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Sep. 6th, 2005 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickWhen we had the tsunami thing over in Thailand and other foreign places with brown people, the news got better and better as time went by. I wish I could say that I thought the same thing was happening in New Orleans... but I don't think it's getting any freaking better down there. I don't think it's organized at all, and by now the fucking government should realize that it's got one hell of a shiner rising -- does it want to try for two? Get someone with a fucking clue (I was thinking perhaps our military, though they're the ones who brought us Abu Ghraib or whatever... maybe if we wanted the good people of New Orleans naked and in cheerleader-style pyramids, they'd be more able to help) and get the damn thing organized.
Collect up the corpses and start sorting through them before they look too much more like Dawn of the Dead extras. Use fucking technology, please. Use digital cameras to take pictures of the corpses. Offer up internet-searchable databases, containing the living and the dead. Seperate by sex, best-guess for color (black, white, hispanic, asian), age (child, full-growed, aged), location found OR residence, distinguishing features (tattoos, missing arms/legs, jewelry), name (if known), and anything else (dental records, though given how poor these people are likely to be, the odds that they've GOT dental records is pretty fucking slim) that might help identify the dead. I'd put a message board thingie for each, er, item so that people could add comments like "Aunt Fay? We're in Houston, here's our emergency cell phone number, please call. Damion and the boys are OK, praise God, but we haven't heard from Tayvon or Shaneequa. Love, Keesha.") [Yes, I did pick names that *sound* black. Sue me. If you'd like names that sound redneck southern white, here you go: "Aunt MaryEllen? We're in Houston, here's our emergency cell phone number, please call. BillyRay and the boys are OK, praise God, but we haven't heard from Earl or Loretta yet. Love, Shirleen."] If you don't know how to backend this, try talking to some of the major internet retailers -- eBay or perhaps amazon.com would be my choices -- for structure and advice. They manage huge, regularly modified, regularly-updated, hammered-upon searchable databases EVERY DAY and I bet they're good at it. I bet they'd also jump at the chance to help out if they could put a little logo "Database and hardware donated by amazon.com" at the bottom of the search page. And, then, y'know, make sure that all the people at the refugee camps have internet access, like a wireless hotspot with some donated laptops and stuff. You'd need geeks there to set the thing up and help people who've never used a search engine before, but I bet if you put out the call to local colleges for geeks, you could get a few. Also, if you made the databases UPDATEABLE BY USERS, people could add their own records so that you wouldn't have to input them all yourself. It might not be perfect, but at least it'd show willing.
Most of all, keep the whole fucking thing in the news. Yes, yes, we're tired of reading about Katrina, but I imagine the people who are down there in the water, amidst the wreckage of the Gulf Coast are also pretty damn tired of living with Katrina. If there is still news to be had from the Gulf Coast on Katrina, and there will be for quite some time, you have to keep reporting it. It's okay to report the happy stuff, like the six-year-old kid leading a group of other kids (all reunited with their people) or the eighteen year old boy who commandeered a bus, loaded it with people, and drove them all to the Astrodome. However, you also have to report the less-happy stuff, like why the fuck it took so long for aid, why the relief efforts were so damned uncoordinated, why you let the FEMA people FUCKING LIE TO US ON NATIONAL TV, and why we're not hearing more about the grand emergency plan DVD that Mr. Mayor Nagin was making to tell the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of that teeming shore, those, the homeless, tempest-tost of New Orleans that they were on their own as far as evacuating in the event of a hurricane disaster type thing.
I didn't think this was the sort of country we were supposed to be having, see. You don't ask for the huddled masses so that you can leave 'em to drown in the event of a natural disaster. (Besides, iffn you leave 'em to die, then they're a public relations disaster, a health hazard, and unavailable to serve as cheap labor to clean your hotel rooms, wash your dishes, take care of your lawn, stock your produce, run a register at your fast food joint, or otherwise provide the day to day low-wage services that make being not-poor pretty fucking sweet. Look, you fucking asshats, if you KILL THE SHEEP, you can't shear them next year. What the fuck kind of shepherds are you, anyway?)
You might also, and I realize at this point that I'm running right into and a pony territory with my argument, here, report on why our news coverage of Katrina was not as good as it could have been. I got more useful and interesting information from the law student that everyone's been reading (brendanloy.com) than I got from CNN or the Grey Lady. I don't know why he, a student at Notre Dame, had better information and analysis than the people on the ground in Louisiana, but he did. He aggregated better, gave better summaries, and had assloads better commentary. People. The news is not best delivered by standing there in high fucking winds and pouring down rain, shouting loudly enough to be heard that it's, y'know, raining a lot with some really high winds. Do you not know how to use the internet? Brendan also didn't have trouble with racist picture captions or a gross failure to offer followup questions worth pursuing. What can we, er, learn from this? Do you think, perhaps, that maybe we would like better news, presented without the bullshit spin, that covers the issues from a more realistic perspective and asks the tough questions? Fuck your hard-hitting journalism. All hat and no cattle, there, mainstream news media.
*sigh* This is still distracting me from yaoi bondage porn.
Buggerit.
Collect up the corpses and start sorting through them before they look too much more like Dawn of the Dead extras. Use fucking technology, please. Use digital cameras to take pictures of the corpses. Offer up internet-searchable databases, containing the living and the dead. Seperate by sex, best-guess for color (black, white, hispanic, asian), age (child, full-growed, aged), location found OR residence, distinguishing features (tattoos, missing arms/legs, jewelry), name (if known), and anything else (dental records, though given how poor these people are likely to be, the odds that they've GOT dental records is pretty fucking slim) that might help identify the dead. I'd put a message board thingie for each, er, item so that people could add comments like "Aunt Fay? We're in Houston, here's our emergency cell phone number, please call. Damion and the boys are OK, praise God, but we haven't heard from Tayvon or Shaneequa. Love, Keesha.") [Yes, I did pick names that *sound* black. Sue me. If you'd like names that sound redneck southern white, here you go: "Aunt MaryEllen? We're in Houston, here's our emergency cell phone number, please call. BillyRay and the boys are OK, praise God, but we haven't heard from Earl or Loretta yet. Love, Shirleen."] If you don't know how to backend this, try talking to some of the major internet retailers -- eBay or perhaps amazon.com would be my choices -- for structure and advice. They manage huge, regularly modified, regularly-updated, hammered-upon searchable databases EVERY DAY and I bet they're good at it. I bet they'd also jump at the chance to help out if they could put a little logo "Database and hardware donated by amazon.com" at the bottom of the search page. And, then, y'know, make sure that all the people at the refugee camps have internet access, like a wireless hotspot with some donated laptops and stuff. You'd need geeks there to set the thing up and help people who've never used a search engine before, but I bet if you put out the call to local colleges for geeks, you could get a few. Also, if you made the databases UPDATEABLE BY USERS, people could add their own records so that you wouldn't have to input them all yourself. It might not be perfect, but at least it'd show willing.
Most of all, keep the whole fucking thing in the news. Yes, yes, we're tired of reading about Katrina, but I imagine the people who are down there in the water, amidst the wreckage of the Gulf Coast are also pretty damn tired of living with Katrina. If there is still news to be had from the Gulf Coast on Katrina, and there will be for quite some time, you have to keep reporting it. It's okay to report the happy stuff, like the six-year-old kid leading a group of other kids (all reunited with their people) or the eighteen year old boy who commandeered a bus, loaded it with people, and drove them all to the Astrodome. However, you also have to report the less-happy stuff, like why the fuck it took so long for aid, why the relief efforts were so damned uncoordinated, why you let the FEMA people FUCKING LIE TO US ON NATIONAL TV, and why we're not hearing more about the grand emergency plan DVD that Mr. Mayor Nagin was making to tell the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of that teeming shore, those, the homeless, tempest-tost of New Orleans that they were on their own as far as evacuating in the event of a hurricane disaster type thing.
I didn't think this was the sort of country we were supposed to be having, see. You don't ask for the huddled masses so that you can leave 'em to drown in the event of a natural disaster. (Besides, iffn you leave 'em to die, then they're a public relations disaster, a health hazard, and unavailable to serve as cheap labor to clean your hotel rooms, wash your dishes, take care of your lawn, stock your produce, run a register at your fast food joint, or otherwise provide the day to day low-wage services that make being not-poor pretty fucking sweet. Look, you fucking asshats, if you KILL THE SHEEP, you can't shear them next year. What the fuck kind of shepherds are you, anyway?)
You might also, and I realize at this point that I'm running right into and a pony territory with my argument, here, report on why our news coverage of Katrina was not as good as it could have been. I got more useful and interesting information from the law student that everyone's been reading (brendanloy.com) than I got from CNN or the Grey Lady. I don't know why he, a student at Notre Dame, had better information and analysis than the people on the ground in Louisiana, but he did. He aggregated better, gave better summaries, and had assloads better commentary. People. The news is not best delivered by standing there in high fucking winds and pouring down rain, shouting loudly enough to be heard that it's, y'know, raining a lot with some really high winds. Do you not know how to use the internet? Brendan also didn't have trouble with racist picture captions or a gross failure to offer followup questions worth pursuing. What can we, er, learn from this? Do you think, perhaps, that maybe we would like better news, presented without the bullshit spin, that covers the issues from a more realistic perspective and asks the tough questions? Fuck your hard-hitting journalism. All hat and no cattle, there, mainstream news media.
*sigh* This is still distracting me from yaoi bondage porn.
Buggerit.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-08 06:34 pm (UTC)The Geaux Library Project www.geauxlibrary.org will attempt to meet the information needs at hurricane evacuee shelters around Louisiana and beyond. Using computers and networking equipment donated to the Red Cross and others by large commercial and local IT companies, we will be setting up small computer labs at Red Cross shelters and staffing them with librarians and other trained volunteers.
Our pilot locations in Louisiana will include the Gonzales, Baton Rouge, and Acadiana (Lafayette) areas. We need your help!
Specifically, we have openings for the following volunteer positions:
On-site positions
l Geaux Getters
o Initial needs assessment on the shelter(s) in your area. You will be provided with a questionnaire to determine the information necessary for the project. This will require you to visit the shelter physically and in put your findings into a web-based form.
l Geaux Coordinators
o Responsible for determining and assigning the necessary amount of volunteers for shelter(s) that they oversee. Communications will take place over the phone, online, and possibly in person. Coordinators may need to periodically visit the shelter site to determine adequacy of resources. Coordinators can also double as Geaux Librarians.
l Geaux Librarians
o Supervise a small network of computers and volunteers in a shelter. This may include: reference, referring in-depth questions to our searcher network, data entry, instruction on computer use to a population with very limited computer skills, coordinating computer usage times among patrons, opening and/or closing the computer area, basic technical support i.e. turning on computer and maintaining a printer and/or fax machine, other duties as they arise. Shifts are flexible.
l Geauxfers
o Need to be available to do anything the Geaux Librarians or Geaux Coordinators need you to do.
l Geaux Techs
o Needed to troubleshoot any issues (hardware and network) that may come up at the various sites, and setup new shelter computers. Some of the work may be done remotely depending on the issue.
l Geaux Couriers
o Drive equipment and supplies from a pickup point to the shelters. This can be a one time job or you can volunteer to do it more often. We will specify the locations as they come up.
o We have an immediate need for a Geaux Courier to bring equipment from Lafayette to Gonzales or Baton Rouge!
Remote positions
l Geaux Speed Searcher
o You will be issued a login ID and password that will give you access to questions posted by onsite librarians. You may work on these answers and view other answers until a notice has been posted that no more are needed. This may be done anytime, anywhere, and our only request is, in accordance with the ALA Code of Ethics, to respect the confidentiality of these questions.
l Geaux Writer
o Write content for the website such as policies, volunteer position descriptions, link descriptions, etc.. Experience in writing clear, easy to read information in a must.
l Geaux Webmaster
o Maintain the geauxlibrary.org website. You must have experience in using a variety of web programming languages and using database driven websites.
Everything is voluntary at this time, but the satisfaction you receive will be helping hurricane Katrina victims by doing what you know how to do better than anyone else!
For more information and further description of volunteer opportunities, please see our website at www.geauxlibrary.org. Go there to fill out the volunteer signup form to become part of this much needed project.
Click on the For Donors section to see what items we need and how to donate.
We will be putting out instructions on how to start your own Geaux Library in your area soon, so keep watching the website for more information. The website is just now functional to get more volunteers and donations. We will add more information when we get some help.
Geaux Library Project (shelter) Organizers,
Becky Hebert and Addie Fletcher