----- Original Message ----- From: "Dorothy Titus" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Mpls Forum" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, November 04, 2005 9:10 PM Subject: Re: [Mpls] Justice Du Jour
Dottie Titus says (and MT responds):
I wonder if that was the thinking in New Orleans as well. It certainly resulted in an oppressive situation for the poor who did not have cars and could not reach the buses to evacuate. But perhaps they should have thought about that inconvenience in advance and tried to solve the problem on their own by some creative means.
MT: The citizens of New Orleans who couldn't get out were not oppressed. They were victims of their own government. Oppression implies an enduring culture of subjugation by cruelty or being kept down by unjust force or cruelty. I don't think this was the case in NO. Keeping that in mind, when things go bad, more often than not, government will fail the people. Government screws far more things up than it solves owing to the massive amounts of bureaucracy and political patronage. Katrina was another example. I got news for ya: FEMA's first mission is NOT about managing emergencies. FEMA's first mission is ensuring the existence of FEMA. Do you think if the federal government really cared about the citizens and managing emergencies, they would have put a former horse show judge at the top?
MT: The government in New Orleans failed the residents, not the transportation system. The transportation is an entity run by the government, it is not a tangible being that cun run itself. City officials failed to properly plan. State officials failed to properly plan. Federal officials failed to properly respond, as illustrated above. However, to some extent, when you live in hurricane land, you hold some (not all, but some) responsibility for getting yourself out when the hurricane IS COMING. You also, like it or not, hold some responsbility for living in hurricane land in the first place, just like people who live on flood plains do when their homes get flooded or people in LA who build on the San Andreas fault. I would never live on the Gulf Coast without an idea of how I will get out on THREE DAYS notice. Maybe I'm expecting too much of people.
Cities nearly always have a certain population that do not own cars either for convenience or because they cannot afford to. In my neighborhood, 21% of those in the workforce used public transportation to get to work (2000 census). 27% of the population lives below the poverty line. Public transportation is important. Certainly, it is not a "right."
MT: That's not what Robert Halfhill says. He says transportation is a right. See below.....
Then Robert Halfhill of Loring Park says (and MT responds):
Access to adequate public transportation is a right. If you think of it in collective terms, we can either collectively provide for adequate transportation for the people living in this city or do it the way we do now, with most people providing for their transportation individually and clogging the streets and polluting the air > with a plethora of private automobiles.
MT: I do not see the connection to transportation being a right so as not to clog the streets with a "plethora of private automobiles." Public safety is a right, but it is not a right just so we don't clog the streets with private security guards. Your connection is not clear.
Were you actually being serious or were you satirizing the position that adequate transportation is not a right when you said that the people in New Orleans who > were trapped there should have come up with some "creative means" of solving their lack of a way of getting out of the city? Well, I've got news for you. I don't > own and cannot afford an automobile and if Pararie Island ever explodes, I can't get out of here either. I will be completely dependent on the mercies of the government to provide emergency vehicles.
MT: I am responding to your points above, though I know that your response above was to another's posters comments. That said: It's not too late to plan. I believe in the old adage of "if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten." If you're banking on the government to come through for you on this one, you run the significant risk of being let down, once again, by a system that honors bureaucracy before citizens. Make a contingency plan. Hell, contact me back-channel and I'll volunteer to be your ride out of town should the sh*t hit the fan. Seriously. And no, I'm not a survivalist. I'm a realist...... who realizes that the government is not always the answer and often makes things worse than they were.
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