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Can anyone provide me with an actionable plan to mobilize 100k people from disparate regions and move them into a location that has no power, as well as no relevant governmental or organizational structure? Oh also you need to get their supplies there as well. Also the I-10 bridge over the lake is out, so you can't take the most direct route. Also the city is 90% under water, and on fire. Oh - and do in fewer than 4 days. Write that plan up for me, guys - it's just not that simple to do.
Don't get me wrong, I think that failing to envision the potential failure of the levy system (and the mismanagement by LA officials, who have never been known for efficacy to my knowledge) accounts for a miserably poor decision, but once it's been done, I can't imagine how things could have gone better. It was a disaster, in every sense.
Hindsight is indeed fraught with clarity, but to mobilize this kind of force before natural disasters (since, obviously, we "knew it was coming") would be met with similar monday-morning quarterbacking when the disaster did not live up to projections . . . think of how expensive it would be over the long term. Guess who gets penalized most in the ensuing taxation?
Oh yeah - the poor, due to the relative time value of money.
The poor get screwed in everything - realize that the poor also inhabit the poorest parts of NO, and have since its inception. The poor got screwed in Rome, the poor got screwed in Stalingrad during the revolution, they're currently getting screwed in the USA - we can do our best to ameliorate the situation, but times of crisis hit the poor harder. I'm not sure how we can account for this, or if it's possible.
With all of that said, Kanye can use his time and his influence to say anything he pleases - hell, if even one person uses Kanye's message to investigate further, then wasn't it worth it? Why should a celebrity pull punches, politically, intellectually or really for anything, when we give them a stage and an audience?
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