Getting married and getting off Medicaid was supposed to be wonderful, right? We didn’t take into account being sick long term. I miss Medicaid’s $4 co-pays. No wonder we’re so damn broke these days.

When our medical expenses are combined with what is taken out of Matt’s paycheck for health insurance, we are paying exactly the same per month on medical expenses as we are on rent ($1175).

Saw the doctor again today for a follow-up. Still sick. Bacteria and congestion just aren’t clearing up. I’m back on antibiotics for a month.

At least I’m not pregnant.

I think it would be more beneficial to all of us to be hearing from those people right about now. not just those from the first of the 53 years since the Brown versus Board but also from those from the last thirty years, twenty years — even ten years, since the racial divides in our country have changed so much over time.

Oddly, as a white person, I am one of those people: I was a racial minority at every school I attended after fourth grade except the private school (10th grade, for six weeks). An academic paper was written about several of these schools — the magnet school programs in my county that and I attended — by George Washington University professor Jeffrey Henig, called ‘Race and Choice in Montgomery County, Maryland Magnet Schools.’ (Those without access to an account can download the PDF of the document from my site.)

I couldn’t find demographics for the schools I attended for the years 1985-1996 (when I left school), but my memories regarding race, school, and friendship are fairly clear. Every school I attended from kindergarten on was very racially diverse. I don’t remember paying much attention to how many of the kids around me were one color or another until I was 10. My teacher that year was a hippie who began educating , me, and the rest of our class on racial politics. As a result, it was that year that I first noticed that the population of the new school I was attending was predominantly black, but I don’t recall that ever bothering me. That year was my second year in the magnet program. At the time they didn’t have a magnet school for sixth grade, so I went back to my home school for a year and then returned to the magnet program at a different school for seventh and eighth grades.

I don’t really remember the demographics for my sixth grade year; in my (white girl) memory, it seemed to be pretty even between black and white, with maybe about 40% both ways and the other 20% going to various Asian, Hispanic, or Latino-descent groups. But my years at the magnet schools were definitely different demographics, and once in middle school it was a breakdown that caused social pressure among us, though I’m not sure how many of us at the time realized how much of it was due to race, or all the politics behind the wall that we all created. There were three grades in our school of about seven hundred kids. Of those, two hundred were in the gifted and talented (GT) program (a magnet program) in grades seven and eight. If memory serves, no more than five of those kids were black or Latino in the two years I was there. One of the kids hung out strictly with the non-magnet kids, whom she knew before joining the GT program. Outside of the program there were maybe twenty other white kids in the whole school (, do you remember any better than I do? I can only remember about ten people for sure and then just the general impression that I remember from walking in the hallways between classes and stuff), a handful of Asian kids, and the rest of the population were black or Latino.

This generally created a bad vibe. Us GT kids were bussed in from all over the county. Some of us got on school buses at six in the morning — first class started at 7:55, last one ended at 2:45 — and didn’t get home in the evening until

School Briggs Chaney MS
Enrollment 930
African American 45.27%
Asian 16.88%
Hispanic 10.54%
White 26.99%

School Eastern MS
Enrollment 883
African American 26.50%
Asian 14.16%
Hispanic 30.01%
White 29.11%

School Montgomery Blair HS
Enrollment 3292
African American 31.74%
Asian 14.76%
Hispanic 26.00%
White 27.19%

School Paint Branch HS
Enrollment 1805
African American 42.05%
Asian 18.95%
Hispanic 9.09%
White 29.58%

Don’t let the door hit ya on the way out.

Watching the video of the resignation news is deliciously painful, by the way. The way he stumbles, the way he still wears that cocky self-assuredness even after yesterday, enforces how uncomfortable it is that the man is still there. Additionally, at certain points in the sixty-one seconds, I keep expecting to hear gasps or cheers, and instead there is the echoing silence of the press room.

I feel like dancing.

Funny, though, because according to the latest annual Transatlantic Trends poll by the GMFUS, 58% of USA responders disapprove of Bush’s handling of foreign relations, while only 40% approve… and yet, 97% of those same American responders echo the Bush school of thought that “terrorism [is] one of the most serious threats to security.” 79% of the same USA people queried said that “Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program elicits a shared concern,” and “that efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons should continue.” To avert the risk of Iran joining the nuclear weapon party, 28% of Americans want incentives, 36% want sanctions, and 15% said that military intervention is the best way to keep Iran from arming itself. Should non-military action fail in Iran’s bid for atomic weapons, 53% Americans polled said they preferred military action to there ever being a nuclear-armed Iran. I’m having a bit of déjà vu; 2003, Iraq, anyone? Look at Iraq so that you won’t look at the mess we created in Afghanistan, now look to Iran (who has no atomic weapons, so far, but lots of oil) instead of paying attention to the already armed North Korea.

Head spinning about the priorities, yet? Then you have a lot in common with Australia’s academic intelligentsia, who seem to be ignoring the problem in case it goes away. Of course, there are alternatives to this madness: reporter Peter Taylor is currently asking in a two part BBC2 documentary, Al Qaeda: Turning The Terrorists, the very radical question of “Is it time to talk to al-Qaeda?” [watch the television trailer] In the Guardian’s Comment is free blogs, Inayat Bunglawala argues that while it might sound like a radical idea, it wouldn’t be the first time terrorism has been ‘negotiated,’ sometimes even successfully. Food for thought.

* * *
Poverty is a big problem that often shows itself in odd ways. This recent story is a hell of an example:

A WOMAN travelling by train across the United States with her ailing father waited up to 23 hours to notify authorities that he had died because she could not afford to ship his body home to Chicago.

Daniel Stepanovich, 80, died of natural causes in Colorado, on Sunday, but was declared dead on Tuesday in Illinois.

We’ve got one hell of a social problem when shit like this is going on.

Conversely, there’s the opposite of poverty: affluence, the permeation of which in my hometown makes me feel like I’ve been drinking effluent. I didn’t think very many other people agreed with me– let alone people with power and influence — but apparently, I was wrong, as there’s a marvelous story in this past Monday’s WaPo that explains exactly why I feel rage every time I go back downtown, and why I refuse to do so any time in the near future. Some golden nuggets:

“This is what it [feels] like to be in Washington at the new fin de siècle. It [i]s an uneasy age of condos mortgaged to the gills, gentrification, urban tribes of twenty-somethings drinking martinis at $35-a-plate eateries, and the quiet but deeply embedded fear of terrorism, housing bubbles and national implosion.”

“They’re block-fillers and often very drab… the Web sites advertising these new homes emphasize a television idealization, or a suburban one, of what urban life supposedly means: youth, energy, power, elegance, nights on the town.”

“Politically and economically this is an urban success story. But look at the details of these buildings and they don’t seem very urban at all. Yes, many of them have street-level retail — and the chain stores are moving in. And yes, these buildings will bring thousands of new residents to a once-empty area. But they also have an inexorable thrust upward, to rooftop pools and running tracks and common areas that give their denizens a view of the city from a 100 feet up, rather than an immersion in it. That doesn’t mean the people who move in will choose a hermetic lifestyle, but the people selling or renting these spaces seem to believe that’s what’s appealing.”

“While developers and the city’s planners have absorbed some of the basic insights of Jane Jacobs, they overtly and intentionally flouted one of her darker warnings. Jacobs distinguished between two types of money that contribute to the remaking of cities. There is “gradual money” that helps maintain existing properties and finance small-scale new building and evolution within neighborhoods. And there is “cataclysmic money,” which can mean either the devastating removal of dollars (through, for example, the blacklisting of whole neighborhoods for mortgage or equity loans) or the blitz of new capital for urban renovation. In 1961, when she published “The Life and Death of Great American Cities,” the cataclysmic influx generally meant government-sponsored slum clearance and housing projects. But her observation about the aesthetic effects of cataclysmic money — how the sudden flood of capital generally leads to a loss of diversity and a uniformity of urban building — still holds today, if Massachusetts Avenue is any evidence.”

“Although many of the buildings pay a bare minimal homage to the residential style of old neighborhoods in Washington, their surfaces scream: This brick lacks gravitas.”

Yes, the developers have raped my city. They have mauled its very charm and chiseled away its eccentricities, much like they have done with Dr Maude’s Manhattan… and many other cities, worldwide.

No wonder Jane Jacobs gave up and moved to Toronto– she was fleeing the Vietnam war and found Toronto to be delightful. There, she kept up the fight for good urban planning and healthy city living. I wonder how she felt about what her beloved Greenwich Village has become over the last thirty years. Maybe she, too, felt disgust and defeat; I’ll probably never know, as she didn’t write much about New York after leaving it. A clean break, in other words. That’s what I’m looking forward to when I move in May, though I’m already disassociating as much as possible. Sometimes, you just have to let the pain go, even if it is over the death of one of the not-so-great American cities.

I always said I’d put roots down in a smoke-free city. I had thought New York, as they were the first in the USA. Scotland is on their way there, as is Brisbane. But now, so is DC.

How can you tell if someone is just passing through or if someone is truly devoted to where they live? Ask them what they do for the holidays: if they say they go home, that’s a key indicator that they don’t feel wholly attached to where they are now. If they say they go to visit family, then there’s a good chance that they consider where they are now to be home. Personally, I visit my folks and then get the hell out of the suburbs back to home as fast as possible.

Home. Most of my friends here don’t smoke. We’ve all eagerly been anticipating the smoke-free legislation passing. To be able to spend a night out being able to breathe and not come home reeking like an ashtray: that’ll be glorious.

I want to buy the house my grandmother was born in, down on Capitol Hill, and live there, and the building that used to hold my great-grandfather’s hardware store in Brookland, and turn it into an after-hours members-only club. Hell, if DC can really become smoke-free (which apparently, is really going to happen), then a girl like me can continue to dream some crazy ass dreams and maybe some of them will come true. Like attending Howard on full scholarship as a history student, and then getting a job with the now defunct City Museum. Dream baby, dream.

The first time around, in ’68, organizers took a lot of flack for leaving at night to go sleep at a motel. I guess I just don’t believe in the cause enough to be a martyr; for a while I was thinking, okay, yeah, fuck my health, this is more important, I’m gonna go do this and sleep on the Mall, but then reality set in and I realized what a completely fucking horrible idea that would be for me. I mean, yeah, it would help prove the point that people living in nasty conditions have failing health, but I’ve spent years trying to get better and finally have the opportunity and start seeing the Hopkins sleep guy next week–am I to fall on my figurative sword for that? Part of me says yes and part of me says no. I feel selfish and smart and cowardly and self-preserving and justified and two-faced all at once.

But finding this other group that plans to hold the same sort of camp-on-the-mall demonstration puts my mind at ease, somewhat, because now I know that at least there will be other people doing it. So my plan now is to distribute the edited statement to message boards, letters to the editor, blogs, etc., set up some site or something that links to all the other sites that are detailing accountability and demands, try to centralize facts and figures and such, and then point people very much in the direction of the Camp Katrina/Bushville people. Go align with them, ‘cos they have the right idea.

And hang my head because I’m scared to subject myself again to the conditions that make people sick–that have made me sick in the past. Scared that living down there will no plumbing and the mosquitos and the dampness and the mold and the ragweed and the stress will eventually end up giving me double pneumonia AGAIN and I’ll end up back in the hospital AGAIN and Cheney or Condi will win in 2008 somehow anyway and there will be a draft and people will get tired of the grind and go back to watching reality television and it will all have been for naught, anyway. I hope that’s not the case.

Anyway, the camp out on the Mall starts this Saturday, September 11.

Before King died he had been planning something he called the Poor People’s Campaign. The plan was to lead a massive group of the poor people of America — not just black, but of all colors — to Washington, DC. Upon the suggestion of Marian Wright, the people were to construct a “tent city” along the Mall in the nation’s capitol to demonstrate the despicable injustices the poor were experiencing. If necessary, their encampment would even disrupt the workings of the federal government. Under the direction of Ralph Abernathy, the first settlers moved in to what would become know as Resurrection City on May 13, 1968. Eventually 2,500 demonstrators were calling the Mall “home.” The demonstration peaked on June 19 (Solidarity Day) when 50,000 other demonstrators from all over the nation joined them. The city brought itself to a halt; after five days the federal government sent out armed troops to disperse the demonstration. Resurrection City was no more.

Though Resurrection City and the Poor People’s Campaign were considered to have been failed movements, they were ultimately successful in shifting consciousness beyond segregation and toward socio-economic justice: an issue that impacts more people globally as well as in the United States of America. After King died, the movement suffered from a splintering in organization and a lack of management. Without those key aspects, the splinter groups went their own ways and the united movement crumbled. King had been a seemingly irreplaceable universal modifier and so the movement has stagnated.

Between 1968 and the present there have been several events that have sparked similar controversy in the USA, namely the OJ Simpson trial and the beating of Rodney King. However, these incidents focused on only two individuals and not a mass population of people. Media coverage has (finally) brought to light on a mass scale the disparities that still exist even here in this nation. There still is no equality among the races and the economic divide is growing ever greater. There is no socio-economic justice. But now that the entire world is watching and is aware of the brutality of the situation, perhaps we can finally bring about the justice we have been waiting (praying, hoping, begging, fighting) for.

I think it is time to resurrect the Poor People’s Campaign. With the evacuees internally displaced all over the country, maybe it is time to bring back Resurrection City, both metaphorically and literally. We’ve seen the horrors in the New Orleans’ Superdome and Convention Center in the past week, though President George W. Bush did not stop to look for himself. Maybe instead of the Astrodome we should be focusing on a different temporary home — Bush’s backyard. The lawn of America: the Mall.

Liberty says to bring her the “tired,” the “poor,” the “homeless” “huddled masses,” and the “tempest-tost” — but she was saying that to immigrants when those very people live here, in the USA. They aren’t refugees; they’re your American people. Here we are, we’re right here, Mr. President…right here in your backyard. Now what are you going to do about it?

Though “Congress last week appropriated $10.5 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Defense Department, it is clear much more will be needed.”

The Democrats in the Senate are proposing legislature that would provide immediate assistance.

Ensuring health care for all displaced victims

* Immediate access to Medicaid for displaced victims.
* No need to prove residency or assets
* No copayments
* No penalties for failing to sign up for Medicare Part B in time.

Getting victims housing

* Emergency housing vouchers for displaced victims
* Expedited application procedures with no red tape.
* No tenant contributions until they find work.
* Tax incentives for private families to take in victims.
* Identify federal facilities that can house victims.
* Relief for homeowners facing threat of foreclosure

Getting victims to family members and friends

Many of Katrina’s victims have little or no access to transportation. Although FEMA has legal authority to address this, the agency seems overwhelmed and has proven unable on its own to meet the compelling needs of countless numbers of stranded victims. We therefore need to make this a White House priority and direct the President to lead a broad effort to quickly ensure that displaced victims can get to family, friends and others who can provide them with room and board.

Getting students into school

Bringing victims’ families together and placing them with other families

Getting victims cash to meet other basic needs

Providing financial relief to victims and National Guard

Ensuring victims have access to food

Restoring order

Helping victims get jobs

Supporting the National Guard

Requiring accountability

We should require the President to submit regular reports to the Congress on the status of recovery efforts, the number of victims who remain without decent housing, jobs, etc., and any additional resources or action needed to address the crisis.

Emphasis mine, obviously. It’s horrid and I hope it’s not the case, but I don’t think any of the above is going to happen. I’m sure they mean well and whatnot, but have any of these Senators actually taken a good luck at their public assistance system lately? They’re putting the evacuees on the same regular state and federal programs that are already over-crowded, under-funded, publicly derided, and constantly threatened by tax cuts. The programs don’t work. Putting that many more people on the system, even if they are given streamlined access (instant approval instead of waiting lists, no need for proof of income or identity, etc.) to the programs it doesn’t mean that being on the programs will help!

Some people have been on waiting lists for public housing for years; even with a voucher you aren’t guaranteed to find a place willing to take your voucher. The current food stamp program is a total mess — you try living on $30 a month for groceries and see how well you do. Medicaid is a disaster; most of the doctors who participate are no longer taking new patients and the ones who are aren’t always competent. The job program is a total joke. The case workers at the health department and Social Security department (who manage the public assistance services) have such high work loads and are so heavily stressed that their turnover rate is phenomenal; I’ve had more than six case workers in the past three years, most of whom don’t even return phone calls.

These people are not being helped by being put on the standard public assistance programs; they’re being left there to rot like the rest of us stuck on SSI with no way of getting off/out. This is not a real solution.

* * *

Bloomberg.com crunched some numbers and released a report earlier today. As of Monday 5 September:

• The evacuation has moved about 75,000 people to shelters in Louisiana and 35,000 to places in Texas;
• The death toll “is in the thousands” [a non-Bloomberg source is quoting more than 10,000];
• The hurricane has left more than $100 billion in damages;
• NOLA police shot eight people who fired at some Army Corps of Engineers contractors, killing six;
• 44% of adults surveyed said Bush deserves “a great” or “a good” amount of blame for the government’s response, 33 percent said “some” blame, 22% said Bush deserves no blame;
• $10.5 billion in relief funding bill for victims of Katrina;
• An estimated 70 nations, from Azerbaijan to Venezuela, have offered cash contributions to the Red Cross totaling more than $100 million. Many countries also have donated supplies ranging from helicopters to emergency rations;
• By noon Sunday, aid contributions totaled at least $404 million;
• The Gulf of Mexico is (was?) the source of about one-third of the oil consumed in the U.S. and about one-fifth of the natural gas. As of Sept. 3, 79% of the region’s crude-oil production was out of action, while 58% of gas production was shut;
• Katrina will cause will cause more than $100 billion in total economic losses, insured damage may be $50 billion;
• Lloyd’s of London said a Gulf of Mexico hurricane of Katrina’s size would lead to losses of $60 billion, with $10 billion in offshore energy and $50 billion in mainland property.

* * *

If all the above weren’t frightening enough, check out the story of 6-year-old Deamonte Love and his six tiny charges. I won’t spoil it for you, but if you read any of the human interest stories you should check out this one. You won’t be disappointed. Amazing kid.

- Another Paris fire in the immigrant “temporary housing” ghettos. Fatalities.
- Another bomb in India. Fatalities.
- Bush faked the levee repair photo op.
- Bush faked the photo op from a few days ago of him at a food relief center.
- Bush’s visit caused food deliveries to be halted.
- On Saturday, FEMA cut the emergency communication lines in Jefferson Parish.

The US press seems to largely be ignoring the “race issue,” which I find it to be…I’m without words. The Guardian (UK) has run a few pieces on it, and even Australia’s newspaper The Age has run a piece on the race-based issues post-hurricane, and Australia isn’t exactly known for its own good treatment of its black population.

In terms of race and tourists, The Age also has an article about Australians trapped in the Superdome. It’s a strange perspective; on the one hand, so much of Australia is just so white that I can understand how suddenly being a miniscule minority would be terrifying. On the other hand, the vocabulary in the interview made it sound like every local citizen in there was…well, a criminal, a primate, less-than-human, and that the only ‘decent’ or ‘humane’ persons were those in the Nat’l Guard. And somehow, I doubt that. If you act afraid instead of friendly, you’re going to get kicked in the head.

Anne Rice actually has a really good editorial in the NYTimes today; worth a read.

Theory on Federal Impetus Behind Fucking Up

Bush and Chertoff have delayed sending people in. They aren’t bringing in foreign aid. They aren’t bringing in aid from other US cities except military. They aren’t even letting citizens upriver bring boats in to help those still stranded. They’re rounding people up and slowly letting them go. They’re frisking them before letting them get on buses. It’s mandatory evacuation but they seem to be leaving a lot of people to rot, without food or water. Why?

Maybe not, but this makes sense to me: they’re paranoid. They know the area is vulnerable now, and so everyone (particularly those with dark skin) becomes a threat — a possible terrorist. Someone who might get down to the oil plants or lines and blow them up. That’s their fear.

Grown Men in Uniform, Crying

“Head of emergency management, his mom was in a nursing home. She called on Tuesday, asking, ‘Son, is somebody coming to get us?’ Yeah, mama, yeah, somebody’s coming, someone will be there. Wednesday, ‘Son, when are they coming?’ Soon mama, soon, someone will come. Thursday, ‘Son, are they coming? Is someone coming?’ Friday, ‘Yes mama, they’re coming, they’re coming.’ Friday night, everybody in the nursing home drowned. Nobody’s coming. Nobody’s coming to get us, nobody’s coming to get us… The secretary’s promised, everybody’s promised. We don’t need any more press conferences, for god’s sake, somebody…”
– President of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana (I didn’t catch his name)

This guy was calm, relating how everything was going down, how his people had repaired some levee problems on his side of the 17th Street levee, how Wal-Mart was being more efficient in their help than the government, how we need a new government. Then he got to the story above, which I tried to relate as best I could. The man went from being calm to having that high pitched voice of containment, his face turned purple, and by the end he wasn’t just speaking the voice of this man’s mother: “Nobody’s coming to get us…,” he was speaking for himself and everyone there.

What We Can Do

Other than give money, give time, volunteer at phone banks, we need to be thinking long term. The whole population (nearly 1 million people) from along the coast line has been displaced and is going elsewhere. As many of us know, moving is not easy. Finding jobs in this market is really hard these days. Getting into affordable housing is nearly impossible. These people, god, these poor people are so fucked. They’re gonna need real social services, real help.

Donations of: clothing, cars, food, school supplies, kitchen utensils, furniture, linens, computers, cell phones, etc. are going to be needed.

Then there’s the kids. Most of the families are going to be relocating to other urban areas. Most urban areas in the US are already overcrowded with underfunded schools. Classrooms with sometimes as many as 40 kids to one teacher, not enough books, out dated materials… it’s pathetic. And these kids are going to be coming in traumatized, with untold psychological troubles; they’ll be the odd ones out in the schools with the southern accents and few clothes and maybe still living in the damn Astrodome. Come on, let’s be realistic.

Short term, donate money to the Red Cross, etc. Long term? Donate your time. Go to your local Big Brothers, Big Sisters association and become a mentor. Sign up to tutor through your local school system or community center.

The other big thing is there is such a lack of affordable housing in regions where there is work. So many of the survivors were renters without insurance or savings. Habitat for Humanity has started Operation Home Delivery to bring the displaced new homes.

In the meantime, let’s not forget the impoverished or homeless populations in our own cities. Here in DC, the rate of children that go hungry every night is astounding. If you feel you can’t help because it’s too far away, at least help locally. Those people are human, too, and they’re also going through some tough shit and will appreciate it just as much.

So those are some things we can start doing in terms of relief.

In terms of protest… finally there’s been some organizing. National Day of Emergency Action this Wednesday, September 7 in Washington DC, Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco. 5pm at the White House. I don’t expect much turnout for this as everyone is still reeling, it’s short notice, it’s the middle of the week, it’s in the middle of rush hour, etc. I’m personally having surgery that afternoon and won’t be there. BUT let’s not forget that in a few weeks, September 24, is the long-planned Mass March of protest. What are we not protesting at this point? In my mind, a lot of Sept 7′s protest is going to roll over into Sept 24′s. ‘Cos everything’s just a fucking mess at this point. A disaster. And we need to speak up.

If anyone can come in from out of town for the protest on the weekend of the 24th, you’re welcome to stay here. We’ve got space.