Miss Gracie and the Reverend Al

The Reverend Al Sharpton is shorter than I am and arrives with quite a posse. He’s got a handful of Black Muslim security people and a relatively effeminate publicist who wears torn jeans, tight shirts, has a couple of piercings, and dictates who does and doesn’t get to speak with the Reverend. I should say right off the bat that I would have voted for Reverend Al in the election if he’d made it past the primary because for better or worse the power structure would have changed if Al were in charge (I can't imagine he would have handled this disater any worse). If you really want to see changes in America you make someone like Al Sharpton the President. Anyway, Al was in Houston to announce his involvement with a coalition of local churches to provide relief for the victims of Katrina. This may prove shocking to hear but Al blamed George W. Bush and his administration for what was happening. Though it is hard to present the argument that G.W. himself caused the actual storm (though since he is on speaking terms with God it seems like he could have at least tried to convince him to send the storm to Mexico) there is a fair amount of evidence pointing to his administrations refusal to provide funding in 2002 to repair the levees (in order to fund the war in Iraq) as well as the slow and ineffectual response of the men and women he put in charge of taking care these kind of emergencies as a root cause for all this excessive misery. Reverend Al also firmly believes that this happened because the people are predominantly black and so no one cared about them, but since I explained my opposing views on that before I will refrain from repeating myself (especially since I’m the only one who reads this blog and I hate to hear myself being repetitive).

Houston Congresswoman Jackson-Lee was also on hand. She used curious words like “dimmering” to describe the lights inside the Astrodome and referred to the situation in New Orleans as being of high “gravitude.” Since spell-check can’t find these words in the dictionary I will assume she must have been drunk and didn’t know what she was talking about. For that reason I will not comment anymore on what she had to say.

We were supposed to be following Al down into the bowels of the Astrodome as he made his big tour of the “evacuees” (a term Al has coined and I actually agree is more apropos). It turned out though, that Chris and I’s little escapade the day before had caused quite a stir and the Red Cross was adamant that there would be no further exploitation of the victims of this terrible disaster. They told us we could only go in if we went up to the nosebleeds and filmed from the rafters. Since this vantage point doesn’t really provide for the tear jerking kind of imagery worth actually working for, we opted out and instead went and had lunch at the Olive Garden.

No sooner had I received my mushy pasta and bland marinara sauce when the phone rang and we were told that we should head to Sugarland where some lunatic woman had actually agreed to let evacuess stay in her home. We hopped on the Westpark Toll Road, promptly missed the exit for Alief Clodine (which is not marked), turned around and then missed the Highway 6 turn off and the 59 South exit before settling on just taking Bissonett all the way to Sugarland. For those who don’t know Houston, this meant that what should have taken twenty minutes was a one and a half hour ordeal.

Nice.

Once in Sugarland we pulled up to a rather unassuming suburban home and piled in. The story we found inside was amazing and even tugged my own cynical heartstrings to the point that I was near tears. Mrs. Gracie, as all her new guests called her, was a small, well-put together woman, probably in her late forties who looked like any other suburban mom. She had driven to the Astrodome to drop off donations and ended up bringing home a grandmother and her 14 month grandson, a twenty eight year old woman, and a family of four. The tales these people told us about what they went through in New Orleans and then at the Astrodome before being rescued by Mrs. Gracie were both spellbinding and terrifying. There was the story of Beatrice who was babysitting her 14- month old grandson when the levee broke and found herself on the roof of her home for 24 hours with the baby before being moved to the Superdome which she likened to hell on Earth. There was Antoine, a man who had a job and a car and who fled the storm but only had enough money for a couple of nights in a hotel and when the money ran out he had nowhere to take himself, his wife and his little boy. The kindness of Mrs. Gracie to bring these strangers into her home – and how much that meant to these survivors – was something I had never witnessed before. As much as I tend to distrust people who do extraordinary acts of kindness, always assuming that in the end they will ask for money or a hand job, Mrs. Gracie seemed to have no ulterior motive other than to act as she hoped someone would act toward her in this situation: with kindness. I was humbled by her goodness, and listening to the victims she gave refuge tell their stories in an environment outside of the chaos of the Astrodome brought the reality of what has happened home in a way three days of walking amongst the thousands had not. These were real people who had gone through a terror I couldn’t imagine and didn’t want to.

It had been easy the last few days to walk past the nameless dirty, tired faces that moved in and out of the Dome and forget that they are victims – to almost resent their helplessness and tell myself with confidence that there was no way that could be me. I would leave. I have a car. I have means. But there are plenty of disasters that I’d have no chance of fleeing (tornados for instance) and I can only hope that I meet kinder and more generous people than myself.

These people were screwed. Even a Libertarian has to agree that one of the roles of a Federal government is to take care of its citizens during a natural disaster. Our government did not. FEMA usurped the efforts of the local and state agencies and then didn’t come through. If you want to get the whole story on these things just read the paper. The stories keep coming. We should refrain from calling these folks "refugees" because that implies that our role in caring and accepting them is somehow a charitable or volountary act - it is not. These are American citizens who are the victims of one of the worst disasters our country has faced. An entire major city was destroyed and it is the job of their government to take care of those citizens. It is not a welfare project. It is their right to be rescued. Six days later they are still on rooftops - they are still in the convention center.

We should all be angry.

I am leaving Houston. I’m worn out and tired. I want to just hug my wife and kids and dogs.