skullaria wrote:

I agree. Howard Dean said it best when he pissed a bunch of people off - America has CLASS issues. Politicians use race issues to further divide the poor. We've got to go past the race issue and talk about CLASS issues. Its just that poverty in this situation has mainly hit blacks. There are certainly poor white folks in that mess as well as old people of every sex and color. They are all POOR. Also, because they are poor, they are social suspects. I am sick of hearing that 'they are ignorant and only mooch off the government.' None of the people I hear saying these things - and after going out today, I have certainly heard those things said - they don't even KNOW those people...if they have jobs, what they've contributed to society. It is like being poor makes you automatically GUILTY of being dumb and lazy. I have a problem with that.

I heard something on the news about during one point of the evacuation apparently the people who had been staying in a nearby hotel were allowed to cut to the front of the line on the buses leaving the convention center. If this is true, then there is a definitely an argument to be made that classism slipped right past everyone there. Unless that hotel was hosting a convention of diabetics or octogenerians or sufferers of some other medical necessity, there's really no excuse for people who were enclaved away from the general populace instead of queuing up at the designated evacuation point to have been given this kind of special treatment.

RE: Kanye West *almost* gets it--Bush doesn't care about poor people