STILL WASHED OUT
not so sweet home
NPR's Alix Spiegel has a multi-part series on how, two years post-Katrina/Rita, Gulf Coast residents are still struggling to recover. It's a powerful piece of radio journalism, especially in hearing the voices of people who sound desperate to escape the poverty they've become mired in. Equally notable was one of the quotes from a FEMA rep who basically said, "Katrina is what caused people's depression...living in FEMA's trailer parks is not a factor," when, clearly, everything else in the story points to the fact that the "recovery' has been, in many ways, as bad as the disaster itself. At the very least, the shortcomings of the government (state and federal) to address the continued suffering of Katrina/Rita survivors is laid bare - once again.
I wonder if any of the main candidates for 2008 really has any kind of comprehensive plan to address poverty (Edwards' aside and even then...) in America. The free market method of neglect clearly isn't going to do much to help out people who can't afford the cost of rent on minimum wage.
In more hopeful news, there was an extraordinary story in today's NY Times about Donnie Andrews and Fran Boyd, a former armed robber and drug addict, respectively, who are connected to the universe of The Wire: Andrews was the inspiration behind Omar Little's character (arguably one of the greatest gangsters in popular culture history) and Boyd was the real-life subject of both the book and mini-series, The Corner, which The Wire grew out of. Basically, the two pulled each other out of their respective private hells: Andrews helped Boyd escape the cycle of addiction while Boyd was instrumental is helping Andrews get paroled after serving 17 years of a life sentence for killing a drug dealer. As the story explicitly says, it's not a "happily ever after" tale but it does offer a sense of hope amidst an ocean of despair. (Credit: HHH)
And since we're on the media bent anyways, Sasha Frere-Jones disassembles just what makes Lil Weezy the greatest rapper alive for The New Yorker.
<< Home