Why I'll never be locked in a convention center

[wellstone_democrat]

I'll say it since so many else don't want to:

I'm not only *white* I'm an upper-middle class professional. Better yet! I'm not only a WASP, I'm a Pilgrim-descended-founding-father-last-named-American.

Someone's going to say: "Ah, but *they* can lock anyone up!"
"They" sure can but when my brother was a pot head and arrested he was let go without a record, no one confiscated my parents house, and his "future" wasn't damaged. When my sister with her "C" average decided that going to the same Ivy her friends were going to sounded fun...they found room on a "legacy" admit (you have 300 years of degrees from a place, they let your idiot next generation in...). Don't waste your breathe telling me it isn't so---I've 45 years on this earth watching what I can get with little effort versus what my "darker" or less educated and priviledged fellow citizens can get to believe anymore silly idealistic prattle. This event demonstrates it even to the willfully ignorant. If you are Black, if you are poor you are *less* to most of the people in this government and this country. Otherwise, it would not be the night of day 5 with STILL inadequate assistance.

My point is that the Convention Center is locked, the roads are blocked and camps with armed guards are near LA tonight because those people are Black and they are poor. The spectre of poor Black people "rampaging" through the countryside is an old nightmare. The armed security is there not for the mainly Black citizens--AMERICANS-- of New Orleans, they are there to protect everyone else from them or from their old well earned fear that what is reaped, might just be one day sown.

BTW: when's the last anyone mentioned all those people no one got out of attics huh? Think about it.

[tk2kewl]

1. Exactly why I said this about looting yesterday...

Have you ever been oppressed? Kept down? Not given opportunities while the kids on the other side of town have everything handed to them?

And then, after generations of that, had your government turn its back on you in your most desperate time of need? While your family fights for its survival?

I could see someone very easily thinking taking a TV was the justice they were owed.

[wellstone_democrat]

3. what kills me about that...

I saw teenagers and young men doing that when I watched---wow, big surprise! My own friends did stuff that crazy when they were unsupervised.

This is a city, the worst of the population who is predatory didn't evacuate for a variety of reasons of their own including the chance to prey on people and property. Why is this a surprise? Of course there are criminals among 80,000 people! So fucking what?

[tk2kewl]

5. i know plenty of well off white people who shoplifted

burglarized, stole cars, dealt coke, you name it. none of them did time other than a few days awaiting bail in the worst case

[Lindsay]

2. Hell, I can't stop thinking about them.

And the people in the convention center.

And the fact that BushCo got on the job and now most of the media is back to fluffing.

Can't get food and water to people for days, can't get them out of New Orleans, can't fix the levees, but they sure can spin.

Have I mentioned lately that I really hate those fuckers?

[wellstone_democrat]

4. did enough aid come in today even to the central areas?

All those trucks? Did they bring anything more than a photo-op backdrop?

[I_Make_Mistakes]

6. Well, they had a white restaurateur who fessed up to looting

in Philly ABC (I think) 11 o'clock news. He was white, and owned several restaurants in NOLA so I'm pretty sure he was fairly well-off. He said not direct quote, What was I to do I had to protect my family and get them out!