Bring it, by Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture
January 20, 2010 Whitney Farmer 1 Comment
Haiti…Haiti…Haiti…
I don’t care why people give, as long as they give it up.
Maybe Hollywood types want the spotlight to either start a career or jumpstart a career. I don’t care. Bring it.
Maybe Pat Robertson believes that he has the authority to free this obliterated place from a curse or has a deep silent lie in his soul that tells him to try and buy his way into heaven by supporting relief efforts there. Maybe Pat wants to use his money from his blood diamond operations for this.
I don’t care why, and I don’t care where the money comes from. Bring it.
Maybe politicians want to try and make amends for betraying New Orleans and having written cute emails about rolling up their sleeves for the cameras because it looks butch, while people were drowning. Maybe they can’t sleep at night because somewhere there is a conscience that is crying out as it tries not to die.
I don’t care why. Bring it.
I don’t care where the money comes from. Bring it.
Maybe Wyclef Jean is lousy at accounting and mingled finances and maybe even made compromised decisions. Or maybe his accusers want to use this moment to grab the spotlight. I don’t care. The world can and will now watch together. Judgments of what’s done right and what is done wrong can come later. But momentum must not be compromised now.
Let all comers come. This is a macroeconomic moment. The fine tuning and the marginal risk/benefit analyses will come. But right now, bulldozers are needed because people are still trapped below the rubble.
To the shallow who want to get dates by volunteering, COME!
To the snakes with fake tears but bags of cash, COME!
To the publicity whores and the corporate raiders and gluttonous bankers, bring your money and COME!
A January 16, 2010 article by Nicholas D. Kristol in the New York Times presented Jorge Moll’s research from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that showed that giving lights up the same areas of the brain as sex. So if the idea of spreading open our wallets really wide and digging deep in to pull out a Jackson or a Benjamin makes people feel the same way as if it were a Johnson, great. I don’t care why.
As long as we don’t forget Haiti.
—
Whitney runs a rock music venue in L.A. She has an MBA and no one cares.
Reg
January 27, 2010 - 9:06 am
I am often infuriated to point of gnashing my teeth when I see the frequent salacious attempts of the media to depict the ‘savagery and lawlessness’ of Black folks in times of desperation so that ‘they’ can keep the manipulation game going….
Hence I was so very gratified to read the following blog entry by Dr. Sanjay Gupta… Of course, it’s very likely NOT going to be broadcast…but at least it’s something.
Dhanyavaad, Dr. Gupta.
“By Dr. Sanjay Gupta
CNN Chief Medical Correspondent
A couple of days ago, a man was stoned to death about a block from where we are staying in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. I have been down here nearly two weeks covering the earthquake devastation, having arrived quickly the morning after it occurred. I didn’t see the stoning myself, but several of my colleagues described a man who had been trying to steal money and was met with swift and deadly citizen justice. A lot was made of this particular tragedy, and if you caught only that headline, you might be left believing the incident was in some way emblematic of what was happening all over the place. Truth is, even though I braced myself to see rampant lawlessness and mob hostility, I wanted to blog about what I have actually seen.
As I drove through the streets of Port-au-Prince, just 16 hours after the earthquake, I was met with stunned stares and unfathomable grief, as parents tried to dig their babies out of the rubble and older kids did the same for their parents. It was heartbreaking. And though we raced out with our first aid bags to help those we could, it seemed like we would never be able to make a dent in the suffering. There were people who died in this earthquake and those who lived – but there were also a large number of people somehow caught in between. They were alive, but terribly injured and dying. That is where we focused our attention. Terrible crush injuries of arms and legs. Degloving injuries, where the skin of the arms or legs was ripped away. And, people so malnourished and dehydrated that they could barely walk.
I expected to see those stunned stares turn to desperation, and that desperation turn to brutality. It didn’t. In fact, I remember driving by a water station that had finally opened on January 18th, five days after the earthquake struck. It stayed in my mind for two reasons. First of all, five days is a long time to go with little to no water, especially in Haiti heat. Second of all, there was no pushing, shoving or aggressive behavior. There were no armed guards and there was a tight line, with people waiting patiently. Some were even singing songs, while blistering away in the heat. I almost cried. A piece of my faith in humanity, which had been trashed by too many terrible images, was slowly restored.
A couple of days later, I was seeing patients at one of the hospitals in downtown. It was actually more of a tent city situated outside the hospital, where care was sparse and misery was thick. Helping care for wounds, evaluate injuries and even perform surgery – every single patient said thank you, in Creole, French and English. Thank you. When recounting this to a neurosurgery colleague of mine, he reminded me that we could often go months working at a county hospital in the states without ever hearing those two words.
Over the last two weeks, I have not seen the violence Haiti has been known for in years past. During this time, when lawlessness had been put to the test, it seems the people of Port-au-Prince stood tall, dignified and with respect for one another. Yes, there has been “looting” from stores of supplies. But, is “looting” even the correct term for people taking basic necessities for themselves and their families? Instead, it is just survival, and faced with the same situation, I would’ve likely been right there with them, wanting to preserve the lives of my wife and children.
Consider this a blog that went beyond a headline, and presented a reporter’s on-the-ground view of this very important issue. I won’t pretend that this is more than a slice of life in the aftermath of a terrible natural disaster, but it is my slice, and I wanted to share it with you. Thank you – for reading it.”
http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010/01/26/its-just-survival/?hpt=T2