IMPORTANT 'felons were the first to feed, the first to respond to need,..'

[bobbieinok]

IMPORTANT ARTICLE...all articles here are very important

http://www.blackcommentator.com/151/151_dixon_katrina.html

....

"We kept expecting to see the National Guard, the government, the Red Cross, somebody to do something. The idea that our leaders would allow people to fend for themselves two, three, five days with no food, water, medicine or help from outside – we just couldn't get our minds around it.

"People were dying by the hundreds in New Orleans, and more folks we knew in Mississippi, in Alabama were hurt, missing and homeless or hungry. You've got two choices when you see something like that. Choice one is to feel defeated. Choice two is to be pro-active and do something about it. There were about six of us in my living room at that moment, all movement vets. We called around to see what we could make happen ourselves.

"The first folks to send a couple of vans of food and supplies was TOPS, The Ordinary Peoples Society, a prison ministry in Dothan AL founded and staffed by ex-offenders. They organized food from a food bank, pooled their money to get additional goods and moved it to Mobile where they connected with a second organization of formerly incarcerated brothers down there to distribute it while they went back to Dothan for more. That's why we tell everybody now that it was felons who were the first to feed, the first to respond to need, the first to get up and do something. They didn’t wait for permission or for a contract. That’s real leadership.”

The Real Leaders

Rev. Kenneth Glasgow of Dothan Alabama and Paul Jackson of Mobile each spent a decade in prison. Both are part of a network of black civic and religious organizations that have fought for years to restore the right to vote to over 200,000 former prisoners in Alabama, most of them African American men. Glasgow and his organization hustled food and got the first vans on the road southbound to the gulf. Jackson and his organization met the vans and guided them to where the need was greatest. “We started going into the projects,” said Glasgow. “We went to Orange Grove and other places, somewhere the water had reached second floor windows, but nobody had seen FEMA or the Red Cross. We just started targeting areas where nobody else was coming.”

more....

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. Yeah, so what.

All REAL christians were sending money to Operation Blessing where scrupulous accounting made sure that at least 10% of it actually reached people in need.

Who's the real criminal here?

Props to those good men who could think and do for others.

[jwirr]

2. It is not unusual for prisoners to be used in relief work when

there is an emergency. Many of the towns along the Mississippi River have let them help in sandbagging.

[applegrove]

3. I look forward to this. Yes - important site to bookmark.

[bobbieinok]

4. kick for Saturday