« FEMA Refuses Help Left and Right | Main | Bush Family Quote of the Day »
Monday, September 05, 2005
Katrina Evacuees Welcomed at ABQ Convention Center: How We Can Help
9/7 UPDATE: All listed organizations have requested at least a temporary stop in people dropping off clothes, food and other items. Many need volunteers to sort and process what they have already received. Financial donations are still being sought. Please call the city information number at 311 or the organization BEFORE taking any items over there in person. Reports are that evacuees in the ABQ Convention Center now number about 40, with most having success in finding other housing.
9/6 UPDATE: The Salvation Army isn't taking any more clothing donations. The number of evacuees at the ABQ Convention Center is down to about 60 and it is unclear whether any more will be arriving, or when. Please DO NOT take donations directly there. Please call 311 to see if anything else is needed. Roadrunner Food Bank still needs volunteers but please call or email them BEFOREHAND.
As of late Sunday, 93 evacuees from Hurricane Katrina had been welcomed at the Albuquerque Convention Center downtown. It's expected that about a thousand people will eventually he housed temporarily at the facility, with a total of about 6,000 expected throughout the state. Governor Richardson has declared a state of emergency and released about a million dollars to assist help hurricane victims here in New Mexico.
How We Can Help
According to the Albuquerque Journal, you can call the City of Albuquerque info line at 311 for information on how to help, to find out what items are needed or to offer housing to those who need it. Call the state at 1-800-610-7610 to find out where to drop off diapers, baby food and baby formula needed for disaster relief.
The NM Human Services Department at 1-866-638-6819 is coordinating donations of other goods and services.
Call the NM Department of Children, Youth and Families at 1-800-610-7610 to find out what they need.
Also, Roadrunner Food Bank needs food donations and volunteers to sort and process the food and other items they're receiving.
TO VOLUNTEER: After 8 a.m. Tuesday, call 247-2052 ext. 101 or go to www.rrfb.org to e-mail availability.
TO DONATE: Send checks to Roadrunner Food Bank/Katrina Disaster Relief, 2645 Baylor S.E., Albuquerque 87106. Baylor Drive is off Gibson a few blooks east of Yale boulevard on the South side of GIbson. In addition to regular food items, they're also now accepting baby food, formula and diapers.
Donations for the Roadrunner food bank are also being collected at the New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority, 444 Fourth St. SW.
American's Second Harvest is coordinating nationwide food support for hurricane relief.
SALVATION ARMY offices in Albuquerque are accepting: Blankets, Pillows, Towels, Toiletries, Clothes (especially men's), children's toys. Bring them to 411 Broadway SE (a couple blocks south of Central) or 6821 Academy near Jefferson and Osuna area.
September 5, 2005 at 03:16 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink
Comments
No. Donations are not the answer, they are the problem.
We have a federal government, formed to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. We have a federal government because some things are too big to be efficiently done by individuals, cities, or states.
Katrina is a national disaster, not an aggregation of individual and local disasters. It isn’t just places such as New Orleans and Biloxi and towns in Alabama, it’s a major portion of the United States. New Orleans isn’t just one instance of solely local and humanitarian interest, it’s an integral part of a national system.
We all enjoy the benefits of New Orleans. The Kansas farmer who exports his wheat by sending it on barges down the Missouri to the Mississippi to be loaded onto oceangoing ships benefits from New Orleans. Anyone who buys anything imported through the port of New Orleans (and that’s almost everyone) benefits from New Orleans. Anyone who buys gasoline or natural gas refined or piped through the gulf also benefits.
New Orleans - and Biloxi, and everywhere else - are necessary to the general welfare. We all live better because they exist. That makes preserving and protecting them a necessary part of promoting the general welfare.
Justice and fairness require a federal response. Just as we all share the benefits, we all must share the costs. Allocating costs is an inherent function of government. That’s what politics is all about - figuring out how we can all share the costs and benefits of our national system.
The costs of displaced persons shouldn’t depend on the accident of where they happen to land. It shouldn’t cost Albuquerque residents a penny more, or a penny less, whether 93 refugees arrive here or 930, whether more are sent to Houston instead of Albuquerque.
The benefits given to those refugees shouldn’t depend on where they land. Refugees sent to a rich area shouldn’t get better treatment than those who end up being sent to a poor community. Justice and fairness require that everyone injured by Katrina should be helped equally - and that means being helped by a coordinated national governmental effort, not by piecemeal local and individual efforts.
Practicality also requires federal effort. Only the federal government has the authority and scope to mobilize and coordinate a national response. The Mayor of New Orleans can’t know what resources can and should be brought from Albuquerque, or where the most accessible stores of drinking water can be found in Texas. Even the Governor of Alabama can’t intelligently decide how to allocate and assign available resources among the states of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. That must be a federal responsibility.
On a more personal note, decades ago I was a member of a Search and Rescue team here in Albuquerque. We went out looking when someone was reported lost in the forest or overdue returning from a hike anywhere in the state. I learned that there was nothing worse than a search without a single entity in charge, except for a search with a lot of untrained, unequipped and unprepared amateur searchers. People died when there wasn’t someone in charge to make sure that resources were deployed where they were needed, and had adequate communications and equipment.
Yes, whoever happens to be on the spot when an emergency arises must respond as best they can. But when we’re talking about bringing people in from across the country many days later, hordes of amateurs are worse than useless - they’re another disaster in the making.
That’s why practicality requires a coordinated federal response.
But instead of a federal government that’s prepared to do its job, we have chosen a government that believes it shouldn’t do anything. We have chosen a government that believes the answer is always less government and lower taxes. We have chosen a government that believes individuals and agglomerations of charities can do a better job than the federal government which we, the people, established and ordained.
We’re paying the price for that choice. Unfortunately, some of us are paying a far higher price than others; as usual, it’s the poor and the minorities paying the highest price.
But the answer is not more charity: the answer is a competent and responsible federal government. Charity is a cosmetic fix: it makes things look better without fixing the underlying problem, the problem which we know will recur again and again.
We in Albuquerque bear our share of the blame. We chose Heather Wilson, Pete Dominici, and George Bush. We must accept responsibility for our mistake, get rid of them, and re-establish a federal government which will establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare.
Posted by: Michael H Schneider | Sep 5, 2005 6:24:03 PM
I agree with you but in the meantime charity is all we have and if it helps people, that is a positive.
If people aren't getting what they need from the government do you suggest we should just let them suffer because we believe in the principles you describe? Seems pretty cruel.
Posted by: Pissed Off Voter | Sep 6, 2005 9:37:08 AM
It's statements like that that give us liberals a bad name.
Please don't say that in mixed company.
Posted by: KathyF | Sep 6, 2005 5:33:41 PM
I wonder if your average Katrina refugee would agree that the donated water she is drinking, the donated food he is eating, the donated clothes they are wearing "are the problem." Just because you seem to have misplaced your own benevolence, please don't belittle other "amateurs" who answer the call for help in any way they can.
Posted by: Part of the problem in ABQ | Sep 6, 2005 10:10:16 PM
“It's statements like that that give us liberals a bad name.”
If you have a reasoned basis for disagreement, I’d sure like to hear it.
“If people aren't getting what they need from the government do you suggest we should just let them suffer because we believe in the principles you describe? Seems pretty cruel.”
It’s a difficult question: is it ethical to help prop up an inherently unjust (or unethical, or immoral) system by trying to mitigate the symptoms without addressing the underlying wrong?
My feeling is that it’s unethical. That merely treating the symptoms of injustice, without responding to the underlying cause, just allows the unjust system to perpetuate itself and causes more injustice. That’s why I made such a point of the fact that we are seeing a federal government problem rather than an individual or local problem. That’s why I alluded to the Constitution twice.
We’ve also seen that the effectiveness of private charity can be very limited. We’ve all seen the stories about how the various private charitable endeavors were prevented from helping the victims. If private charity isn’t going to do much good anyway, is it something we should support?
On the other hand, I may be wrong, so let’s look at how one should contribute according to the current rules our government has adopted.
First, don’t contribute unless you have a substantial income and itemize deductions on Schedule A of your 1040. If you don’t itemize, every dollar of aid you give takes a dollar from your pocket. If you’re high income and do itemize, each dollar you give takes only about 72 cents from your pocket. In other words, our official government policy is that it should cost poorer people more to help the victims of Katrina. My inference is that only high income people should contribute.
Second, don’t throw cash into a collection bucket. Contribute by check or credit card, and contribute to an organization you know for sure is a 501(c)(3) charity, so you get your fair share of government help with your contribution.
Third, don’t contribute goods or services. The value of your time and labor isn’t deductible; in other words, our official government policy is that it’s valueless. The fair market value of goods is deductible, but it’s very hard to document and claim. So do what our government policies reward: give money.
Remember, our government assumes that people make rational economic decisions. Our tax structure reflects this assumption. It’s only fair to do what our government chooses to encourage.
At this point it’s mostly moot: the emergency has passed. But I think this is an important question because it will inevitably recur.
Do we want a government that continues to rely on individual charity to provide essential government services, or will we insist on a government hat can do its job? Remember, every dime you donate makes it easier for people to say “let’s lower taxes some more, let’s underfund Fema, let’s cut the budget for disaster planning and prevention, and instead let’s rely on private charities”.
And, of course, pay your taxes. I figure that my share of the $10B relief package Congress will consider soon will be about $50. I’m happy to pay that. In fact, I think that I should be paying more taxes, and I think this would be a really good time for congress to consider increasing and re-allocating disaster preparedness and relief efforts. I’d be a lot happier to pay more taxes to support disaster efforts in the US rather than killing people in Iraq (for which I’m probably going to pay several thousand dollars). In a representative democracy, taxes are the way we try to fairly allocate the costs of civilization among those who get the benefits.
Posted by: Michael H Schneider | Sep 6, 2005 10:18:58 PM
“Just because you seem to have misplaced your own benevolence, please don't belittle other "amateurs" who answer the call for help in any way they can.”
Benevolence? Benevolence???
This should not be a question of benevolence. Webster’s 3d New Int’l defines benevolence as ‘a kindly disposition to do good and promote the welfare of others”.
This is a duty, not a question of benevolence. Promoting the general welfare is a duty we all share, a duty we created a federal government to carry out. Helping our neighbors isn’t a matter of kindly feelings, it’s our obligation. To meet our obligation we should insist on - and pay for - a government that is competent and effective. To rely on kindly feelings, rather than our duty to and through the government, is to belittle the obligation.
Posted by: Michael H Schneider | Sep 6, 2005 10:30:40 PM
Of course we should push our government to better fund FEMA and the rest. That's not in question. However, debating the pros and cons of tax considerations and the ethics of government while suggesting people refrain from helping in their own ways is wrong-headed, to say the least.
Debate away, but people's lives are in the balance right now. The emergency isn't over. It's just begun.
Posted by: Pissed Off Voter | Sep 7, 2005 9:28:07 AM
“debating the pros and cons of tax considerations and the ethics of government while suggesting people refrain from helping in their own ways is wrong-headed, to say the least”
Why? I’ve given reasons to support my conclusion. Where has my reasoning gone astray?
“The emergency isn't over.”
Yes it is. I’m using ‘emergency’ in the the dictionary’s sense of “an unforseen combination of circumstances or the resulting state that calls for immediate action”. (3d New Int’l, again).
These circumstances were foreseen, and this is the ninth day since they arose. It’s long past the time for doing the first thing that pops into our heads. We’re past the time when “whoever happens to be on the spot when an emergency arises must respond as best they can”, as I said in my first post. Now’s the time for an organized, planned, cooperative, considered response.
Any intelligent response must face the question of why we, through our government, botched it so badly, and what changes we need to make in our government so we don’t botch it next time.
Correction: I’m behind the curve on the cost. Apparently Bush is asking for another $50B, so my share of the taxes is looking like $300. See:
https://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/07/katrina.washington.ap/
This morning I ran across some people saying what I’ve been trying to say, but doing a better job. See:
https://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=22644&mode=nested&order=0
https://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=22643&mode=nested&order=0
Posted by: Michael H Schneider | Sep 7, 2005 10:42:35 AM
"We have a federal government, formed to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare."
This seems to be a juxtapostion of the preamble with the writer's beliefs. Strike the words "federal government" and replace them with "We the People". The federal government was formed as the instrument of the Republic. No where in the Constitution does the document profess that the legislative, executive or judicial branches will usurp the right of the people to practice goodwill. Charity begins at home, with the individual. It is not, nor should it be, the job of the federal government.
"I believe in less need for charity, and more of it when needed."
If you are able to give, with a glad heart, to a cause you believe in, do it.
Posted by: Candy | Sep 20, 2005 3:35:33 PM
I have just arrived in New Mexico after 3 years of being displaced from Hurricane Katrina.The Salvation Army refused to help me and they are useless.The Director in ABQ is cold,stupid and could care less.I am a survivor,I pay my own rent and noone does anything for me except me.
Posted by: Darby | Feb 12, 2008 7:43:03 AM
