Desperate people Love their looting

[T h e H o r r o r]

One of the starkest facts i've read here, in England, is that the affected area is larger than the UK.

 

I think those of you who said they'd simply walk out, even Kabar who i gather is something of an outdoorsman, should take that into consideration. Walking 300 miles in a couple of days is impossible, and walking out into the countryside without knowing where you will take shelter from a hurricane that is about to strike is madness.

[Dawood]

when did the name change? what's up with the 12 oz. censorship?

[shai]

^I thought about that too...I tried to change a thread title once and couldn't do it. Well, at least it was for the better. They could have closed it, you know.

 

Today, I've been seeing more white folks on the news who either stayed or got stuck...that, or maybe the media realized they fucked up pretty bad with the "selective coverage".

 

There was two AP photos I saw earlier...one was of a black guy with some food that he "looted" from a store...the next was of a white couple who were walking out of the same store with food they had "found"....no joke, it's in the Katrina thread. Along w/ the video of NOLA cops looting a Walmart. One was even pushing a shopping cart...did I mention they were black. Oh, they were black. Thus, making them looters.

[!@#$%]

i changed the title.

 

you guys can always PM (us) moderators and complain if you want

 

i got complaints about the thread title

it seemed fucking racist and i wasn;t interested in looking at a thread title that is racist all the time, so i changed it

 

moderating gives a weird ass viewpoint into censorship, and yes, i think it is wrong.

however, everyone is free to express themselves in their posts, and say what they want, for the most part.

i have not censored any posts

 

i just thought that thread title was a fucking shame, and since the dude actually admitted in his first post to being slightly ignorant about the whole thing, i decide to change it up

 

if someone starts a thread and the title is super offensive, yeah, we reserve the right to censor it.

the media has fucked up pretty badly on this one as well

part of the point of the thread title change was to clown the guy who started it with that dumb name as well, i saw all those things (shai halud mentions) on the news as well (because it is discussed in a channel zero thread that no one moved in here)

[shai]

^Normally, I'd be the first one to start bitching about p.c. censorship (living in or next to Berkeley will make you more conservative, I'm living proof), but I won't do that since I don't think you did it out of any misguided moral sensibility.

 

People are starting to wonder about all the consolidated threads, though...could you maybe start a thread telling where topics are ending up? And, maybe move some of the threads in Channel Zero over here where they seem more relevant? Just a thought. Thanks. You're doing fine, I think.

[!@#$%]

it's kinda funny, i only consolidated three threads.

that's it.

 

there are 2 in channel zero, but i don't mod in there so i can't move shit out of there, and i didn;t think it was such a big deal that i had to get another mod to do it.

 

i am also ok with more than one thread, it was just getting to be like, ten threads.

 

 

i think most of the shock and awe is done

unless we get another round when the waters recede.

for now, yeah, i think it's fine too..thanks..

[shai]

I'll bring it up over there, unless you want to let those moderators know. Either way. And, I'm still shocked. Probably will be more so when the damage becomes apparent.

[KaBar2]

I'm very pleased to say that the situation in Houston is rapidly improving. The first couple of days were kind of rough, but they have settled thousands of people into apartments and hundreds of people have taken people into their private homes. The cops made a few arrests of people racking shit at supermarkets and breaking into cars, but it turned out to be a lot less than I had believed. They placed a curfew on the AstroDome and Reliant Center, which stopped a lot of the traffic in and out of there at night, and the situation in the neighborhoods close to the Dome settled down with heavier police presence.

 

The Katrina survivors are being rapidly assimilated into the fabric of Houston society. Spreading them out all over town has VASTLY improved the situation. Thousands of kids are being enrolled in schools. The medical care, dental care and support they are receiving at the Dome and Reliant Center is probably a great deal better than anything they received in New Orleans. The Dome and R.C. are about two miles from the Texas Medical Center---the largest medical center in the region. University of Texas has several teaching hospitals here, and all of the major hospitals are sending crews to man the medical and dental clinics--Methodist Hospital, Memorial Hermann Hospital Systems, St. Luke's, Texas Children's Hospital, and so forth.

 

I'm an RN. I called the volunteer center twice. Both times they told me if I wanted to volunteer I'd have to take an 11-7 shift during the week, because every other shift was filled. We've got TONS of donated food, clothes, shoes, househouse items, dog and cat food and everything else you can imagine arriving hourly at collection centers around the city. I happened to be over at the SPCA center on Old Katy road yesterday. There were like fifteen volunteers loading 50-pound sacks of dog food onto pallets, and horse trailers being loaded with sacks of pet food to be hauled to a warehouse and a steady stream of cars and trucks waiting to unload more.

 

The Katrina survivors are being cared for, but they are not being isolated and kept in some separate section of Houston. Families are being moved as rapidly as possible into family housing. The adults are sent to job centers to get employment, and the kids are being sent to SCHOOL, now, today, immediately. They do not want hundreds of teenagers wandering around the streets of Houston with no money and nothing to do.

Single people are being sent to shelters, both homeless shelters like Salvation Army and Star of Hope, and also expedient shelters in churches, community meeting buildings, city service centers and so forth. The City of Houston is hiring people left and right for all manner of positions, everything from computer operators, to truck drivers to pick and shovel jobs. The large employers, especially the oil companies and the companies around Port of Houston, are hiring people as fast as they can process them. There are scores of oil rigs out in the Gulf, knocked out by Katrina, ripped loose from their moorings and drifting. The oil companies are desperately trying to get them towed into repair facilities and to hire people to work repairing them---welders, machinists and so forth. Many of the people from Louisiana were employed before doing this type of work.

 

The Gulf Coast is hurting bad, but the economy down here in Texas is fixing to boom like a motherfucker. With South Louisiana knocked out of action, Texas is fixing to pick up the slack, and most of the new hires are going to be displaced Louisianans. Not to mention the clean-up and rebuilding that will be required in Louisiana itself.

 

Yes, there were some assholes who got out of hand. But 99% of the people who arrived here want to get an apartment, a job, and a bank account full of money, in that order.

 

My initial post above ^^^ was too pessimistic. Things are looking a shitload better today.

[dumy]

Originally posted by SF1+Sep 3 2005, 01:38 AM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SF1 - Sep 3 2005, 01:38 AM)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteBegin-shai hulud@Sep 2 2005, 01:32 AM

it's really sad...i saw a photo of hundreds, if not thousands, of people waiting to be let into the superdome to ride out  the storm...and i only saw ONE white face in the crowd. i gues when the mayor of nola gave the evacuation order, he forgot that there wasn't a bus line to "higher ground"...so, a lot of poor folks got stuck while everything was blowing apart around them, and found themselves in an abandoned city with little or no oversight. oh, and probably not much food, clothing, or any way to attend to personal hygiene, either. what would you do? what is the right thing to do in this situation? do you kick back and wait for someone to provide for you? or, do you take matters into your own hands? i wouldn't have any moral conflict about getting the things i needed wherever i could get them, if i had lost everything i owned and my city was essentially a ruin. however, the media feels that they have a duty to remind us that in times of crisis, and when The Man isn't around, black people will rob us silly if the opportunity presents itself. at least they aren't running headlines like, "darkies run amok like thieving savages in the flooded streets of new orleans"...but, that's clearly implied when the only people that get caught in the act "happen" to be black. hmmmmm.

Quoted post

 

Amen to that. And for real, all you people bitching and moaning about "if you're stealing food that's one thing but otherwise it's wrong"---> you are lieing to yourself if you honestly believe that in this situation, after busting into stores to get food and water you aint gonna be like "you know what... I might as well take this while I'm at it... might as well get some other shit to sell for "loot" cause God knows I'm gonna need that. Aint nobody gonna give a shit if I take a TV set or two cause everybody abandoned this shit to Katrinas wrath! These people are gonna do what they gotta to survive, and in a capitalist society that means getting that money. Espescially when everything you had has just been washed away including your home and job and any stability. Would you seriously be sitting there debating the morality of looting at that point?

 

Aint yall graffitti writers anyways? aint yall ever rack paint and markers and shit before? :huh2:

Quoted post

[/b]

 

this is one of the more realistic responses in this thread. Some of you guys live in a fantasy world.

[SF1]

Updated: 10:07 PM EDT

Churchgoing Grandma Jailed Over Sausage

Accused of Looting, She Spent Over Two Weeks Locked Up

By KEVIN MCGILL, AP

 

 

 

AP

Merlene Maten's bail was set at $50,000 and she spent over two weeks jailed over a sausage.

 

Talk About It: Post Thoughts

 

KENNER, Louisiana (Sept. 15) - Merlene Maten undoubtedly stood out in the prison where she has been held since Hurricane Katrina. The 73-year-old church deaconess, never before in trouble with the law, spent two weeks among hardened criminals. Her bail was a stiff $50,000.

 

Her offense?

 

Police say the grandmother from New Orleans took $63.50 in goods from a looted deli the day after Katrina struck.

 

Family and eyewitnesses insisted Maten was an innocent woman who had gone to her car to get some sausage to eat only to be mistakenly arrested by tired, frustrated white officers who couldn't catch younger looters at a nearby store.

 

Despite intervention from the nation's largest senior lobby, volunteer lawyers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and even a private attorney, the family fought a futile battle for 16 days to get her freed.

 

Maten's diabetes, her age, not even her lifelong record of community service could get the system moving. Even the store owner didn't want her charged. "She has slipped through the cracks and the wheels of justice have stopped turning," her attorney Daniel Beckett Becnel III said, frustrated.

 

Then, hours after her plight was featured in an Associated Press story, a local judge on Thursday ordered Maten freed on her own recognizance, setting up a sweet reunion with her daughter, grandchildren and 80-year-old husband. It was unclear whether she would be released Thursday evening or Friday.

 

 

"There were people looting, but she wasn't one of them."

-Elois Short

 

"I'm just gonna hug her and say 'Mom, I'm so sorry this had to happen."' Maten's tearful daughter, Elois Short, told AP shortly after getting the news.

 

Maten must still face the looting charge at a court hearing in October. But the family, armed with several witnesses, intends to prove she was wrongly arrested outside the hotel in this New Orleans suburb where she had fled Katrina's floodwaters.

 

"There were people looting, but she wasn't one of them. Instead of chasing after people who were running, they (police) grabbed the old lady who was walking," said Short, who works in traffic enforcement for neighboring New Orleans police.

 

The path to freedom was complicated amidst the chaos of Katrina.

 

Maten has been moved from a parish jail to a state prison an hour away. Her daughter had evacuated to Texas. And the original judge who set $50,000 bail by phone - 100 times the maximum $500 fine under state law for minor thefts - hadn't returned a week's worth of calls.

 

Becnel, family members and witnesses said police snared Maten in the parking lot of a hotel where she had fled the floodwaters that swamped her New Orleans home. She had paid for her room with a credit card and dutifully followed authorities' instructions to pack extra food, they said.

 

She was retrieving a piece of sausage from the cooler in her car and planned to grill it so she and her frail 80-year-old husband, Alfred, could eat, according to her defenders. The parking lot was almost a block from the looted store, they said.

 

"That woman was never, never in that store," said Naisha Williams, 23, a New Orleans bank security guard who said she witnessed the episode and is distantly related to Maten. "If they want to take it to court, I'm willing to get on the stand and tell them the police is wrong. She is totally innocent."

 

Police Capt. Steve Carraway said Wednesday that Maten was arrested in the checkout area of a small store next to police headquarters.

 

The arrest report is short and assigns the value of goods Maten is alleged to have taken at $63.50. The items are not identified.

 

"When officers arrived, the arrestee was observed leaving the scene with items from the store. The store window doors were observed smashed out, where entry to the store was made," police reported.

 

Williams, one of the witnesses, said Maten was physically unable to get inside the store - even if she had wanted to.

 

"She is not capable of even looting it the way the store was at the time. You had to jump over a counter, and she is a diabetic and weak-muscled and wouldn't be able to get herself over it. And she couldn't afford to step on broken glass," Williams said.

 

 

 

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Williams said she tried to explain that to police but was brushed off.

 

"They didn't want to hear it. They put handcuffs on her. They just said we were emotional. It was basically, 'Just shut up,"' she said.

 

Maten's husband was left abandoned at the hotel, until family members picked him up. He is too upset to be interviewed, the family said.

 

Christine Bishop, the owner of the Check In Check Out deli, said that she was angry that looters had damaged her store, but that she would not want anyone charged with a crime if the person had simply tried to get food to survive. "Especially not a 70-year-old woman," Bishop said.

 

Short, Maten's daughter, did not witness the incident. She said her mother has led a law-abiding life. She is a deaconess at the Resurrection Mission Baptist Church and won an award for her decades of service at a hospital, Short said.

 

"Why would someone loot when they had a car with a refrigerator and had paid with a credit card at the hotel? The circumstances defy the theory of looting," said Becnel, Maten's lawyer.

 

Robin Peak, a legal analyst from the AARP senior lobbying group who assisted Maten's family, declined to discuss the case. She wrote colleagues an e-mail earlier this week about the elderly woman's plight. It was titled, "50K: The Price of Freedom in New Orleans."

 

Associated Press writer John Solomon contributed to this story from Washington.

 

 

09/15/05 20:20 EDT

 

 

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