Help, I need to answer this idiot about those that couldn't get our of New Orleans

[goddess40]

I guess the "poor" people in NO could not be evacuated out with the thousands of buses that were there either. Also, when did being "poor" equate to not being able to walk?! In any other country, people would have WALKED OUT if the incompetent leadership of state and city had shown some leadership.

Yes the federal government was slow and that was admitted from the top, but what about all the cops that just ran away?

The levees KNOWINGLY built to substandard is a statement that is incredibly inflammatory towards the people that were planning that, going back to the 90's. What is the point of building them at all if they knew they were substandard?! Get over yourself and stop spreading this victim-pandering at any occasion.

Strange, when I think about it, the people in Texas seemed to be able to get out in time when Rita arrived, but I guess they are just a bunch of "dumb rednecks" that didn't realize that Bush should have bailed them out..

You people are so full of hate and presumed rhetoric that it almost makes me want to register and vote against whoever you guys DO hate, if I wouldn't risk theatrics, I mean jury duty.

[Nitrogenica]

1. One gif sums it up for me.

[Rick Myers]

2. Some could probably have found higher ground if they were told where to go...

But the majority would not have been able to just WALK OUT. And then, there's the infirm, the elderly...

I was in a flood in Alaska in 1977, and we had to be FLOWN OUT!

Tell the idiot to FOAD!!!

[MercutioATC]

4. I work with a guy from LA...they are ALL very conscious of where the high ground is.

I'm not assigning blame, just agreeing with the statement that in most countries, the people would have gotten out on their own, not sat around like sheep waiting for government help.

[pitohui]

12. you are assigning blame based on your own ignorance

it is not possible for the least resourceful people to walk over 200 miles, the necessary distance, to reach safety

i'm tired of the lies and the spin

if people don't know how large a storm katrina was by this time of century, it's because they are being deliberately, maliciously ignorant

i drove 200 miles to evacuate to jackson, where the storm hit as a cat 2, and where i was told by state police that i had to move on because they could not allow us to stay there because of the extent of the storm damage, 97 percent of jackson lost power as a result of katrina

no one could have walked out and telling the poorest people, those single mothers with children, those older ladies with heart disease and diabetes, the handicapped, the elderly -- you know, the very people who are too poor to own cars -- that they should have just walked out is bullshit

anyone who walked out would have been killed either by the storm or by the exposure, the heat index in the week following the storm was a whopping 108 degrees!

i'm ashamed to be a part of the human race when i read posts like this on a board where you'd think people have at least half a heart and a brain

this is DU not free republic, at least TRY to engage brain before putting foot in mouth

[MercutioATC]

16. 2 words...."French Quarter".

That aside, I specifically stated that I wasn't assigning blame. I was responding to the idea that people in NOLA has no idea where the high ground was.

Get the stick out of your ass and read once in a while.

[justanaveragedude]

22. You may not have be assigning blame, however

Your agreement that people in other countries would not have waited on the government to get them out and would have found a way out is essentially the same thing as assigning blame and is bullshit by the way. If a storm of this magnitude hit Mexico City, there would have been 100 times more people dead.

Let me ask you, what would you have done if you were broke in New Orleans, didn't have a dime to your name, didn't own a car and had no way to get out of the path of the storm. What would you have done? Let me guess you would have walked (I've heard that stupid line to many fucking times). Where exactly I don't know. Do you think you could have gotten out of the path of this storm on foot? Have you ever driven to New Orleans? It's freaking a hundred miles to anywhere. Granted, you know well ahead of time that the storm is coming, but you just can't walk that far.

French Quarter? What the fuck? Please tell me you're kidding. I can see this conversation:

Resident #1: "Hey man, what are we going to do? That storm is coming, we need shelter.

Resident #2: "I know, let's all go to the French Quarter!!

Resident #1: "Yeah, let's go, it's the HIGH GROUND everybody knows that!!!"........."OK, we are here, now what?"

Resident #2: "Well it's the high ground so all 20,000 of us should be just fine. I mean it is the high ground after all."

Resident #1: "But dude what about the 150mph+ winds and rain, we still need shelter."

Resident #2: "No man, so dumbass on DU said "2 words.... French Quarter" so here we are at the French Quarter.

Resident #1: "Man, we are fucked!!!"

[MercutioATC]

24. Again, two words...."French Quarter"

I'd have walked.

I'd have walked to one of the places that ALL NOLA residents know is high ground...the French Quarter.


...and again, this isn't about blame. It's about how weak our society has become. The kind of weakness that has no plan if the worst happens and the government isn't there to help. That's what I take issue with.

[justanaveragedude]

28. Great !!you would have walked to the French Quarter and done

what exactly? Sleep in the street while a cat 5 hurricane was passing through? How many people were in the dome? What if only 1/2 of them would have gone to the FQ? (As you suggest, and which by the way isn't a very long walk) Where would have they stayed? It wasn't like the FQ was sitting there completely deserted with beds just waiting on people to come. Being on the high ground doesn't do you any good if you are still outside. It wasn't just about the high ground, it was about shelter. Being as high as freaking Mount Everest doesn't do you any good in a cat 5 storm if you have no shelter.

If saying that other people in other countries would have found a way out isn't just another way of saying, "Of course you could have gotten out, the people of India would have gotten out, and if they could've done it, so could you. It's just your fault for not doing it."

I mean if that is not what you are saying, why even bring up what others in another country would have done.

[ribrepin]

31. Oh please, I know of a man who stayed in New Orleans

He sent his family out, but he stayed. Bet you can't guess why! That's right he stayed to protect his property from looters. I guess he didn't have much faith in the NO police department. He'd worked hard all his life and had a house and some belongings. He stayed with his weapon, generator, gas, food and water. He didn't think anyone would be worried about protecting his little rattle-trap house...can't protect your property from the french quarter!!!! How's that for not being weak? He knew he was on his own even before the hurricane hit.

He still had gas for his generator when he was taken out of his house. If he could have seen the future, he would have left with his family. He thought he would have something after the hurricane.

[vademocrat]

3. Thousands tried to walk out of the city and were met by guns - here are a couple of links -

http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/2007/09/bridge_blockade_after_katrina.html

"But beginning Aug. 31, two days after the storm, a stream of evacuees started appearing at Gretna's city limits. Some had walked across the bridge to the Terry Parkway exit; some were brought in by Regional Transit Authority bus drivers desperately trying to ferry people out of the floodwaters.

Gretna officials said storm victims came to Terry Parkway because New Orleans police officers were blocking the exit ramps to General de¤Gaulle Drive, the first exit on the West Bank end of the bridge which is within the city limits of New Orleans. NOPD spokesman Sgt. Joe Narcisse said officers never blocked the ramps."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/racist-police-blocked-bridge-and-forced-evacuees-back-at-gunpoint-506371.html

"A Louisiana police chief has admitted that he ordered his officers to block a bridge over the Mississippi river and force escaping evacuees back into the chaos and danger of New Orleans. Witnesses said the officers fired their guns above the heads of the terrified people to drive them back and "protect" their own suburbs.

The desperate evacuees were forced to trudge back into the city they had just left. "It was a real eye-opener," Larry Bradshaw, 49, a paramedic from San Francisco, told The Independent on Sunday. "I believe it was racism. It was callousness, it was cruelty."

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. I remember hearing about that,. It was un-freaking-believable. Those people

who blocked the evacuees' routes should be ashamed of themselves.

[Rosemary2205]

8. It sickens me that America doesn't know this.

[Greyhound]

23. Thank you for saving me the trouble of finding this, yet again.

All of the information is out there, yet there are large numbers of the magical thinking, delusional, and willfully ignorant, that insist on posting this crap over and over and over and...

Apparently many of the flock still have not noticed that there are fewer and fewer of them every day.

[truedelphi]

34. Diane Sawyer went into Katrina and she interviewed

Some college age kids -- it was a terrifying interview.

The kids had banded together and had walked miles to leave behind NO.

But they were stood down at gunpoint by some sheriffs from one of the borderline towns that ring NO. They were made to go back.

The young woman in the group broke down and asked Sawyer if she could use Sawyer's phone - and then she called her Dad. When her father answered the phone, she was bawling and bawling.

They were only on the phone a few minutes, but the dad said he'd come and get her. I will never forget that interview.

[babylonsister]

5. Walked out during a hurricane, and to where? Don't even bother

with this person. If he/she saw those pics from Katrina and still has this opinion, there's no persuading him/her.

[ourbluenation]

7. who walks out of a hurricane? Just sayin...

[Rosemary2205]

9. I guess they were supposed to walk 300 miles in 2 days????

30 miles in one day is damn good for someone in tip top shape - for someone at the bottom of the economic pool, likely with health issues, children, elderly etc - they'd be lucky to make it 10 miles in a day. 20 miles isn't going to make one bit of difference in a hurricane.

[pitohui]

14. thank you rosemary

at least somebody in this thread isn't a freckin idjit

i really wonder about people sometimes

if they have no clue what a hurricane is or the size of katrina (it was roughly the size of the entire gulf of mexico) i wish they'd just shut the fuck up instead of airing their ignorance

[hifalutin]

17. Didn't Nagin

let the buses drown?

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[slackmaster]

10. NOPD = Not Our Problem, Dude

:hide:

[pitohui]

11. no you don't "need" to do anything except stop posting GOP talking points

if you knew anything about the storms, you would already know that the evacuation for hurricane rita from houston was a disaster that killed over 100 people, including 24 elderly people in a bus that exploded, the remainder were killed from exposure because the traffic didn't move for 24 freaking hours -- plenty of DUers from houston were caught in the debacle that was hurricane rita evacuation and can tell you more than you ever need to know

by contrast the evacuation for hurricane katrina using the contra=flow was a success beyond the wildest imagination of the federal gov't which originally projected 60,000 deaths from such a storm, as it happened, the contra flow worked a miracle and people who evacuated by car got to safetly in greater numbers than ever believed possible -- 80 percent of those who evacuated to safety from the hurricane katrina disaster area got there by car

it was not physically possible to "walk out" -- i evacuated to jackson, mississippi, which is 200 miles from new orleans, where hurricane katrina hit as a cat 2 storm with the resulting damage, did you know that counties that far to the north were disaster zones, well, you did if you went through it

people who would have tried to walk out would have been killed by the exposure to the hurricane force winds including spin up tornadoes with winds in excess of 200 miles per hour that flung enormous trees and entire buildings around -- i saw an 18 wheeler that had been wind tossed and destroyed NORTH of jackson and i'm talking about 30 miles NORTH of jackson, a human being who tried to walk out wouldn't stand a chance

but if you (or your friend) knew anything about texas, louisiana, or mississippi, you (or this supposed friend) would know this already

the evacuation for rita from houston killed over one hundred people, as documented by the houston chronicle, if you can look in the mirror and call that a successful evacation and pretend that the state of texas knows fuck all about how to evacuate people in case of a hurricane, well, shame on you for lying to yourself

if rita had hit houston -- thank god it turned -- tens of thousands of people would be dead right now -- many of them dead in their cars, many of them DUers and their families

the evacuation of new orleans was a great and unexpected success story, unfortunately overshadowed by "spin" and the federal gov't trying to cast blame for their own failures on somebody else -- the state governors were responsible for setting up contra flow procedures and they did a fine job -- the feds were responsible for building/maintaining levees and getting fema and national guard in place and they did a shitty job -- so they had to crap on those who did something useful to deflect blame from themselves

what honest person doesn't know that this time of century?

[goddess40]

15. Of course I know this idiot isn't going to change his mind but...

when this shit goes unanswered people that read the blog think that it must be true. So I guess I'm not really asking to answer the idiot but to prevent his idiocy infecting others.

[Rosemary2205]

21. You just taught me something I didn't know

and I thank you muchly for your post. - I have googled supporting links that support your post and added to my ongoing list of Katrina info.

Thanks.

[azureblue]

13. Bush caused the flood

February 2001
Bush’s first budget proposed more than half a billion dollars worth of cuts to the Army Corps of Engineers for the 2002 fiscal year. Bush proposed half of what his own officials said was necessary for the critical Southeast Louisiana Flood Control Project (SELA)—a project started after a 1995 rainstorm flooded 25,000 homes and caused a half billion dollars in damage
February 2002
The president unveiled his new budget. Bush provided just $5 million for maintaining and upgrading critical hurricane protection levees in New Orleans—one fifth of what government experts and Republican elected officials in Louisiana told the administration was needed. Bush knew SELA needed $80 million to keep working, but the he only proposed providing a quarter of that.
February 2004
The SELA project sought $100 million to strengthen the levees holding back the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, but Bush offered only $16.5 million. The Army Corps of Engineers asked for $27 million to pay for hurricane protection upgrades around Lake Pontchartrain, including the industrial canal (the 17th st. levee)— but the White House cut that to $3.9 million. Gaps in levees around Lake Pontchartrain, which were supposed to be filled by 2004, were not filled because of budget shortfalls. IOW work stopped because of no money.

Bush also failed to put disaster response teams in place before K hit, unlike Nixon, Clinton and Daddy Bush did. W was eating cake, remember? But when Charlie hit Fl in 2004, Bush declared the state a federal disaster area to release federal relief funds. Less than two days after Charley ripped through southwestern Florida, he was on the ground touring hard-hit neighborhoods.

The bus thing is a hoot- Repubs lie over & over again to cover the fact that Bush caused the flooding of New Orleans, but they also lie to cover the fact that Bush promised Nagin when K hit that help, including buses were on the way, but Bush lied again.

Here goes:
9:30 AM — MAYOR NAGIN ISSUES FIRST EVER MANDATORY EVACUATION OF NEW ORLEANS:
“We’re facing the storm most of us have feared,” said Nagin. “This is going to be an unprecedented event.”
“Special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable to evacuate themselves.”
This is referring to evacuating people to an emergency shelter within the city, not evacuating people to points outside the city. The Mayor did implement an emergency bussing system that evacuated the city's poor and disabled to the Superdome. This can be verified by reading the plan at http://www.cityofno.com/portal.aspx?portal=46&tabid=26


BUSES:
Peter Pantuso of the American Bus Association said he spent much of the day on Wednesday, Aug. 31, trying to find someone at the Federal Emergency Management Agency who could tell him how many buses were needed for an evacuation, where they should be sent and who was overseeing the effort. This is an association of bus lines (including Greyhound), charter bus companies, and the like. In other words, a group of companies that could, if asked, rapidly provide large amounts of transportation.
Instead the agency had farmed the work out to a trucking logistics firm, Landstar Express America, which in turn hired a limousine company, which in turn engaged a travel management company. Landstar Express is a subsidiary of Landstar System, a $2 billion company whose board chairman, Jeff Crowe, also was chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the nation's premier business lobbies, from June 2003 until May 2004.
Jeff Crowe owns LandStar Express that had a $100million contract with FEMA to provide emergency evacuation services. LandStar Express didn't start working on the New Orleans evacuation until TWO DAYS AFTER Katrina hit. Then they subcontracted to a limo company who subcontracted to a Virginia travel agent...
They were trying to find 300 buses.
Meanwhile Greyhound and another company were trying to contact FEMA to offer 3500 buses at cost.
For this idiocy, LandStar's contract has been raised to $400million.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi0509230350sep23,1,1064399.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

[ZombieHorde]

18. Many people could not walk out, and

many people stayed to help them.

[Xenotime]

19. * was at fault. One .jpg does it for me too.

[KamaAina]

20. Two more pix, from a NOLA ex-DUer

not to mention the guy who lured me into the NOLA blogosphere where I am a frequent commenter.



Above is the memorial to Vera Smith, who died at the corner of Jackson Avenue and Magazine Street on Tuesday, Aug. 31 2005, the victim of a hit-and-run driver during the frantic evacuation of New Orleans after the Flood. Her body lay on the street for days until neighbors built a rough tomb for her from found bricks and buried here (see photo below). If you happen to stop by soon and the mums are still there, please water them.



(P.S. Magazine St. is among the highest points in the city)

[left is right]

25. 50,000 households without cars,

100,000 people with disabilities

End of month with way more month left than pay/government assistance

5 state established emergency shelters with room for a total of 1,000 or so

those who tried to walk out of New Orleans to a near by parish were met by a sheriff with a gun willing to kill any "riff raff" daring to cross over into his territory

and as mentioned above levees that were inadequate for the predicted category 4 hurricane. Tallest flood wall 16.5 feet tallest levee 13 feet--waves cresting at 18 to 23 feet

flood wall/levees that were 40 years old built for category 3 only but more importantly budget cuts for 20+ years meant no inspections or refortification or repairs. System pumps also 40 years old and most failed at crucial time not to mention long term erosion that allowed water to seep underneath levees

21 hours only of mandatory evacuation (without adequate evacuation plan) when city of NOLA's size would require at least 40 hours according to NOAA experts

[left is right]

26. surrounded on three sides by waters that flow directly into gulf

and a city that is 49% below normal sea level which according to IHRC is the number 1 and 2 reasons that NOLA is the most likely region to suffer major damage in a hurricane.

The people of NOLA were extremely fortunate that the actual landfall was 35 miles east--no one left in that unfortunate city would have survived

[Lydia Leftcoast]

27. Didn't the levies break in the early hours of the morning?

My memory is hazy on this point, but I believe that the night before, everyone was relieved that New Orleans had been spared the worst damage from Katrina, and then when I woke up the next morning, the news was all about how the levies had broken and flash flooded the Ninth Ward.

[kevinbgoode]

29. OH puhleeze. . .that storm was over 200 miles wide. . .

Now how in the hell are hundreds of thousands of people supposed to WALK along clogged highways, in ONE direction for a distance of a couple of hundreds miles in TIME to get out of the path of that storm? Do any of these ridiculous morons understand that people cannot easily walk around during a hurricane? And where in the hell were they supposed to WALK? To shelters that were already overflowing with people?

Let's see. . .some people drove to Jackson, Mississippi, and when the storm hit THERE the emergency centers lost power for an extended period of time and struggled to find enough food and water for the people staying THERE. Things weren't much better in Baton Rouge.

Does anyone know how many hours it would take for a healthy adult to WALK 200 miles? Or were they only supposed to walk to high enough ground to through a fuc*ing tarp over themselves and lay on the ground through the worst of the storm?

You can also ask that moron why, when there was a blizzard forecast for Colorado a couple of years ago, did we manage to find helicopters to drop food to the cattle? Aren't they capable of WALKING out of a forecasted storm? Weren't the people in Tennessee, hit by those tornadoes a couple of months ago, capable of heeding a storm forecast and WALKING out of the state? Why in the hell do those people live in a place which could get tornadoes anyway?

And you can most certainly tell that little fuc*ed up con-artist con-servative that you understand all too well that he doesn't believe American dollars should be used to help American citizens in America. And when you remind him that more foreign governments prepared help for hurricane victims than our OWN (and some had it ready sooner than OURS), why not ask him why Republicans have so little problem losing money in the goddamned deserts of Iraq, are more than willing to keep building and rebuilding the utilities for people overseas who are NOT American - who can just as easily WALK over to a country we haven't bombed the services out of yet. . .but he hates Americans SO much that he thinks WE should suffer so his fuc*ing political party can create a goddamned empire of corruption.

[truedelphi]

35. You say (And I agree)

when there was a blizzard forecast for Colorado a couple of years ago, did we manage to find helicopters to drop food to the cattle??

Well, we value our cattle in this country.

In the Bush administration, they place NO value on poor people, and especialy NO value on poor black people.

[OwnedByFerrets]

30. Please don't forget that the Hurricane wasn't

what killed all those people. They died because the levies broke and there were no contingency plans for that, even though the government knew they were substandard.

[cynatnite]

32. My understanding is they didn't have the resources...

bus drivers were gone and there wasn't anyone to drive the buses. I also heard the logistics weren't there.

A lot of this, though, I blame FEMA. They're supposed to be the know-how folks and 'heckuvajob' Brownie's nose was too far up bush's ass to do anything. Between bush and FEMA, they get 99% of it. They ignored the calls for assistance before the hurricane arrived.

[McCamy Taylor]

33. ICU patients, nursing home patients, the sick, elderly, infirm, hospice patients

had no way out of NOLA The transportation provided did not include ventilators and the specialized care one would need. So, their families could not leave without them. And if you are too poor to own a credit card, what are you going to live on once you are evacuated?

The RWers of the Country openly celebrated. Here is the first thing I posted at my website about Katrina:




As someone who has lived on Galveston Island, I know how hard it can be to judge when to evacuate---and that island has a fraction of the number of people of NOLA. Plus, it has a safety zone in John Sealy Hospital where I worked.

Once the storm struck, many people did try to walk out. We all saw what happened. Police set up road blocks and barricades to keep them in. Police shot at them, as if the evacuees were criminals.

Here is one of the latter collages I did about Katrina



And then they put Karl Rove of all people in charge of the reconstruction fund

[blonndee]

36. This kind of shit just inflames me more. NOTHING made me more angry than

the shameful neglect by Bushco of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf States area. In fact, that's what motivated me to go to D.C. for my first anti-war protest (it felt like the only symbolic thing I could do at the time). That protest is something I will never forget. Probably the most memorable part of my experience was a little speech after the protest, though, and I actually found it on Youtube. We were looking for a place to sit on the grass and not really paying attention until we heard this young man speaking...about three sentences in, we all jerked our heads around after hearing him and just stood there, listening. The video does not do justice, but after hearing this SHIT again here on DU, I had to look it up again, just to remember.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iNojJt80Do

“Giving all honor, thanks and praises to God for courage and wisdom, this is a very important rally. I'd like to thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts, feelings and concerns regarding a tremendous problem that we are currently facing. This problem is universal, transcending race, economic background, religion, and culture, and this problem is none other than the current administration which has set up shop in the White House.

In fact, I'd like to take some of these cats on a field trip. I want to get big yellow buses with no air conditioner and no seatbelts and round up Bill O'Reilly, Pat Buchanan, Trent Lott, Sean Hannity, Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Bush Jr. and Bush Sr., John Ashcroft, Giuliani, Ed Gillespie, Katherine Harris, that little bow-tied Tucker Carlson and any other right-wing conservative Republicans I can think of, and take them all on a trip to the ‘hood. Not to do no 30-minute documentary. I mean, I want to drop them off and leave them there, let them become one with the other side of the tracks, get them four mouths to feed and no welfare, have scare tactics run through them like a laxative, criticizing them for needing assistance.

I’d show them working families that make too much to receive welfare but not enough to make ends meet. I’d employ them with jobs with little security, let them know how it feels to be an employee at will, able to be fired at the drop of a hat. I’d take away their opportunities, then try their children as adults, sending their 13-year-old babies to life in prison. I’d sell them dreams of hopelessness while spoon-feeding their young with a daily dose of inferior education. I’d tell them no child shall be left behind, then take more money out of their schools, tell them to show and prove themselves on standardized exams testing their knowledge on things that they haven’t been taught, and then I’d call them inferior.

I’d soak into their interior notions of endless possibilities. I’d paint pictures of assisted productivity if they only agreed to be all they can be, dress them up with fatigues and boots with promises of pots of gold at the end of rainbows, free education to waste terrain on those who finish their bid. Then I’d close the lid on that barrel of fool’s gold by starting a war, sending their children into the midst of a hostile situation, and while they're worried about their babies being murdered and slain in foreign lands, I’d grace them with the pain of being sick and unable to get medicine.

Give them health benefits that barely cover the common cold. John Q. would become their reality as HMOs introduce them to the world of inferior care, filling their lungs with inadequate air, penny pinching at the expense of patients, doctors practicing medicine in an intricate web of rationing and regulations. Patients wander the maze of managed bureaucracy, costs rise and quality quickly deteriorates, but they say that managed care is cheaper. They’ll say that free choice in medicine will defeat the overall productivity, and as co-payments are steadily rising, I'll make their grandparents have to choose between buying their medicine and paying their rent.

Then I'd feed them hypocritical lines of being pro-life as the only Christian way to be. Then very contradictingly, I’d fight for the spread of the death penalty, as if thou shall not kill applies to babies but not to criminals.

Then I’d introduce them to those sworn to protect and serve, creating a curb in their trust in the law. I’d show them the nightsticks and plungers, the pepper spray and stun guns, the mace and magnums that they’d soon become acquainted with, the shakedowns and illegal search and seizures, the planted evidence, being stopped for no reason. Harassment ain’t even the half of it. Forty-one shots to two raised hands, cell phones and wallets that are confused with illegal contrabands. I’d introduce them to pigs who love making their guns click like wine glasses. Everlasting targets surrounded by bullets, making them a walking bull's eye, a living piñata, held at the mercy of police brutality, and then we’ll see if they finally weren’t aware of the truth, if their eyes weren’t finally open like a box of Pandora.

I’d show them how the other side of the tracks carries the weight of the world on our shoulders and how society seems to be holding us down with the force of a boulder. The bird of democracy flew the coop back in Florida. See, for some, and justice comes in packs like wolves in sheep's clothing. T.K.O.'d by the right hooks of life, many are left staggering under the weight of the day, leaning against the ropes of hope. When your dreams have fallen on barren ground, it becomes difficult to keep pushing yourself forward like a train, administering pain like a doctor with a needle, their sequels continue more lethal than injections.


They keep telling us all is equal. I’d tell them that instead of giving tax breaks to the rich, financing corporate mergers and leading us into unnecessary wars and under-table dealings with Enron and Halliburton, maybe they can work on making society more peaceful. Instead, they take more and more money out of inner city schools, give up on the idea of rehabilitation and build more prisons for poor people. With unemployment continuing to rise like a deficit, it's no wonder why so many think that crime pays.

Maybe this trip will make them see the error of their ways. Or maybe next time, we'll just all get out and vote. And as far as their stay in the White House, tell them that numbered are their days.”

Transcript thanks to http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0927-20.htm