New Orleans

[bethlakshmi]

I'm stymied. I did just write my representative and my state senators, figuring that those are the people in power most directly related to me, that I can impact the most strongly.

The disaster simply overwhelms me. The tsunami (I assume) has cost more lives, but this is at home, not far away. I look at pictures, I listen to the reports by the mayor and I'm overwhelmed. Figuring the best way to make the resources I have count, and do whatever little bits of assistance I can.

I think since I have more money than time, right now, I will figure out how and where to send money...

Comments

[anne-lj.livejournal.com]

Money is what they need most right now. Money pays to transport rescue personnel and equipment, food, water, and medical supplies to New Orleans. And they will need a lot of money to take care of refugees for the forseeable future. I donated to the American Red Cross, but there are other reputable charities listed at www.wbur.org.

Hugs.

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Not to diminish the tragedy of Katrina, which I also find overwhelming, I have seen many such comparisons to the tsunami, and I still think trying to put them on the same scale is unreasonable. Katrina has killed something like 500 people, maybe as many as 1000. The tsunami killed 150,000. Does it really matter that much to you whether humans whose lives are obliterated live 1500 miles away or 9000? I find the destruction of New Orleans more personally affecting than the destruction of half the pacific rim's coastline, but I'm disturbed that we are comparing it to the tsunami, in much the same way that I dislike seriously arguing that an administration is worse than Nazi Germany, simply because it has more of a personal impact on us.

[lakshmi-amman.livejournal.com]

I think the point is that realizing it at all is opening the question to wonder at oneself - not to say they are at all similar, but to wonder at why locality makes a tragedy more profound. On at least one level, I would hazard the guess that loss of life in the 1,000s versus the 100,000s is not readily appreciable to people - me included. They are numbers on a page.

But then - the loss of one grandfather can be more frightening than the loss of an entire race, or an entire species. It's a matter of personal intimacy - not numbers.