to believe in this living
I've noticed that I call this "the disaster". It reminds me of my first disaster, Hurricane Katrina.
My Katrina time comes up for me in weird ways right now. There's this knowledge that I had forgotten I had that SBA was efficient when FEMA was not in getting cash out the door. There's the FEMA Check song that I was finding stuck in my head 15 years later last week as I fought for cash assistance. It's a disaster because I feel myself doing disaster relief. Get people food, security, whatever that new need is.
When I was in Mississippi, I knew that we were not sufficient. People deserved social workers, they deserved master electricians, and people across the country deserved to be paid to meet the needs. We were kids. We were figuring it out. We tried. But people deserved better than us. Faster than us. More skilled and more experienced and better resourced than us. I learned a lot and thought a lot about accountability.
Our government owed them more than what they gave them. Which was tens of thousands of unpaid volunteers rebuilding two states worth of damage.
(Katrina aside for a moment: I deeply believe that in New Orleans, the federal government failed on an explicit covenant with the people of that city. That they would maintain a levy system that would protect them. The feds failed to do that. And that is an even greater injustice. In Mississippi, the issue was different and more common. Storms hit coasts. And mostly capitalism is what remains. People across the Katrina-affected area were left reliant on a slow and unresponsive federal government and their own bootstraps. And volunteers.)
I don't know what it is in me that looks up in anger in these moments. For better or for worse, I am the girl who runs the campaign to get the city to fork over money, rather than help set up the mutual aid network.
And I know it's their fault, and their responsibility, and all the thems that I don't want to let off the hook.
But...
I'm buying food every 10 days or so when I can make it out of the house before the grocery stores close and the whole process of being extra safe. It's for my neighbors. I don't know my neighbors particularly well, not beyond the few houses on my block. But I'm near some huge old apartment buildings, and I know that there must be people within 1,000 yards of me who are hungry.
It's a few hundred dollars worth of food, that's been picked up slowly over a few days. This was the 3rd time I did it.
In the end when I knew that we won $5 million, I was alone in my room.
On Saturday, I was painting my porch and my neighbor stopped by to tell me she wanted to leave food on my table. We talked and I gave her my number. She said she had elderly parents in the house, so she couldn't do much, but wanted to contribute some food she had. Yesterday, I was worried that I'd gotten some perishable stuff and wanted people to get it before it went bad. As I walked around the house and to put up signs on the block I talked to everyone I saw, speaking Spanish or English and telling people, hey if you know anyone that needs food, come by the house. And people talked to me as I put the food out. They tell me it's a good thing I'm doing. One guy after a passing greeting, turned around down the block and put $20 in my hand "for next time." I tried to talk to someone in Spanish who was collecting food from the table, though six feet and masks were making my comprehension pretty bad. But I think he was telling me about people he knew who were sick. He was clearly scared. I couldn't offer much.
I got teared up, yesterday, between some of these conversations. Walking back to the car to get another bag of food.
I wanted to go to the store because it had been almost two weeks. And people kept telling me how badly people needed support. Agitating me to agitate the system to act more quickly. And so I went to the store. In hopes that that would mitigate something for someone.
Here's the thing about disasters. I know it takes all of us. It takes all of all of us doing more. And that necessarily means the government, the corporations, the rest. But I know it means us too. And that the reality is, while it's not a big deal that college students gave up their spring break to be in Mississippi, and it's not a big deal for me to buy the extra groceries, it means, that on a human level, we care about each other. We care for each other. We are in the act of caring.
Postscript. When I was in Mississippi, we sang a lot of John Prine. He's one of few songwriters who I have learned in my adult life first from live singing, then only later from recordings. Singers stay with us, we hold them even when we are not with them, which we mostly aren't. I've appreciated John Prine in his death, and have let myself sink into his music again. The title is in his honor.
My Katrina time comes up for me in weird ways right now. There's this knowledge that I had forgotten I had that SBA was efficient when FEMA was not in getting cash out the door. There's the FEMA Check song that I was finding stuck in my head 15 years later last week as I fought for cash assistance. It's a disaster because I feel myself doing disaster relief. Get people food, security, whatever that new need is.
When I was in Mississippi, I knew that we were not sufficient. People deserved social workers, they deserved master electricians, and people across the country deserved to be paid to meet the needs. We were kids. We were figuring it out. We tried. But people deserved better than us. Faster than us. More skilled and more experienced and better resourced than us. I learned a lot and thought a lot about accountability.
Our government owed them more than what they gave them. Which was tens of thousands of unpaid volunteers rebuilding two states worth of damage.
(Katrina aside for a moment: I deeply believe that in New Orleans, the federal government failed on an explicit covenant with the people of that city. That they would maintain a levy system that would protect them. The feds failed to do that. And that is an even greater injustice. In Mississippi, the issue was different and more common. Storms hit coasts. And mostly capitalism is what remains. People across the Katrina-affected area were left reliant on a slow and unresponsive federal government and their own bootstraps. And volunteers.)
I don't know what it is in me that looks up in anger in these moments. For better or for worse, I am the girl who runs the campaign to get the city to fork over money, rather than help set up the mutual aid network.
And I know it's their fault, and their responsibility, and all the thems that I don't want to let off the hook.
But...
I'm buying food every 10 days or so when I can make it out of the house before the grocery stores close and the whole process of being extra safe. It's for my neighbors. I don't know my neighbors particularly well, not beyond the few houses on my block. But I'm near some huge old apartment buildings, and I know that there must be people within 1,000 yards of me who are hungry.
It's a few hundred dollars worth of food, that's been picked up slowly over a few days. This was the 3rd time I did it.
In the end when I knew that we won $5 million, I was alone in my room.
On Saturday, I was painting my porch and my neighbor stopped by to tell me she wanted to leave food on my table. We talked and I gave her my number. She said she had elderly parents in the house, so she couldn't do much, but wanted to contribute some food she had. Yesterday, I was worried that I'd gotten some perishable stuff and wanted people to get it before it went bad. As I walked around the house and to put up signs on the block I talked to everyone I saw, speaking Spanish or English and telling people, hey if you know anyone that needs food, come by the house. And people talked to me as I put the food out. They tell me it's a good thing I'm doing. One guy after a passing greeting, turned around down the block and put $20 in my hand "for next time." I tried to talk to someone in Spanish who was collecting food from the table, though six feet and masks were making my comprehension pretty bad. But I think he was telling me about people he knew who were sick. He was clearly scared. I couldn't offer much.
I got teared up, yesterday, between some of these conversations. Walking back to the car to get another bag of food.
I wanted to go to the store because it had been almost two weeks. And people kept telling me how badly people needed support. Agitating me to agitate the system to act more quickly. And so I went to the store. In hopes that that would mitigate something for someone.
Here's the thing about disasters. I know it takes all of us. It takes all of all of us doing more. And that necessarily means the government, the corporations, the rest. But I know it means us too. And that the reality is, while it's not a big deal that college students gave up their spring break to be in Mississippi, and it's not a big deal for me to buy the extra groceries, it means, that on a human level, we care about each other. We care for each other. We are in the act of caring.
Postscript. When I was in Mississippi, we sang a lot of John Prine. He's one of few songwriters who I have learned in my adult life first from live singing, then only later from recordings. Singers stay with us, we hold them even when we are not with them, which we mostly aren't. I've appreciated John Prine in his death, and have let myself sink into his music again. The title is in his honor.
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