Blame Is Not a Game

I really wanted to take a break from writting about Katrina, but I just can't. You are forgiven if you can't read anything else about it and you just want to click on by. I will even give you something to go to...here.

I have seen and heard the chorus of people who don't think we should get involved in the "blame game" with regard to the Government's response to Katrina. I can understand to some degree why people say that. There is so much wrapped up in this tragedy that it seems almost impossible to assign blame for everything that happened and continues to happen. I also understand people who say "Let's just help people instead of pontificating on poverty, race, levees, blah, blah, blah. These people need help not words." To that I say yes, help people, but part of helping people especially the people most affected by this event (the poor, old, sick, young, and black) is raising a voice to ask why this manmade disaster happened and how can it be prevented from ever happening again.

I think now is the most critical time to talk about who and what entities are responsible for the incompetent preparations and early inept response to the Katrina crisis. I think if we don't work through and wrestle with who and whom is to blame then we are abandoning the people who were horrifically left to fend for themselves all over again. Which already happened to them once.

Yesterday the President accepted responsibility for the failings of the National Government he is responsible for. This is a watershed moment for any President to admit a mistake, and particularly for this President. For that I reluctantly CHOOSE not to be skeptical and believe that this is something he wanted to do instead of being compelled to do due to political factors. Bush is RIGHT to take responsibility he knows it and the majority of the country knows it. I eagerly await the Thursday address to the Nation to hear more about what he has to say. I wonder if in saying he accepts responsibility for the poor federal response that he will acknowledge that his failure contributed to the deaths of hundreds of people and that the poor planning facilitated the separation of more than 2400 children from their families. Bush should be extremely sorry for appointing Mike Brown as the head of the governmental organization that is supposed to protect us during natural and manmade disasters. Sure "Brownie" pulled it off in Florida last year but that was with a strong local and state government taking the lead, and FEMA playing the support role. It's ironic that Bush's whole platform for getting elected was "Making America Safer and Stronger" yet he appoints this guy as the head of FEMA. Then he tells him "Your doing a good job Brownie!" as people are fighting for their lives at the convention center and any person could see that it was indeed not a good job. Unbelievable!

By now most of you have probably heard the story about the couple who are being charged with 34 counts of negligent homicide because of their refusal to evacuate their patients in the nursing home they ran (story here). The article states that the couple was repeatedly warned to evacuate, but they did not. The Louisiana Attorney General states, "Their inaction resulted in the deaths of these patients."

Are we to apply the same logic of not playing the blame to this situation? I would hardly believe that many people out there would stand up for those two and say: "Hey lets not get into the blame game here. Those people were old, and many of them had a few years if not only months to live anyway. Logistically it would be a very difficult process to evacuate 34 elderly people with all their special medical needs and medical equipment to a safer place. And no one knew that the levees were going to break. Let's just think about helping rebuild the nursing home and taking care of those who made it."

I believe that justice requires us as a free citizens of the United States to ask questions. Those questions are important so that people can learn why or how so many people were left without help or resources for six deadly days. There are thousands probably millions of people who are physically and monetarily helping the victims of this hurricane. Watching these peoples stories and situations unfold before our collective eyes two weeks ago compel that kind of response. But valuable contributions aren't only limited to physical responses. There should also be a intellectual & critical response that examines what happened, why, who's at fault, and how to prevent it from happening again.

Finally, I have seen a few blogs where there is this dispensationalist idea that what happened in New Orleans was just the result of a broken and sinful world. That while it's tragic what happened to the poor and sick Jesus told us that we would always have those kinds of people with us. This view basically holds that the world is just a bad place, a sinking ship, and that all we can truly do as Christians is get people off the ship into our boats of salvation before the ship goes down. In part I agree with that kind of thinking. Nothing we can do can bring about the FULL kingdom of God until the return of Christ. However I find myself also leaning towards a Social Gospel view of humanity. What I take from that view is the idea that God works through faithful servants that bring hope to the poor, justice to the oppressed, and help create a society where the Kingdom of God is realized through God's children advocating and living for justice, peace, love, and freedom.

The Social Gospel aspect of my beliefs is what makes it impossible for me to separate the factors of poverty, race, class, and corruption from what happened with Katrina, and with what happens in Africa, the Philippines, the South Bronx, and other places around the world. These issues have to be addressed because when and if they are that ushers in a little more of the Kingdom of God where there will be no oppression, hatred, or greed. Again this is only fully realized at the return of Christ, but until Christ returns it is a moral and spiritual imperative that we (I) work to advocate justice for all God's children, and in the case of Katrina , accountability.