Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Bodies in the Backwater


You're poor, dirt poor. 
You have no car.
You have no credit card.
You have no way to pay for a hotel even if you could find a way out. 
Payday is tomorrow, you don't even have the cash.
You're poor, you're black, in the deep south...
And a hurricane is coming to town.

'They should have left' says the accumulated wisdom of two doctors sitting in a restaurant in Brussels sipping on wine. This after witnessing the deaths of hundreds - horrible, avoidable, neglected deaths in the most disgraceful response to a natural disaster in our history.

Bloated bodies floating in the brackish backwater, lying in the streets, for days. 
6 days of suffering, of hunger, of thirst, of constant reminders they are unimportant, don't matter, even if that means they die - unnecessarily.

'They should have left' - as if. Racist, ignorant, spoiled, superior, inhumane, and sadly - typical.
It took all my will not to spit in their smug, arrogant, dispassionate faces. 

For sure - never forget - how far we have yet to go.



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