Katrina: Victims For Life?

Most of Katrina's victims lived their lives without a single tattered
safety net in place, Poor, unskilled, and underemployed, many of these
Gulf Coast residents barely stayed afloat even before the flood waters
raged in. Now what little they had is gone. They cannot bury their dead
and get on with life as the 911 families managed to do - because there
is no life left.

There can be no debate about the horror of the World Trade Center
attack. No conceivable rational excuse for the criminal destruction of
spectacular buildings and thousands of innocent lives can be advanced.
It was monstrous; it was deadly; it was immoral.

Four years later, the survivors still mourn their loved ones and the
world looks to ground zero as the crucial moment when American innocence
died. Somehow, the families of those who perished moved on. Several
thousand Federal dollars in compensation did not take away the pain but
did enable dreams of a life still worth living.

Only after the settlements were made were the cries of the families in
Oklahoma heard. Those families, too, suffered a terrible loss but
received only speeches and sympathy.

And now there are the victims of Katrina. Not only were hundreds of
family members lost but, in addition, entire businesses, lifestyles,
community bonds, and the independence conferred by gainful employment
were entirely obliterated. We must ask ourselves: do we deal with
victims in an evenhanded manner?

The financial safety nets of insurance, high pre-trauma earnings, and
safety member retirement systems, were already in place in New York. The
financial largesse of the government provided an even larger buffer
against the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune.

Most of Katrina's victims lived their lives without a single tattered
safety net in place. Poor, unskilled, and underemployed, many of these
Gulf Coast residents barely stayed afloat even before the flood waters
raged in. Now what little they had is gone. They cannot bury their dead
and get on with life as the 911 families managed to do - because there
is no life left.

The political think tanks that worry if a nominee is conservative
enough, the lobbyists busily grabbing the largest slice of pork for
their clients, and the Haliburtons, the Fluors, and the oil magnates
have no emotional conception of the reality of poverty. While difficulty
in paying the bills is common at all economic levels, contrast that with
someone who has no bills because they have nothing: no debts, no
creditors - but also no money, no food, no home, no resources.

For those still living in shelters or staying at a hotel until the
vouchers run out this month - where are the federal dollars to help them
move on? The government can't even figure out how to get generators to
hospitals nor trailer homes to available land.

After the photo-ops, the dramatic flyovers, and the congressional
appropriation bills, our leaders will go home to their comfortable beds
with easy consciences, confident that they have done what was needed.
Years from now, the victims will still be suffering as are those who
were displaced long ago by Hurricane Andrew.

Unless they are lucky enough to become the swing vote in a tight
election, they will recede from the front pages and slowly submerge
beneath the slime of poverty, a more permanent threat than any temporary
storm.