This has been addressed three days inna row (twice yesterday) with minimal response here BUT, I sent my diary yesterday to Rachel Maddow and Huff Post ran the story front page. Rachel is reportedly doing something on it tonight and it's going to be a huge success for anonymous bloggerdom.
UPDATE: Changed title but, this shoulda been front and center on Daily Kos but it wasn't and I'm gobsmacked.
UPDATE: Everyone is bitching about the title! Nonetheless, you guys are finally READING about this!.
UPDATE: Droogie finally thought this worthy of a diary that gets the prominence it deserves. Thank you all!
Urgent. An Immediate American Tragedy
While George Bush is hard at work on his legacy project, Sarah Palin lambasting bloggers and our attention is tranfixed by the I/P conflict, ALASKANS ARE STARVING AND FREEZING! Yup, Yup, with Palin sitting on a $5 billion surplus, the Alaskan Emmonak tribe is relying on outside charity and not getting 3 squares a day.
I apologize if some complain that this might not meet the level of a dairy but I felt this crisis in our own country needs some attention. AKM on www.themudlfats.net is doin an excellent job covering this; anonymous bloggers making a difference again.
Here are a few excerpts from mudflats:
Four days ago, a cry for help went out via the Bristol Bay Times. Many of us have known that residents of Alaska’s rural villages are having a hard winter. The weather has been unusually cold, and prices of heating oil and gasoline have been astronomical. Add to that a disastrous collapsing salmon fishery in Bristol Bay that left residents in that area heading in to winter with less than usual, and you have the makings for a humanitarian disaster.
So in desperation, Nicholas Tucker, from the Village of Emmonak sent out a cry for help. With 21 days left in the month, Mr. Tucker had only $440 left to feed and keep his family of nine warm, with heating oil at $7.83/gallon. As Emmonak runs out of fuel, it will have to be flown in, potentially raising the price to $9/gallon or more. While contemplating his own plight, he wondered how many other families of the 800 living in his village were having similar hard times. So he sent out a message on his VHF radio, asking his neighbors how they were doing. Twenty five answers came.
While there's more on mudflats, here's a couple:
G. & K. F.: Young couple with family of five. Wife is unable to sleep and stressed out not knowing when they will be able get their next heating fuel. A 100-lb. bottle of propane gas that usually lasts four months is now lasting only two months because they use it to heat water. This costs them $200 every two weeks. They do not have hot water heater. Wife has very little income and uses $375, the one-half of her gross income every two weeks, to get heating fuel. She has no food for her family sometimes, because, she has to split the rest of what little is left for water/sewer and electricity. Gasoline for her 4-wheeler is very expensive. Her parents help her with food and firewood. They cannot afford a snowmachine or a boat to get logs. Heating fuel and propane is taking her food money away. Her added worry is that the village native corporation is running out of heating fuel and is being airlifted in. New cost is expected to be near $9 - $11 per gallon or higher.
P. R: Single, separated, with five children. (He chokes occasionally, holding back crying.) He and his children are staying in the same household with his brother’s family. Cost of fuel is so high and everything else and we’re able to get just a few things at a time. We have no other subsistence food left. Only thing we’re surviving on moose meat alone and it is almost gone. Everything is so high – only able to get little bit. We can’t catch up on our bills. We’re really hurting even we are given some from other people. Right now, we can’t eat during the day, only at supper time. And, it is still not enough. If there had been no school lunch, our kids would be starving. It is going to get worse in two weeks when our new heating fuel supply is airlifted in. Price of fuel will go way up again. I am lucky that the Women’s Shelter is able to give me some coffee.
Here's the contact information for any donations:
The answer lies, where many answers lie, with us.
To help, please call:
City of Emmonak, (907) 949-1227/1249 (They will take donations by credit card. Please specify the donation is for heating oil!)
Emmonak Tribal Council, (907) 949-1720
or send a check to:
Emmonak Tribal Council
P.O. Box 126
Emmonak, AK 99581
Attn: Christine Alexie
Blogger Power! Many thanks to AKM for bringing this story needed attention.