"There but for fortune go you or I."

[Fridays Child]

What would happen if we framed the behavior of the so-called looters and thugs not as individual acts of irresponsibility but as symptoms of a systemic societal illness? Katrina has torn the scab off of a very ugly class and race infection in this country--one that has been festering since Reconstruction. And, while the Civil Rights Movement and ensuing federal laws may have been a shot of penicillin, the disease was, by no means, cured.

Considering the generations of repression and bigotry that so many African-Americans have suffered, when I step back and take a look at the New Orleans situation, I cannot say, with any certainty, that I would not have been one of those looters or thugs. As Phil Ochs' song reminds us, "There but for fortune go you or I."

[Qibing Zero]

1. A post was made about this from the start of the 'looter' nonsense.

It summed up perfectly what you're getting at. Too bad it's gone now...

[Fridays Child]

4. I wish I had seen it. I've seen a thread or two on the debate...

...as to whether the looting is justifiable. But the perspective of those discussions seemed to be on the problem of theft, rather than the larger issue.

[Qibing Zero]

9. Yes, it is the larger issue.

People look upon anarchism and immediately condemn it based on situations like this, when in reality they are just too blind to see the fault in that. The chaos that results in the breakdown of a society filled with massive inequality has nothing to do with the nature of society sans rulership or government. Ignorant of how people feel when repressed, some say 'Anarchy doesn't work because of BAD people.' In reality, the society is what creates not only the 'bad people', but the class warfare as well.

We have the means, why do we not care for the good of the people? Greed under the guise of 'everyone deserves a chance!'

[Fridays Child]

10. Well said. nt

[Mz Pip]

2. I was talking to an acquaintance today

who is a conservative, but more in the traditional sense. He's no lover of Bush. And we started talking about the violence and he believed, as do I that if there had been help in there earlier on and people saw that something was being done it would have cut most of it. People need to believe that help is on the way before they can calm down. That didn't happen.

I told him that I get nervous and angry when I am hungry and my blood sugar drops. Who knows how I would behave in a situation where I was hungry, scared and had a gun.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[Fridays Child]

7. That's part of it, too. And the downtrodden who live...

...from paycheck to paycheck--if even that well--are never very far removed from that desperation flashpoint.

[Katidid]

3. I was watching the movie "Civil Action"

this afternoon, and the last words spoken in this film were from Kathy Bates when she asked John Travolta (Went something like this)

"What happened? What happened to all of your things ... things which measure the worth of you life?"

Turned off TV and Cried some more.

[Fridays Child]

8. It seems to be a sadly appropriate question, on a number of levels. nt

[MaineDem]

5. Another Phil Ochs fan

And you're so right. At any given time any one of us could be that person on the rooftop or the dehydrated woman outside the convention center or the man walking along the highway with all his wordly possessions in a plastic trash bag.

...or the person breaking into a store.

[Fridays Child]

6. Yes and, if only fortune distinguishes us...

...we are those people.