Charity work

This is the first in a series of five posts on Katrina over the next day or so. It also gives me a chance to try out a new feature, categories. I'll go back and categorize everything else over the next couple weeks. (Edit: actually, there won't be any categories until Mozilla fixes their Greasemonkey add-on to plug the massive security breach it contains.)

I refuse to believe anyone reading this blog at this late date might not know how to help victims of Katrina. But I nonetheless feel I must link to my two favorite charities here, both of which are very deeply involved in Katrina relief efforts. First of course is The Red Cross; second is UMCOR, the United Methodist Committee on Relief.

I've really wanted to take a leave of absence and go out there and volunteer in person, get my hands dirty in relief work instead of sitting up here in my nice cozy house with my great view and sending money so other people can get dirty. I felt the same way after Ivan destroyed Grenada last year. So far, though, I haven't yet found an appropriate relief agency that's ready to do the kind of work I want to do. Texas is doing a good job of providing hands and bodies to care for the Astrodome refugees, and I haven't seen many other places that are seeking volunteers. Yet. I'll keep you posted.

Take a jump and read the rest of the post.


There have been people on all sides criticizing the government's response to this disaster. I'll deal with that matter in an upcoming post. I would like to start, however, by pointing out that I have yet to hear anyone, including government officials, claim that the response was perfectly adequate and on time. I think were anyone to make that claim they'd immediately hear about it from the folks in Louisiana and Mississippi. In short, there doesn't seem to be much doubt but that the government could have done more, faster, to respond to Katrina.

Accepting that as a given, then, it's worth adding that the Red Cross and UMCOR and others were in the area--particularly in Mississippi, which was significantly more accessible after the disaster than parts of Louisiana--sooner than any government agencies. The power companies had trucks and crews assembled and ready to enter the disaster zone before the storm struck. Individual boat owners and the local fire and rescue units were already on scene doing most of the early lifesaving work, long before outside government agencies arrived on scene.

In light of the above, how ridiculous is the idea that the government should contract out a lot of its disaster response?

I'm not talking about the kind of contracts we give to Halliburton. I'm talking about the government giving funding to agencies like UMCOR and the Red Cross and others. If the Red Cross had skiffs and big trucks and everything else that they actually maintained, that had been given to them by the government, could they have operated more efficiently?

Obviously the Coast Guard is going to keep its helicopters. I'm not too worried about the CG response to this event; they were pretty much on the ball (and I think that gets overlooked when people talk about the inadequacy of the government response). What I'm really interested in is, what, exactly, do people think the government was supposed to be doing? What were we expecting from FEMA? What were we expecting from the president? I have yet to hear that articulated.

Those of us who sit on the sidelines (and some of us who are on scene, like Fox's wonderful(ly idiotic) Shepard Smith) find it easy to say, "the government should have done more." Sounds great. But what do we mean, precisely? What do any of us who are out there talking about actually mean by what the government should have done?

This is a tragedy, but not a Greek one. The government is not some god on a machine to swoop in during the last scene and set everything right. This demand that the government "do more" gets circular very quickly. What should the government do? More. What did the government do? Not enough. Hmm. Not very specific.

Who's really got the upper hand on how to deal with natural and humanitarian disasters (and this is surely both?) If you ask me, it's the NGO's (non-governmental organizations) who specialize in charity work, disaster response, and the like. The Red Cross and UMCOR are two of the best disaster-response teams in existence anywhere in the world. They don't have to wait for a spate of four hurricanes to strike Florida in two months to figure out how to respond to a hurricane; they respond to typhoons, cyclones, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, droughts, famines, plagues, and the like dozens of times a year. They know what they're doing, and they do it very efficiently; after all, when you rely on the kindness of strangers, you have to be efficient with that kindness.

I still haven't nailed down precisely what the government should have done more of. More national guard troops? More Coast Guard helicopters? Yeah, I can see that. But is that all we're talking about here? Given the amount of talk I've heard, I can't imagine that's the case.

But maybe we're going about this the wrong way. Our government is a bloated and ineffecient entity that few of us like even on a good day and most us wish would just leave us alone. Perhaps instead of asking that government to do more, we should ask it to do less. You'll recall, no doubt, that several years ago our esteemed president came up with a plan to have faith-based charities do more poverty-alleviation work with government grants instead of having the government do such things directly. Maybe it's time to revisit that idea. Instead of expecting the government to do "more" after a disaster, we should tell the government to give its budget and its equipment to the Red Cross and other relief organizations, and sit back and let them do what they do best.