one million american refugees

Never before have I heard the phrase American refugees. When you hear the word refugee you think of Bosnia, Iraq or Cubans riding makeshift boats to make it to Miami; not the population of new Orleans. I have been sitting and watching the news reports, looking at desperate people faces who simply want fresh water and a place to sleep that is far away from rotting corpses. The one vision of this is the pictures of the person at the superdome in new Orleans who had a sheet draped over them and a note as to whom to contact because they were dead. A human being, and American was shuffled in a corner tagged and covered. I don't even know who to be mad at.

A human being should not die that way, our society has more respect for livestock than to let them rot in a corner.


Another thing I have heard over and over again has been a sentiment that new Orleans is a lost city, that we should not rebuild it because it is vunerable to a natural disaster. Oh yeah, no other city is vunerable to a disaster such as this. There is no city in California built on a fault line. Nowhere in the Midwest can you find a town in an area called "hurricane alley". Here in the northwest we have cities where they are built in the shadow of an active volcano! Even Seattle is on a fault line and combined with that half of the city is built with fill dirt that will liquefy if; not if; when we have an earthquake big enough.
would you say the same thing about rebuilding Seattle or Olympia? If a catastrophic event happened here?

like most people I talk to about this tragedy, I am in shock and dumbfounded. Dumbfounded by the destruction, the chaos, and the lack of support these people have received.

I am sorry you hurt, I and many people I know are sending money, whatever we can to rebuild what you have lost. Not because we expect when this happens to us you will do the same, but because it is what we do as Americans. It is the right thing to do.