FEMA= RACISM from the Top Down
By Darwin Campbell
African American News&Issues: "For African Americans, FEMA�s work with Blacks amounts to a modern version of Abbott and Costello�s �Who�s on First.�
I have been to countless FEMA news briefings, received daily e-mails and ever changing messages and the only certain thing during this crisis is that you will get an e-mail or media directive pointing out the good work FEMA is doing or the money they are spending.
Much of the process appears to be officials meeting, standing around, discussing and trying to figure out, �Who�s on First, What�s on Second, I Don�t Know is on Third��
The whole time everybody is looking around trying to find anybody doing anything, but no one is doing nothing.
FEMA has no idea what it is doing and African Americans are the people suffering the most from this incompetence. The FEMA experience has been one great nightmare for African Americans. All of the hurdles, obstacles, changes and problems are doing nothing to repair the agency�s ragged image in the African American community. It is more obvious every day that there is a whole government agency using tax dollars and many people in those jobs know policy, but know little about the daily �hurt ships� and �hardships� and challenges going on daily in the lives of African Americans who lost everything in both storms.
None of the hurricane victims, especially African Americans, deserves to be treated the way they are being treated. We should not be troubled and still suffering the kind of anxiety we are hearing about and witnessing daily at hotels, motels and churches trying to help put lives back together.
Trying to get to FEMA, you get overcrowded phone lines, overworked computer networks and no definite answers. Now FEMA has the nerve to issue a December 1 deadline on hotel and motel payments and direct cities to move people into "