[Leica] OT NOLA Katrina

[bdcolen at comcast.net (B. D. Colen)]

Tina, I suspect you've been spending far too much time in developing
countries, have become far too emotionally involved with them, and have lost
sight of the realities in your own.

I have only been to the Third World once - not the dozens of times you have,
although my once was to Somalia, which would make Honduras look like LA. But
I recall thinking returning to the U.S. and thinking, 'people here don't
even know what real poverty is, much less live in it.'

But then as time passed, I returned not only to the U.S. but to reality, and
I realized that poverty and standards of living are relative. First off, the
poor of NO live under normal circumstances under conditions far better than
urban poor in most countries outside Europe. However, they are living as
they are in a country that claims to take care of its poor, that claims that
all men are created equal, that holds itself up to the world as a shining
beacon of something or other. They live without hope, and with only the
barest of urban necessities, hidden from view in a rich, decadent city.

And now the scrim is ripped away - we can see who these people are and how
they live. We can see that they were left behind to fend for themselves in
the hell hole that New Orleans is now, left behind while the middle and
upper class fled in their BMWs, Escalades, and F-150s, left behind by a
government that didn't even think to start dropping bottled water and food.

If you want to condemn someone in the U.S., Tina, condemn the system that
has allowed this poverty to continue unabated since people first started
acknowledging it almost 50 years ago. The Mississippi Delta isn't much
different from the way it was in 1900 - and yet we condemn these people
because they don't pull together like the benighted poor of Central America?

Maybe its time that the church groups that so lovingly pour all their
resources into countries outside the U.S., and send photographers to
document their work, start shifting their focus to the poor in this country.
For they are poor, and they are suffering, even if they are not "as poor" as
the people in Honduras.

B. D.


On 9/1/05 9:28 PM, "Tina Manley" <images@InfoAve.Net> wrote:

> 
>> Scott
> 
> What unique conditions?  No money, no job, no education, no
> infrastructure?  All of that is present in rural Honduras