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terryfrost at 05:50pm on 01/09/2005
terryfrost at 05:50pm on 01/09/2005At times I can be a disaster junkie, I'll admit it. Four years ago when the planes hit the towers, Sal and I were awake watching the World As We Knew It became a darker and harsher place. Back in the early 90s, I spent a week watching TV in my St Kilda flat as Gulf War One happened. Now, as New Orleans lies a flooded and lawless urban swamp, I find that an hour or so of it is as much as I can endure in one go. Maybe it's because I'm at home feeling ratshit with my mystery lurgie, but I think it's something else.
Dig this. We're talking abou the wealthiest nation that this planet has ever produced. The bastion of liberty, the light on the hill of democracy. So why are so many poor black people sitting on freeway overpasses above the floodwaters under a hot sun dying of thirst? The more I watched, the more it became clear that anyone in New Orleans who had the money to travel lit out inland when it became obvious that the place was going to become a toxic soup-bowl. Only bus-riders were left behind, along with the hospital staff. Overwhelmingly black folks. Babies dying in the heat, old women laying alongside the blanket covered corpses of their husbands. Why should this bother me more than any natural disaster anywhere in the World? I don't know, but it does.
Dig this. We're talking abou the wealthiest nation that this planet has ever produced. The bastion of liberty, the light on the hill of democracy. So why are so many poor black people sitting on freeway overpasses above the floodwaters under a hot sun dying of thirst? The more I watched, the more it became clear that anyone in New Orleans who had the money to travel lit out inland when it became obvious that the place was going to become a toxic soup-bowl. Only bus-riders were left behind, along with the hospital staff. Overwhelmingly black folks. Babies dying in the heat, old women laying alongside the blanket covered corpses of their husbands. Why should this bother me more than any natural disaster anywhere in the World? I don't know, but it does.
sad