Hurricane Season 07: Day 2 Indian Flood and Katrina Mud

Jun 2, 2007 by

I have recently had writer’s block. During Jazz Fest I was buried between moving house and working the broadcast that I had no time. Since then there has been so much that trying to focus in on one or two things at a time just frazzled me.

This morning, thanks to My Favorite Zombie(tm), I ran across this little gem. Go read the whole post, it’s a very interesting comparison.

Together we visited numerous villages up and down the Indian coast and listened to hundreds of people describe how the tsunami and its aftermath continues to impact them. We listened to displaced families as we sat on woven mats in steaming thatched huts as the temperatures passed 105. An entire fishing community told us their story under towering palm trees backed by the brilliant blue Bay of Bengal of the Indian Ocean. We ate rice, yogurt and fish off of banana leaves with our fingers while we visited with one village. Others shared what happened as we walked in the blazing sun through fields of women and men digging dirt with shovels and pails to construct a new road.

We shared the experiences of our gulf coast communities and the massive and continuing human rights violations perpetrated against Katrina survivors both at home and internally displaced. We shared a slide show illustrating human and civil rights violations after Katrina. After finding out that police fired weapons to turn away fleeing people trying to escape across the Mississippi river in New Orleans, the continuing displacement of hundreds of thousands, and the government’s determination to demolish thousands of usable public housing apartments, our Indian friends were incredulous. One said “This would never happen in our country. If this happened in India, there would be a revolution!”

The rest is here.  Read it, it contains a lot of very interesting analysis, as well as a joint declaration from survivors of both the Indian Flood and the Federal Flood of New Orleans. I wish I had found this for Memorial Day.

If anyone local is out and around I’ll probably be out at the Freret Street Fest….

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