I've struggled with this diary tonight about six times. I've composed it in my head, only to delete it every time I try to write it. If it's disjointed and makes no sense, I'm sorry.
I grew up poor, in one of the rougher neighborhoods of Los Angeles. My father never made more than $36K a year and supported a family of four on that meager income. I went to work at fifteen and haven't stopped since. It's a long, painful story that I won't recount here.
As some of you old-timers know, I used to be a member of the radical right. I'm not exactly sure why I was, but I know how it changed, and today I stand to face the world to say, as both a former wingnut, a member of a minority (I'm Latina), and as a proud hardcore liberal:
We Cannot Forget Each Other Again
In 1994, I was fortunate enough to survive the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. At the time, it was one of the more significant disasters in America, and it ruined a number of places and things that I'd known growing up in the San Fernando Valley. I also was fortunate in that my parents' home, where I still lived, had sustained little damage, and I wanted for nothing in the aftermath. Oh, sure, it sucked that we had to boil our water for a few weeks, and that we didn't have electricity for a while. It was miserable to have to drive two hours for a cheeseburger in the first few days, but no one I knew was hurt or dead, and all I had to worry about was not being indoors during an aftershock. As a wingnut, I laughed when Bill Clinton and James Lee Witt showed up...who needed FEMA, we were fine?!? And all those poor Mexican bastards camping out in parks...I was SO hateful back then.
Fast forward a few years....
I was a fairly new liberal when Katrina happened. Oh, I'd made the leap a few years before, but it took time for me to become politically active. I was dealing with a multitude of wounds and hurts, and it was a while before I was able to really open my eyes and see what was real in the world around me.
I cried. I wailed. My husband made me stop watching television because I became so depressed. How was it that, under a Democratic President and a sensible FEMA I never wanted for anything, but under Bu$h thousands of people were thirsty, hungry, homeless and desperate? How was it that I was back to work in 1994 a week later less than two miles from the epicenter of a major earthquake, and yet a week after a hurricane people were DYING?
Tonight I watched the retrospectives, the "memorials" on the teevee. They helped remind me of the family that relocated to Seattle that I helped collect money for. I remembered how I wanted to bundle so many of those people....humans, just like me...into my arms and give them solace and shelter.
I've done nothing, because I've forgotten.
I guess all I'm trying to say is this: I WILL NOT let another Katrina kill the hopes, the communities, and the lives of so many. I will not stand by and be a party to it. I promised myself that I'd go help out and I've failed. Three layoffs and a cross-country move are my rationale, but I'm tired of rationalizing. I'm so fucking tired of "it's all about me"....