by Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky
We also suspect the media will have been inundated with ‘hero’ images of
the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the
‘victims’ of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we
witnessed, were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief
effort: the working class of New Orleans. The maintenance workers who
used a fork lift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who
rigged, nurtured and kept the generators running.
The electricians who improvised thick extension cords stretching over
blocks to share the little electricity we had in order to free cars
stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical
ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing air into the
lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued
folks stuck in elevators.
LINK
(Via StuartDavis.com)

And also:

The God Who Drowns
I’m driving into work listening to 1010 WINS. The news coming out of the Gulf Coast is nothing less than horrific.

Pulling into the parking lot I listen to a man describe how his boss listened helplessly as his elderly mother, trapped in the rising floodwaters at her nursing home, pleaded for help….
(Via waiterrant.net)