A Year Later...

This past week marked the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. A year ago, we were all glued to our televisions or to the Internet, watching human agony and wondering why no one was helping. It made big news when one or two people went down to help, and when money was finally sent down, and real federal help, we wondered why it took so long, although we were relieved it finally happened.

Even now, I watch the footage, or they show how the affected areas look today, and I personally am still left wondering how this could happen in the United States. It looked like the tsunami affected areas in southeast Asia. Here, in the land of plenty, these people lost everything and no one was there to help them. Yet we are forwarding an agenda of war and killing on another country's soil, spending billions of dollars to "spread democracy" while our own people drown and rot in bacteria-laden water. There is all this killing going on so that we can have our claim on oil and prove our dominance, but we don't have the money to prevent devastation like in the South.

Part of me wonders how our government could not have fixed those levees, which they were warned would give at any moment. Then I look around my own state. We have failing levees, many which started to crumble and cause floods earlier this year when we had 1.5 months of rain. And our government has been warned time and again what would happen if those central valley dams broke. And closer to home, we have a bridge, one of the most heavily trafficked in the world, that may collapse if there is a major earthquake. And there is all this fighting over where that money is coming from, which has held up construction time and again, and meanwhile should the big one hit thousands may die. Where are our priorities?

I don't understand how all this could happen, and if I was the type who prayed, I would pray for all of those rebuilding their lives in the wake of the disaster. And, with elections right around the corner, I can only hope that the American people wake up and stop furthering the agenda this administration has set forth (there have been plenty of alarms going off - Katrina and other hurricanes, illegal wiretapping by our president, his staunch refusal to admit perhaps he was wrong about this whole war thing, critical leaks by his administration...).

Wow, this took a different path, but I am angry, and I think it is time others get angry, too!