PDA

View Full Version : gustav evacuees-learned behaviour?


reb
09-19-2008, 08:27 PM
snopes link:To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

alleged email:

Date: Wednesday, September 10, 2008, 7:42 AM

You, that are not from Louisiana do not understand that you can't do enough to help these people, the more you do-- the more they expect you to do, gimme-gimme-gimme and yes I meant to spell it that way. Volunteers work long hrs and they get spit on--yelled at--cursed.


Subject: Louisiana Evacuations & Shelters
Date: Sat, 06 Sep 2008 05:3 1:31 +0000

Hello Mr. O'Reilly,
I am a nurse who has just completed working approximately 120 hours as the clinic director in a Hurricane Gustav evacuation shelter in Shreveport, Louisiana over the last 7 days. I would love to see someone look at the evacuee situation from a new perspective. Local and national news channels have covered the evacuation and 'horrible' conditions the evacuees had to endure during Hurricane Gustav.

True - some things were not optimal for the evacuation and the shelters need some modification.

At any point, does anyone address the responsibility (or irresponsibility) of the evacuees?

Does it seem wrong that one would remember their cell phone, charger, cigarettes
and lighter but forget their child's insulin?

Is something amiss when an evacuee gets off the bus, walks immediately to the medical area, and requests immediate free refills on all medicines for which they cannot provide a prescription or current bottle (most of which are narcotics)? Isn't the system flawed when an evacuee says they cannot afford a $3 copay for a refill that will be delivered to them in the shelter yet they can take a city-provided bus to Wal-mart, buy 5 bottles of Vodka, and return to consume them secretly in the shelter?

Is it fair to stop performing luggage checks on incoming evacuees so as not to delay the registration process but endanger the volunteer staff and other persons with the very realistic truth of drugs, alcohol and weapons being brought into the shelter?

Am I less than compassionate when it frustrates me to scrub emesis from the floor near a nauseated child while his mother lies nearby, watching me work 26 hours straight, not even raising her head from the pillow to comfort her own son?

Why does it incense me to hear a man say "I ain't goin' home 'til I get my FEMA check" when I would love to just go home and see my daughters whom I have only seen 3 times this week?

Is the system flawed when the privately insured patient must find a way to get to the pharmacy, fill his prescription and pay his copay while the FEMA declaration allows the uninsured person to acquire free medications under the disaster rules?

Does it seem odd that the nurse volunteering at the shelter is paying for childcare while the evacuee sits on a cot during the day as the shelter provides a "day care?"

Have government entitlements created this mentality and am I facilitating it with my work?

Will I be a bad person, merciless nurse or poor Christian if I hesitate to work at the next shelter because I have worked for 7 days being called every curse word imaginable, felt threatened and feared for my personal safety in the shelter?

Exhausted and battered but hopefully pithy,
Sherri Hagerhjelm, RN

have fun, social liberals....

reb

blueback
09-19-2008, 10:13 PM
Ahhh. . .someone got to experience the problems inherent in basing morality on need first-hand.

The problem, stated logically, is thus:

It is good to provide what someone needs
Providing what someone needs encourages them to expect you to provide for their needs
People don't make other arrangements to meet their needs
People now have even more needs

Basically, the problem is that you cannot get rid of a need by providing for it. All you do is create more need. So the morality is inherently contradictory. If you try to do good by filling a need you only create more need which, based on the morality, must be bad. So you do bad by doing good, which is a contradiction.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't help other people, just that they should earn it.

Tenacious B
09-20-2008, 11:08 PM
I think you're spot on blueback. It is the dark side of the proverb "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime." Creating dependency does indeed create more need.


I would honestly prefer to face the storm head on than go to a shelter. For Ike I packed 20gal (in addition to full tank) and a few days of nonperishable food in the car and took a rout that added over 100miles to my trip to safety. All this to avoid the mob of shelters and interstate highways, and worked great.

reb
09-21-2008, 02:22 PM
Paulsen (the son of Pat Paulsen???) doesn't want to deal with funding for Ike today; he wants to save the banking system....George Bush don't care what happens when it's texas that gets hit....everthangs fine in crawferd.....
reb

dragonsscout
09-21-2008, 03:04 PM
I'd like to point out that the status of that was undefined, so it very well could be false. White supremacist organizations have written several false letters similar to this to show the primarily black residents of New Orleans in a bad light. Other rumors have just been that, rumors.
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

That aside, I am a big fan of the "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime." proverb that Tenacious B first raised. This is why I don't support free food handouts unless they are in the very short-term and instead support things like microloans (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.).

reb
09-21-2008, 09:07 PM
this woman dint mention race. i dint view it as being anything to do with white supremacy or black supremacy, or any supremacy, just 'give it to me, i deserve it'. that attitude always torques me....doesn't matter who it comes from. no one 'deserves' anything they don't earn. if people were 'deserving' of anything, they'd have enough intelligence to not live near the hurricane coast, and not live below sea level...the dutch get away with it because they don't have the u.s.s. of a. government/corpse of engineers building their levees...lol!
reb

dragonsscout
09-22-2008, 01:56 PM
Yeah, it tweaks me too. What I meant though was that the majority of people living in New Orleans are black, or at least it seems that way when viewed though the lens of the media. If someone made this up they wouldn't have to mention race.

Avid
09-22-2008, 03:19 PM
While New Orleans is dominantly black, the "entitlement" attitude there doesn't have a race. I'm right around the area this crap is going on. I've seen the FEMA camps with people (assorted colors and mixes) who have been living out of them for 3 years but still insist on playing the "I lost all my stuff from Katrina" card looking for sympathy. They milk it and milk it. Some might say in some cases they truly need the support but when I see a perfectly able bodied person crying for disability.....or some of the ridiculous junk from that letter...ugh! I should get my husband to share his stories. He is working a 24/7 call center right now that is handling the Gustav bunch. Yes, people are still calling in for help. The stupidity and insulting nature of some of them is amazing.