[imc-st.louis] beginning of feature

[inner_alchemy at Safe-mail.net]

this is what i have of a beginning of a hurricane katrina feature.  add, subtract, whatever, but please read through it for errors/additions/ etc.  i want this to be a good article.  i have links posted below that will be placed throughout the article.  more links are on the way.  i want to try to post sunday evening if possible.  any other ideaas?
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Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast Monday and over five days later, the country is rocked with flood relief plans, critisms of the President and the governments lack of disaster planning, and over a million Lousiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida residents are left homeless.  

Everyone wants to know what they can do to provide support and aid for Hurricane victims.  MoveOn.org has provided a forum where over 98,000 homes have been offered to victims of the storm.  Another website, the Hate Bush Housing Mutual Aid forum has housing information available for radicals and others as well.  Houston and San Antonio has been accepting bus loads of people evacuated from the drowned New Orleans over the past two days, along with Red Cross Shelters all over the southeast.  St. Charles, MO has begun plans to re-form an abandoned jail into a facility which will hold hundreds of families providing them with the basic necessities.  Area schools have already reported children registering to enroll in classes beginning next week.  

Critisism of the President and US military hit a high point Thursday with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) when they published on their website the various US corporate media critizing Bush and his first press conference after the Hurricane.  Of course, residents on television had already been screaming for days wondering where the President and military aid was.  Callers on Lizz Brown's, "The Wake Up Call" morning show have been actively calling out racist press and government relations for years, but it was very promenate this week with callers questioning the billions of dollars spent in Iraq and the amount of soldiers that were currently overseas.  Over 5,000 national guard troops from Louisiana alone are serving overseas who could have been helping handout emergency supplies and dropping food and rations those stranded at the Superdome and Convension Center.

Racism is being openly confronted on listserves, schools, and even in national press.  There were pictures seen on Yahoo.com of a black man who was quoted as "looting" from a grocery store and it was compared to a white couple who had "found bread and milk from a grocery store".  Those pictures were passed throughout listservers and blogs and even made their way to several classrooms in the Brentwood School District, portraying the racist American Press.  You can see pictures here.  Friday night, at a NBC concert fundraiser, Kanye West, nationally recognized and radical hip-hop artist, broke away from the tele-prompter screen and openly called George Bush out to be a racist saying, "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

So far, the chaos that is resulting from Hurricane Katrina was catastrophic.  Hundreds of thousands fleed prior to the storm, but those who remained behind were generally poor and black.  Some in the press and in society blamed them for not leaving, saying maybe they deserved what they got.  When in reality, when it came down to being able to leave or not it was deteremined on whether or not they could even afford a tank of gas.  The most 'normal' of society has been forced to look deep within themselves to see if they would join the 'looters', as they were negativally called.  But many had to accept the fact that when it came down to it, they too would steal from Wal - Mart or other stores to provide food for their family or clothes for their grandmothers.  America has been shamed by not being able to provide for their most neediest residents and having constant critiques by national and international press.  People have begun to take things into their own hands by proving food and shelter for those who most need it, not waiting to get help from the American Red Cross or thousands of military soldiers.    

  


Local Organizing for Hurricane Relief
http://www.stlimc.org/newswire/display/605/index.php


Fiction account of what could be
http://www.stlimc.org/newswire/display/598/index.php

AB Contributes hardly anything
http://www.stlimc.org/newswire/display/596/index.php

Hate Bush Housing
http://www.hostingphpbb.com/forum/?mforum=mutualaid

Kanye West Denounces Bush
http://neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2005/09/4117.php

MoveOn.org Housing
http://www.moveon.org