week continues

At last, I am the person of the day at my sister's blog. I have been waiting for this moment since she first instituted the person of the day, oh, last week. Not only that, once she made our other sister person of the day I specifically asked when it was going to be my turn, not having noticed that she had already noted on her blog that my turn would be the next day, because that is how well she knows me.

Emily

spin

The Administration's political damage control plan has been to shift blame for failed the Katrina response from the federal to the state and local level, as described in the following New York Times article:
White House Enacts a Plan to Ease Political Damage

Salon has edited together a little montage of politicos and talking heads taking up this line here:
The Blame Game

Today on This American Life Ira Glass spoke with federal emergency and homeland security policy expert William Nicholson about this question of authority in the face of an officially declared disaster. Here is a transcript of part of this discussion. The full radio show (which is stunning) will be available on their website within the next week.

It really comes down to a couple of basic facts. The Governor of Louisiana declares a state of emergency the Friday before the storm hits, right, calls on the federal government to step in. Then President Bush officially declares a state of emergency in Louisiana the next day, the Saturday before the storm, and authorizes the Federal Emergency Management Agency to act. You can read the paper where he does this on the White House website. Basically, that should have settled who was in charge.

"After that happened, there was plenty of authority. There was all the authority in the world." We checked out this idea -- that from that point the federal government was in fact in charge -- we checked that out with several different experts and consultants on these issues this week and they all agreed that the law is unambiguous. This particular guy is William Nicholson, author of the books Emergency Response and Emergency Management Law and Homeland Security Law and Policy. And if you’re in homeland security policy you might want to check those out. He says that once the governor asks for help and the President declares a state of emergency the Feds basically have the broad powers to do what’s necessary. And he says, even if the President hadn’t declared a state of emergency, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, Chertoff, could have acted. There’s this whole, newfangled way for him to take emergency powers under something called the National Response Plan. [Mr. Nicholson and Ira discuss federal authority to act without state authorization.]

Remember, you heard it here first. Remember you heard it at all.

mr. qt

I am getting ready to go work at the second night of the quentin tarantino film festival. Tonight is all night 80's horror night, which I am celebrating with teal eye shadow.

I spent most of the afternoon in Book People doing my media education reading. I have the feeling that this class is one of those classes that change the way you think. I can't believe I am in one of those classes again. I can't believe my good luck at being so happy with life right now.

Edward R. Murrow

Here's a good article on the news coverage of the Katrina aftermath in Slate. And I really liked this little P.S. at the bottom:

"Get this: Rush Limbaugh called me a liberal on his show yesterday for my Wednesday column about the news broadcasters' general neglect of race and class. Said Limbaugh, 'The whole purpose of this story for Mr. Shafer and these stories on these lower level websites that hopefully they think will percolate to the mainstream press is to eventually indict the American way of life, to indict the American culture, to indict the American society as inherently unfair and racist.'"
Yup.

"I guess we could root for the Texans and and the Cowboys. They're not in the same conference, so it wouldn't be a problem unless they both went to the Superbowl. [pause] An all-Texas superbowl [other pause] His will be done." --Hank, King of the Hill

gulf coast

I feel like rioting. This week: I get up, get dressed, begins the day's projects of introducing myself at classes, mastering the city bus system so I won't have to drive my car anymore, going to work, signing kids up for afterschool filmmaking classes, signing up to volunteer at film festivals and to edit film journals--you know, my dream life. I come home exhausted at night and look at the day's news on the internet. And I sink into despair.

This past week in New Orleans has been like watching the September 11th attacks happen in slow motion--oh how terrible a plane crashed into one of the towers--oh NO another one that means this was no accident--wait, what do you mean they're falling?--how many people are going to die? And then the images hit and you are suddenly living in a country you no longer recognize as your own, and the horror is surreal. Except that took place in a matter of minutes, and this, hurricane is coming, city is evacuating, hurricane hits not as bad as feared, next morning levee breaks, city floods, and people begin dying before our eyes--all of this happened over days. At every step there were things that could have mitigated the disaster. Why weren't buses sent in to the city on Sunday to evacuate people who didn't have cars? Why weren't buses sent in to the city on Sunday to evacuate people who didn't have cars?

Race, poverty, environmental degradation, diverting first responders across seas to fight a devastating, ill-conceived war--we can all do all that math. But then, when the storm that everybody knew was coming hit, to just, leave people--and then what the fuck are we doing bringing them to the Astrodome? A football stadium is a sensible place to take cover for a few hours during a hurricane. It is NOT a fucking refugee camp. It's not a place you can house people in. Not in a country with so many houses.

come to me, september

Classes began with great promise.

Some of the highways Laurel and I drove on a month ago are gone.

I went to every one of those big massive anti-war protests before the Iraq invasion started, but since I left DC I can hardly bear to have anything to do with Iraq. It is hard to remember how hard everyone worked. It's painful to remember how people made themselves keep hoping the war could be prevented, just so we could keep doing the work. When I went to those rallies with hundreds of thousands of people I would feel hopeful again, and I would go back in to the office and work as if there was still a chance. Now, peace rallies are memorials for people who died because we couldn't stop it. It makes me feel hollow. I am letting other people pick up the hope-stoking for me for a while. There were no Crawford trips for me.

But I did go see Cindy Sheehan and her compañeros today when they got to Austin. One soldier who came back from Iraq said "At Camp Casey I found the America I thought I had lost." Loving community/right to be heard=these things are capable of incredible feats of healing, I think. I don't love all of Ms. Sheehan's rhetoric and I am not optimistic about future prospects for democracy or stability in Iraq or a U.S. military withdrawal but like I said, that's why I'm leaving the hoping to other people for a little while.