Monday, September 5, 2005
Power from the people
Andrew Sullivan in the Times:
There seems to me a strong chance that this calamity could be the beginning of something profound in American politics: a sense that government is broken and that someone needs to fix it.
This is some of the best, and toughest, writing on the Bush Administration's systematic failure to grok What's Going On. Read all three pages. Also Andrew's and Scott Rosenberg's takes on the classically Rovean strategy of launching a lie that (in Scott's words) "can make it halfway round the world while the truth -- and the newspaper correction -- is still putting on its boots".
Here's what bloggers say about the story behind that last link.
When I was listening to the radio this morning, one of the channels had a recording of a preacher imploring his congregation to fulfill their first obligation as Christians: to Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself, a matter about which the Bible says far more than it does about abortion, gay marriage or any of the other "wedge" issues politicians and other power-seekers have used to divide America's house against itself.
We all want a better world, a freind wrote. Good place to restart.
The division now is between those that help and those that don't. Between those who fix things and those who get in the way.
Fixing broken governments isn't a partisan issue, although partisanship will always be involved. It's a practical issue.
Protecting people, sustaining vital resources and infrastructures, and recovering from disasters, are our top national priorities now. The reset button Katrina pushed is one that changes the arguments about health care, environmental protection, military base closures, and (the fortuitously named) homeland security.
The shift from War on Terror to War on Error will be a literally democratic one. It will be a practical revolution — one of, by and for The People.
Mother Nature 
is a known terrorist we can't lock up in Guantanamo. The threat level from her attacks has been severe since the Earth was formed. We knew what she'd do to New Orleans. We know what she'll do to South Florida and the Gulf Coast. We know what she'll do to Puget Sound and Los Angeles. We know what she'll do in Hawaii and to all our coasts.
The big questions are Who are we? And What can we do? The answers won't come down from the tops of the power pyramids. They'll come up from interested parties who step forward with constructive ideas and solutions.
It's important to remember that nobody has all the answers, or ever will. And that most of the good ideas any of us have are by nature provisional at this point. What matters is that we treat every idea, its sources, and its good intentions, with respect.
With that preamble, I'll be adding constructive posts to this one as the day goes on, starting with the People Finder Format, the Katrina PeopleFinder Project (and more on the same).
Jeff Jarvis has Recovery 2.0: A call to convene. It's a long, thoughtful and (as far as one man can make it) thorough piece.
Instructive lessons in the Wall Street Journal from the 9/11 Report.
Peggy Noonan on leaving open military bases (written just pre-Katrina). Her points make sense in a disaster recovery (rather than just post-terror) context.
Art of the Long View from Thomas P.M. Barnett, who says
In sum, this is how I maintain my optimism and it's how my influence can truly be expressed. The SysAdmin force is coming into being, in a big way and all around the dial. It will be created not by the political leaders so much as the mid-level bureaucrats who you never hear about and who never leave. And it will be created by a generational wave of military officers.
The temptation now is to crap on everything, to bundle up Katrina and Baghdad and say this'll never work and let's go back to what we know and love (big war with a big opponent to justify our big contracts and our big bases that keep so many jobs and votes and congressmen in their seats). And while some of that is completely right, and for some people, a good call as a full-time calling, it's isn't what I'm all about--nor will it ever be.
Jeff Berkowitz reporting Sen. Obama's "now is not the time for blame games..."
The left hand column on the Technorati's Katrina page. Includes resources and first person reports, among other nuggets. (And it looks like Technorati is holding up under the scaling stress.) Bonus links: Blogpulse Newswire. IceRocket's Hurricane Katrina Help Center.
WeblogsWork for small towns. From the people who bring you the Slidell Hurricane Damage Blog. Along with Seeking People and the Hurricane Katrina Help Page (a wiki).
"A brilliant idea" from Stuart Henshall.
Think New Orleans has a pile of interesting and useful links.
Family links, via the International Red Cross.
What might Google do? Well, there's... Google Maps of New Orleans. Zoom in and click on the "Katrina" link. Click on the picture and push it around. You can see how much of the city is simply drowned. On this page we see the Mississippi, safely inside its levees, on the right, the mostly dry French Quarter, and one small section of the drowned part of the city, with the Superdome at the lower edge, its roof stripped by the wind and its perimiter surrounded by a moat of water. Here's a closer view. Here's a map of Fleur De Lis Park, the parkland along Pontchatrain Boulevard and West End Boulevard, and surrounding streets... Mine Blvd, Catina St. 40th St. 38th St; a hybrid map of the same area when it was all still dry; and the same, under water. Amazing.
safe.millennium.berkeley.edu. Lots of missing/found info and links.
Shelley Powers on Stopping the World and Going Forward.
Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, a most remarkable Wikipedia resource. Hey, FEMA, look here!
Big thanks to Jerry and friends for many of the above links.
From Ernie the Attorney: Steve Domas says I'm very Heartened. Dig Ernie's BlogPulse Profile.
Listening Up
Most of what I listen to to on the radio lately is a mixture of WWL's live stream (.asf, for Windows media, which will open automatically in Windows and will download a file that will open to a live feed on Macs with Windows Media players — you're SOL on Linux) and NPR stations (mostly WUNC and WNYC) with .mp3 streams... plus New Orleans' "roots radio" WWOZ, which has "in exile" streams in Real, .mp3 and .asf formats, courtesy of WFMU in New Jersey. For some great New Orleans music, it's a hard background to beat.