If I stay here, I'll surely drown.
The waves aren't getting any lower. I could lie to you and say that I'm going to graduate.
It's not going to happen.
At least, not this year.
I'm going back to organizing.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Monday, September 12, 2005
The, Until Recently, Hidden Cost
Jesus was a huge fan of the poor. In fact, so much so that he was a poor man himself when made human. In every version of the Bible, both ancient language and current conversions, the scene with the temple full of bankers and moneychangers is actually one of the only ones that has survived as an account unquestioned by contemporary scholars.
Most conservatives consider moral values a part of their dictum. And most of the time that's a dictum that includes religion as a kind of moral pH. Now, while this pH test may not be used for everyone, it is quite common.
I think what Jesus has to say about money is always, regardless of what passage you use, clear: money, while useful for survival, can't make a life. Only the joy of giving to others is what can make your soul something that will stand up to God's eternal example, Jesus Christ.
Just because you give money when there's a disaster doesn't make you a giving person. Money really only goes so far, and what ultimately needs to be given but usually isn't is compassion. I've seen very little compassion this year from conservatives in the government as well as in the general populace. Most of what I've seen in the forum as well as in the world at large is a kind of disdain for the poor unless they are directly in front of those same poor people. They blame them, saying that they are victims of their own misdeeds and bad decisions.
Often I'm called to think of Elijah Muhammad's analogy about water tainted by ink, and that when a man is thirsty he will drink that tainted water because his choice is thirst or no thirst. Now, given a clean glass with pure water and that dirty glass of inky bile, he will drink from the clean glass with pure water. But only if he is thirsty.
I think a lot of the people that I have met in my time in New Orleans, Biloxi, Corinth, Olive Branch, etc. have been folks that are just in need of some clean, clear water to drink, metaphorically speaking. I find that I'm lacking all the time in my efforts to help, and for the most part I try to shore up those obstacles by helping. But I do that NOT JUST WHEN THERE IS A DISASTER.
THAT, for ME, is the biggest indictment of the rich and powerful, especially those who are those things and "conservative." When the chips are down, it is truly nice to see people donating time and money. But what about the other times?
What about not fighting organizing efforts that are perfectly legal for those who make minimum wage, so that they can afford prescription medicine and doctor's visits instead of trying to self-medicate (which incidentally is also linked to occurances of mental illness)?
What about raising minimum wage so that those who work those jobs can live well enough to have good employment records, move when there is a disaster, and avoid getting sick from substandard food and dwellings?
What about fighting FOR funding for improving upon the way we educate children so that they can go beyond the economic stratum placed upon them at birth and ultimately make their own lives better?
Most conservatives consider moral values a part of their dictum. And most of the time that's a dictum that includes religion as a kind of moral pH. Now, while this pH test may not be used for everyone, it is quite common.
I think what Jesus has to say about money is always, regardless of what passage you use, clear: money, while useful for survival, can't make a life. Only the joy of giving to others is what can make your soul something that will stand up to God's eternal example, Jesus Christ.
Just because you give money when there's a disaster doesn't make you a giving person. Money really only goes so far, and what ultimately needs to be given but usually isn't is compassion. I've seen very little compassion this year from conservatives in the government as well as in the general populace. Most of what I've seen in the forum as well as in the world at large is a kind of disdain for the poor unless they are directly in front of those same poor people. They blame them, saying that they are victims of their own misdeeds and bad decisions.
Often I'm called to think of Elijah Muhammad's analogy about water tainted by ink, and that when a man is thirsty he will drink that tainted water because his choice is thirst or no thirst. Now, given a clean glass with pure water and that dirty glass of inky bile, he will drink from the clean glass with pure water. But only if he is thirsty.
I think a lot of the people that I have met in my time in New Orleans, Biloxi, Corinth, Olive Branch, etc. have been folks that are just in need of some clean, clear water to drink, metaphorically speaking. I find that I'm lacking all the time in my efforts to help, and for the most part I try to shore up those obstacles by helping. But I do that NOT JUST WHEN THERE IS A DISASTER.
THAT, for ME, is the biggest indictment of the rich and powerful, especially those who are those things and "conservative." When the chips are down, it is truly nice to see people donating time and money. But what about the other times?
What about not fighting organizing efforts that are perfectly legal for those who make minimum wage, so that they can afford prescription medicine and doctor's visits instead of trying to self-medicate (which incidentally is also linked to occurances of mental illness)?
What about raising minimum wage so that those who work those jobs can live well enough to have good employment records, move when there is a disaster, and avoid getting sick from substandard food and dwellings?
What about fighting FOR funding for improving upon the way we educate children so that they can go beyond the economic stratum placed upon them at birth and ultimately make their own lives better?
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Flux
So this morning at 8 AM I get a call from the owner of the video place. Apparently he has now completely overextended himself and now must realign his schedule of employees. Moving me to another store is apparently his favorite option. So now, after working half a day, I'm going to get paid part time to go on another three interviews.
Seeing K today at 12 instead of 5, ABK at 9 hopefully.
Whee! It's like being a DJ without the good music.
Seeing K today at 12 instead of 5, ABK at 9 hopefully.
Whee! It's like being a DJ without the good music.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Guns don't kill people, I kill people.
Quote:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------That disaster did not cause looting, people caused looting.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And guns don't kill people, people kill people, according to some. But guns have bullets. And while those bullets are not responsible for the trigger, they do cause the injury sustained. So why is it that we don't throw people in jail and through the miraculous healing of justice someone is in turn completely cured when the guilty party is prosecuted? Because fundamentally we still have to repair the damage the gun and its fodder, the bullets, have caused. The violence could come from another direction and still has a primary (or secondary, depending on your choice of prima facie investigation) source, but we're still talking, simple and plain, a gunshot wound. Not to say that the gun is the primary cause, but A cause (one of many, in fact.) Its level is not the same as the person's culpability, but definitely holds true to form as a contributor to injury.
Your analogy then only holds so much weight with the disaster argument. Both indeed are causes, but to say that they are not dependant on one another is like saying that cholesterol didn't contribute to a man's heart attack or that pollen doesn't make me sneeze. The truth lies in that the causes are neither independant nor weighted. They're BOTH part of the same conclusion: poor people who were already struggling to begin with ultimately losing all assets and becoming overtly destitute in a concentrated, polluted area. Which leads to another statement made:
Quote:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------I beat my wife, the devil made me do it, I rape your sister, the disaster made me do it. Sorry, I do not buy the bleading heart liberal montra at all. Everything I have done in my life, good and bad, are because of CHOICES I have made. None of my choices were the results of a disaster, the devil, society. I made the choices, and those who looted made the choices. No one FORCED them to loot. They were not at the point of starvation, they were being challenged for the first time in many of their lives, challenged to be human beings, they were challenged to actually TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A blanket characterization appears here that is troubling. The they in this argument has been molded out of a disturbing model: the welfare queen and/or drug dealer and/or pimp and/or king of the block. To save myself some time, I'm going to repost something that I put up earlier. I think it relates better to our conversation and its something I wish to reference later on.
The human body's systems are dependant on multiple chemicals, nutrients, and solvents to make it function. These vital fluids are determined by the brain to be necessary for survival unless told otherwise. Our bodies, not unlike car engines, run slower and operate at a diminished capacity when unable to find sufficient fuel.
So when people riot, doctors are never called to report on the situation. Why? Because doctors would say that the desire to loot, to find food or water, or whatever the media is calling it is COMPLETELY NATURAL. The human body does anything it can to ensure its own survival. That's why people are known to flee with an almost supernatural sense of eminent danger, exhibit feats of strength that they previously have never shown prior to the extraordinary event, and in times of strife tend to go a little crazy.
In New Orleans, there are five plants that are part of a union I worked for some months ago. Those plants printed all sorts of magazines and newspapers and used a chemical called toluene as a solvent. This chemical is a carcinogen and a level four risk as a hazardous material. It is volatile, so much so that if you filled a coke bottle with it and shook it for a good one or two minutes, you would probably be covered in flames or fatally burned from the blast. In an emergency, MTs of five are called to turn off the pumps, evacuate the facility, and decide who is going to remain because if there's a breach as much as square mile could be incinerated by the amounts in most printing facilities of medium size.
All of the plants I know of were affected by the disaster. And this toluene is now in the water all over town. It is also on fire, and residents have reported coughing and contamination-related symptoms. Now, going back to our previous analogies, this isn't a simple "toluene made people crazy" suggestion. This problem is one of many contamination problems that are now a serious ecological threat. But the contamination also adds to the myriad of reasons why a group of poor people would decide to lash out at aid workers and soldiers trying to save their lives: the events have driven people mad. The overarching conclusion and truth has to be this then:
The current survivors of the disaster are screwed up by the unfolding events. They are probably not going to be well for a long time, and before they were unhinged in this way they were poor and that ALONE can make you crazy if it is the level of poverty that is known of in Ward 9. We're now reaping the benefits of being a society with wealth in that we're alive, but we're experiencing the inverse of that when poor people get angry: our wealth and pleasure penultimately contributed to their hungry and thirsty madness. And we're fundamentally screwed if we don't address it in a healthy way.
The poor people that you describe as animals are typically people who work blue-collar jobs. Plants in NOLA actually have great attendance records, make award winning products, and generally have employees who work hard. There are also people who work in stores like Wal-Mart, KMart, Piggly Wiggly, etc. All of these people in these places make much less than your average white-collar person and live in an area that takes economic advantage of that. As a result, people live paycheck to paycheck.
There are definitely people who take advantage of the system, but they are fundamentally few and far between. We see more of them because it is much "sexier", but being a person who has to compile the statistics out of the field and then go into the worst neighborhoods in the United States to try and help these people, I must fundmentally disagree with the idea that they are animals in search of a handout or a victim. For the most part, they don't have the money to move and are terrified that they will lose all the headway they have made against their own economic situation. Add to that a chemically induced high from the air and water full of toxins and a desire to get some nourishment, and you'll get a lot of angry broke people with nothing left to lose.
gotta break the post here... will continue addressing your letter soon.... feel free to address what I've written so far...
And guns don't kill people, people kill people, according to some. But guns have bullets. And while those bullets are not responsible for the trigger, they do cause the injury sustained. So why is it that we don't throw people in jail and through the miraculous healing of justice someone is in turn completely cured when the guilty party is prosecuted? Because fundamentally we still have to repair the damage the gun and its fodder, the bullets, have caused. The violence could come from another direction and still has a primary (or secondary, depending on your choice of prima facie investigation) source, but we're still talking, simple and plain, a gunshot wound. Not to say that the gun is the primary cause, but A cause (one of many, in fact.) Its level is not the same as the person's culpability, but definitely holds true to form as a contributor to injury.
Your analogy then only holds so much weight with the disaster argument. Both indeed are causes, but to say that they are not dependant on one another is like saying that cholesterol didn't contribute to a man's heart attack or that pollen doesn't make me sneeze. The truth lies in that the causes are neither independant nor weighted. They're BOTH part of the same conclusion: poor people who were already struggling to begin with ultimately losing all assets and becoming overtly destitute in a concentrated, polluted area. Which leads to another statement made:
Quote:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------I beat my wife, the devil made me do it, I rape your sister, the disaster made me do it. Sorry, I do not buy the bleading heart liberal montra at all. Everything I have done in my life, good and bad, are because of CHOICES I have made. None of my choices were the results of a disaster, the devil, society. I made the choices, and those who looted made the choices. No one FORCED them to loot. They were not at the point of starvation, they were being challenged for the first time in many of their lives, challenged to be human beings, they were challenged to actually TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A blanket characterization appears here that is troubling. The they in this argument has been molded out of a disturbing model: the welfare queen and/or drug dealer and/or pimp and/or king of the block. To save myself some time, I'm going to repost something that I put up earlier. I think it relates better to our conversation and its something I wish to reference later on.
The human body's systems are dependant on multiple chemicals, nutrients, and solvents to make it function. These vital fluids are determined by the brain to be necessary for survival unless told otherwise. Our bodies, not unlike car engines, run slower and operate at a diminished capacity when unable to find sufficient fuel.
So when people riot, doctors are never called to report on the situation. Why? Because doctors would say that the desire to loot, to find food or water, or whatever the media is calling it is COMPLETELY NATURAL. The human body does anything it can to ensure its own survival. That's why people are known to flee with an almost supernatural sense of eminent danger, exhibit feats of strength that they previously have never shown prior to the extraordinary event, and in times of strife tend to go a little crazy.
In New Orleans, there are five plants that are part of a union I worked for some months ago. Those plants printed all sorts of magazines and newspapers and used a chemical called toluene as a solvent. This chemical is a carcinogen and a level four risk as a hazardous material. It is volatile, so much so that if you filled a coke bottle with it and shook it for a good one or two minutes, you would probably be covered in flames or fatally burned from the blast. In an emergency, MTs of five are called to turn off the pumps, evacuate the facility, and decide who is going to remain because if there's a breach as much as square mile could be incinerated by the amounts in most printing facilities of medium size.
All of the plants I know of were affected by the disaster. And this toluene is now in the water all over town. It is also on fire, and residents have reported coughing and contamination-related symptoms. Now, going back to our previous analogies, this isn't a simple "toluene made people crazy" suggestion. This problem is one of many contamination problems that are now a serious ecological threat. But the contamination also adds to the myriad of reasons why a group of poor people would decide to lash out at aid workers and soldiers trying to save their lives: the events have driven people mad. The overarching conclusion and truth has to be this then:
The current survivors of the disaster are screwed up by the unfolding events. They are probably not going to be well for a long time, and before they were unhinged in this way they were poor and that ALONE can make you crazy if it is the level of poverty that is known of in Ward 9. We're now reaping the benefits of being a society with wealth in that we're alive, but we're experiencing the inverse of that when poor people get angry: our wealth and pleasure penultimately contributed to their hungry and thirsty madness. And we're fundamentally screwed if we don't address it in a healthy way.
The poor people that you describe as animals are typically people who work blue-collar jobs. Plants in NOLA actually have great attendance records, make award winning products, and generally have employees who work hard. There are also people who work in stores like Wal-Mart, KMart, Piggly Wiggly, etc. All of these people in these places make much less than your average white-collar person and live in an area that takes economic advantage of that. As a result, people live paycheck to paycheck.
There are definitely people who take advantage of the system, but they are fundamentally few and far between. We see more of them because it is much "sexier", but being a person who has to compile the statistics out of the field and then go into the worst neighborhoods in the United States to try and help these people, I must fundmentally disagree with the idea that they are animals in search of a handout or a victim. For the most part, they don't have the money to move and are terrified that they will lose all the headway they have made against their own economic situation. Add to that a chemically induced high from the air and water full of toxins and a desire to get some nourishment, and you'll get a lot of angry broke people with nothing left to lose.
gotta break the post here... will continue addressing your letter soon.... feel free to address what I've written so far...
Monday, September 05, 2005
Obligatory Katrina Post
I've been writing it for a few days, taking time to read the news and make sense of the madness for myself. When I get back from Family Time, I'll post the whole thing, step by step.
Apologies to those in the dirty dirty that I couldn't respond to in time. I'll make sure to return your calls tonight, but if I can't get through, know that I'm praying for all of you.
Apologies to those in the dirty dirty that I couldn't respond to in time. I'll make sure to return your calls tonight, but if I can't get through, know that I'm praying for all of you.
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