The Red Cross isn't the place to send your charitable buck. Katrina will cause an outpouring like 9-11, and the Red Cross will again bank most of it for things like its top-notch executive salaries. Have we already forgotten the scandal of 9-11 when Red Cross director Bernadine Healy was forced to resign from her $450,010 post (1) for deciding the "relief agency" should give to victims only $154 million of the $564 million collected? (2)
What the media fails consistently to remember in its promotion of the organization is that the American Red Cross has been caught time and time again withholding money in the wake of horrible disasters that require immediate release of funds.
Besides, the FEMA isn't letting the Red Cross into NOLA anyway. And its current director is a GOP hack who these days goes on TV to praise Bush. Thoughts on what to do on the flip side.
Nothing is going to get from you to those poor, frightened, sick, needy fellow citizens in the Gulf via the Red Cross. If you don't believe me, do a little research yourself -- here's both the leftish Prison Planet view >
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2005/010905redcross.htm<
or the rightish Wall Street Journal view
>
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=95001506<
or just google "9-11 Red Cross scandal" and read away.
Here's what I'm thinking:
- NOLA and other gulf victims won't get your $ now or ever for the things they really need.
- Katrina victims are going to need sustained help, not just a bottle of water, a toothbrush, and a pat on the ass from the Red Cross.
- The needs will be great: for food, jobs, housing, education, cars, clothing, day care money, counseling, you name it.
- The good guys -- and good guys WILL step up to the plate -- haven't arrived yet with the long range programs, but your money will be needed then. Save it for the charities and programs that will be lifting the victims from misery in the months ahead.
- If you really need to make a contribution now, give your dollar to a group working for structural change so that BushCo can be dislodged and an enlightened administration can take back the reins of government. Katrina is the most recent devastation visited upon poor New Orleans residents, but not the first - or last. There is a reason most didn't have the $40 to fill their gas tanks and flee, and that a third of NOLA residents live below the poverty line. In addition to food, water, and toothbrushes, NOLA victims need us to give a shit about that.
- If someone lives near the shelters and is volunteering and taking needed goods to real people, I am happy to send cash to a REAL PERSON who is doing what the Red Cross is not going to do. I'd like to cut out the middleman, if you don't mind, especially if it's the Red Cross.
(1) The Salvation Army pays its top executive, John Busby, $13,000 a year, plus frugal room, board and transportation expenses [2001]
(2) The Red Cross' explanation for keeping the majority of the money was that it would be used to help 'fight the war on terror'. To the victims, this meant that the money was going towards bombing broken backed third world countries like Afghanistan and setting up surveillance cameras and expanding the police state in US cities, and not towards helping them rebuild their lives.