Politics of words

Words are powerful. They color how we respond and feel to people and situations. Our fellow citizens along the gulf coast are not refugees. They are Americans. These are American citizens that the government has failed. We have failed! Why has the media latched on to the word refugee? Do they not see American citizens as such in a time of crisis or disaster? Why is this the first time that the media has referred to it's own citizens as refugees in their own country? Is it because the faces that fill the screen are faces of color, of the poor, of the sick? Not only black people were trapped and rescued and died in New Orleans. Are the people displaced in Alabama or Mississippi refugees? Yes, the images of people rescued from New Orleans look very much like the images of those that we see when viewing images of people from so-called third world countries. But this is NOT A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY AND WE CANNOT CONSCIOUSLY OR SUBCONSCIOUSLY REFER TO OUR FELLOW AMERICANS AS SUCH. We do ourselves a disservice. We fool ourselves into thinking that it's them and us. We fool ourselves into thinking that that is not America that we are seeing on television. These things happen to others, refugees, right? NO!!!!! What we are witnessing is happening on US soil. It is happening to Americans!!!!!!!!!!! This could be our fate tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!

What we call a people or person guides how we treat them. Is the United States on a humanitarian mission in New Orleans? HELL NO!!!! We are saving our own people who we have allowed to perish for days in situations worse than Abu Ghraib? These are our own people, in our own beloved city of New Orleans. It could be Baltimore, or Washington, DC, or Atlanta, or any other United States city tomorrow.

President Bush did not go to New Orleans to witness the devastation of a people victimized by a hurricane and a flood alone. By the time he arrive and the government responded he was there to witness a people, our people, that we have failed. Yes, my government represents me!!!! We have failed.

Mr. and Mrs. Bush went to see the refugees and tour the devastation caused by hurricane Katrina...Yeah, right!!!! No, No, No! That takes the United States government off the hook. That places the blame of this tragedy on natural forces, mother nature. People are dying because help and assistance has not been sent to them. IT is shameful for the richest, mort powerful nation on the EARTH to respond to its own citizens in need in this way.

Oh, but a refugee...we'll get there when we get there because you are lucking we are helping you out of the kindness of our hearts. They don't see New Orleans as their responsibility!!! That's wrong. Our government has a responsibility to all of its citizens. Rescue from a major natural disaster on our own soil should be an expectation that every American citizen has.

People make more of a concerted effort to go save beached whales. I know it's not the same, but the quality and timeliness of our response sure makes it seems like whales are cared about more than the citizens of the United States in New Orleans.