Katrina put me over the edge.... (Warning: Strong Opinions)

I still remember the reporter on the asphalt of the empty freeway:

"Why isn't someone helping these people?"

I still remember seeing the people on top of their houses, some with "Help! Diabetic" painted on the roofs.

I still remember the devastation of the Ninth Ward.

I still remember the football stadium where "refugees" were crammed together like vienna sausages in a can. (This was the early coverage, before "they" decided that using the term refugees was un-PC because, after all, they were Americans, too.)

It was like watching a war zone. There were trucks without tires, only rims, packed with people trying to escape. There were pregnant women with children walking aimlessly on the freeway overpasses. There were dead bodies abandoned along the side of the road.

I still remember that the Blackwater Security Service was dispatched, hired by the wealthy, to protect their property. It didn't take long for them to arrive. In fact, they got there before FEMA.

One wealthy New Orleans businessman personally hired the Israeli firm Instinctive Shooting International (ISI) to protect the elite gated community of Audubon Place.

... because the wealthy and their property are always more important than the poor.

The National Guard and other services patrolled the streets day and night with a shoot-to-kill mentality because some of the poor had to loot for food. One doctor was arrested for looting a pharmacy to get needed medication to start a clinic.

The wealthy were protected and the poor were left to die. It was genocide based on socioeconomics. At the time, so many were talking about race, as though race was the issue.

Poverty was the issue.

And it was then that I truly got it that it could happen here.

That it had already happened here.

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