Sharon wrote: <Our company of 600 employees expects to raise and donate $10,000 for Katrina. Social groups and churches are donating. You just dont hear about it.>
As I said previously in response to Ricki's statement - this is in the US and we are hearing about it. There's *nothing* happening in the UK at all. For the tsunami relief, people here were chucking money in buckets, holding all sorts of events and donating to all sorts of charities over several weeks. For this, there's nothing *in the UK*.
Also as I said before, whatever the truth, the *perception* is that the relief efforts were at best chaotic, people were left to suffer (especially the black and poor), dead bodies are being left to rot (so life is cheap). This is the *perception*.
When asked why the people of the UK haven't reacted in the same way as we did to the tsunami, an ordinary person in the street interviewed on TV a couple of days ago summed up the *perception*: "It's not the same thing, the tsunami victims were from a poor country; the US is rich and powerful; it's spending huge amounts of money on Iraq so it doesn't need donations from us; if it can mobilise troops for that, it's obviously got enough people to help itself; disgust at the way it seems that the poor and black couldn't get out before the hurricane hit, but the well-off could; how come reporters were on the scene, but it was supposed to be so difficult for relief to get through?; why were people left in the stadium with insufficient sanitary facitilites, without food and water for so long?" - This is the *perception*.
Naturally reporters will latch on to the sensational, but if it wasn't there they couldn't report it.
It doesn't matter how much you say on chat individually, you can't alter the *perception* people generally here have of what happened until the media report events in a better light.
Someone who lived in New Orleans until last year, and now lives here in Dorset, said on local radio this morning: "Why didn't George Bush put on his jeans and wellies when he went to see the area instead of wearing his immaculate business suit? That would have done just a little to improve the image to the rest of the world in this disaster."
Jean in Poole, Dorset, UK To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
