Marable and Fatal Flood

I did not quite understand in the beginning of the course how Prof G. would comment "...before there was Katrina there was Katrina..."  After Prof G read to us about the Fatal Flood I was just in deep pain and anger! I don't understand how people in power can go everyday without feeling remorse that people are deeply affected while they only think about their own interest.  People drowned and lost their homes that they worked hard to build; all because of money.  I can probably preach til my lungs run out of breath but, I DESPISE how much people care about money; I hate that you can't just have one thing you have to have more and more! That is just sick because we could be helping one another but we choose not to.  I might be going out tangent but millionaires think they are helping when they donate 3 or 4 million dollars to a charity but what about the rest of the millions of dollars? What do they do with so much money? Look at how many people are starving or dying from disease because of this bipolar society we have built! Why do we let this happen?!


The Marable article was truly interesting.  What really got me was the part where Marable talked about how "mass unemployment feeds into mass incarceration..." I agree with this statement because I remember reading for one of my classes this semester how after the slavery ended for African Americans they were basically put in jail for no good reason.  It shocked me to know that 5 million people in the US cannot vote because they are in jail or have lost their privileges to vote.  How does that happen? I don't understand how the government expects people to contribute to the economy and society when they are making it extremely difficult to get by; taking such an important thing like voting is like taking their voice away!

This article made me feel very angry of what kind of discrimination in the macro level we are facing.  In the article it talks about working together for change and I agree with that.  In my Communities and Organizations class we have been discussing how important it is to work together because alone one can not do much change.  This week we discussed about the importance of advocating to work toward social change.  There is so much that goes into changing society's ways because anything we change affects everyone, even if one person gets impacted more than another.  There is so much that goes into changing but I would like to achieve social change one day.

I want to be an activist one day and say that I would like people to respect each other and their beliefs; that we could sit in a restaurant and eat without feeling uncomfortable; to choose a job you feel you are more than capable to work hard for; to love one another no matter what we may belief or what color skin we have; that we could help one another instead of hate one another because there are misunderstandings and lack of knowledge; that we could actually have a melting pot in society where everyone has right to everything no matter what.


any thoughts?