is, obviously, her report of what she saw and was told, and she may have misunderstood some of it.

Even with all those caveats, this seemed worth posting.

I also e-mailed an Oklahoma paper with the link and suggested that if the information in it is at all true, it's newsworthy.

[mrswebchik.livejournal.com]

After reading it, I am, indeed, skeptical. The replies posted made some good points.

"Hundreds" of people were flown to Muskegon, MI to stay there for a while at the military barracks that were open and available. I was surprised to learn that many of them had no idea where they were going when they got on the plane. About 150 plan on staying in the area, and the rest are going to stay long enough to recouperate a bit, find out where their families are, then get transportation elsewhere.

No more people are simply going to be flown in, though. Apparently someone in FEMA managed to remove their head from their arse and decided that they'll give the evacuees the option of picking where they go. What a concept! I was stunned to find out this wasn't the case before. And they don't want families to host evacuees - they're looking for actual temporary housing - apartments and other rental units - that people can call home for a while. I seem to recall something about the government (can't remember at what level, or if it was actually the Salvation Army or ARC) wanting to get people free housing for a year while they settle in and get their lives back in order.

In any case, that location seems to be a stupid place to send people. At least where they're going in Michigan is around major urban areas with plenty of access to everything.