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Fall 2005 In this Issue: "Time Out" Gives Special Families a Break Joan M.Driscoll-Kelly - a life dedicated to social responsibility
* Includes Expanded Content only available online
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Higher
Ground Early on, as it gathered lethal force, Katrina drew us to watch the meteorologists' pulsing diagrams, fascinating and then horrifying us as the storm hit and then hit again. The drama seemed to play out in slow motion, at least for us, safely remote from the reality. Briefly, it even seemed that the damage was not as bad as had been feared. Then the levees broke, the water rose, a lovely city drowned and the tentacles of wreckage stretched throughout the region. The images piled upon each other: cadavers bobbing in the flooded, fetid streets; people "survivors for the moment" waving for rescue from rooftops; human flotsam beached in the desperate, ironic sports arena. Most indelibly: the photo of the matriarch, her dark and deeply lined face staring at us, her head and shoulders draped with the red, white and blue. The headlines grew terser and terser, typeface too large for more than one or two words. "Overwhelmed", shouted one, with perhaps unintended specificity. "Whelmed" literally means covered with water
We
are a small group of women friends who asked these questions of one
another on a recent evening, just as millions around the world are asking.
We sat in comfort, healthy and well-fed, happy to be with one another.
We come from different ethnic As we talked, circling the underlying truth, we spoke of the hospitality that our brave and beautiful city is extending officially and unofficially. We are proud that so many are reaching out in small ways and large to welcome the sisters and brothers who come to us without material possessions, bereft of everything but their human dignity. Then
we put the question into words. Was it racism that hobbled the response
to Yes, we had to admit. Racism underlay, overarched and surrounded this tragedy. Maybe not the blatant racism of the Klan, maybe not even the conscious racism of segregation but an entrenched, systemic attitude that infects our society. What can we do? People of good will, we are convinced, comprise the majority of America. Among the haunting photos, many showed the power of human love that ignored racial lines. A Caucasian rescue worker hugged a little African-American girl as if he were her father, his expression mixing hope, relief and worry. A young black woman pleaded for help for the elderly white woman she held by the hand. Civic groups, churches and synagogues and mosques rallied to receive the displaced, mindless of color. And
still, the undeniable imbalance in Katrina's impact forces us to
admit that color still makes a difference, still marginalizes too
many in America. What can we do? We can pour energy and imagination
into a rescue effort that goes far beyond emergency response. Recovery
is months and years away. We must find ways to translate our initial,
open-hearted welcome into long-term support for the newcomers who
must rebuild their lives entirely. We can also talk about what went
wrong, what part each of us plays in failing to love our neighbor,
failing to know our Paula Lawton Bevington |
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The
exodus, another kind of deluge, spread evacuees everywhere. Recriminations
rose as the waters finally began to recede. Why had reaction been
so slow? Who should be held responsible for the multiple failures that
cost so many still uncounted lives? Was something more complicated
than bureaucratic incompetence part of the toxic mix?