Comments on: Levees and lives: New Orleans four years after Hurricane Katrina

By: jack

jack — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:34:18 +0000

i have to agree with the last two posts on this one whats up with people blaming the victims? it’s like every time there is some thing terrible(katrina or the LA roits)that happens to the black commuity they must be the cause of it like the way pat robberts(or who ever it was)said that the hurricanes hit for ressons of sin?

By: flora poste

flora poste — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:46:01 +0000

Dina, are you the same vicious, horrible person who says on NA’s blog that Russian women are prostitutes and women harassed in Jordan are asking for it? You sure sound like it. Please stop with the vile, bigoted, victim-blaming comments.

By: Zan

Zan — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:27:49 +0000

Dina, you’re talking like an idiot. Those people who “should have left”? They couldn’t. They had no vehicles. They had no money. They couldn’t catch the bus to get out of town, because the buses stopped running well before Katrina hit. They stayed because they literally could not get out. The government knew this was going to happen. They knew that 100K New Orleanians had NO WAY of getting out and what did they do? Nothing. They said “sorry, we won’t help you”. They had no shelters open. They had no place for people to go. They abandoned those people, knowing full-well they were trapped. I’m lucky. I have a car, I have money to afford fuel. I have family upstate that will take me in. But for many, many, many people down here that’s not true. Many, many, many people down here have never left the city in their entire lives. They don’t drive. They work low wage jobs and barely get by. Katrina hit at the end of the month, when the scarce funds they did have were already gone. Do you think anyone WANTED to sit through a (at that time) Cat 4/5 storm? Those people who “should have left” are no different than you or me, we’re just LUCKIER than they are, that’s all. The buses stopped running, the planes stopped flying, they had no car, no money, no shelter to go to. So stop the damned victim blaming. They didn’t ‘get themselves killed’. They were abandoned because they were seen as expendable. And they continue to be abandoned by a government/culture that doesn’t value them, doesn’t want them and probably wishes they had all drowned.

By: Dina

Dina — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 09:33:12 +0000

I think the devastation is really sad, and also the fact that the government is not helping the way it should be. But you have to admit that a lot of the people who died or suffered should have just packed up and left and would have been OK. I’m not talking about the old grannies obvs, but some of the other people.