Oh God, another natural disaster....

So it's not that often that I invoke the name of God in a non-exclamatory way...but that's what I found myself doing as I biked to church Sunday morning having seen enough of the headline about Pakistan in my folded newspaper in the driveway to grasp that yet another huge natural disaster had occurred--and that once again, the disasters of underdevelopment, capitalism, imperialism, etc ensured high death tolls and much suffereing to come.

sigh.

Pakistan earthquake. On the heels of major flooding & mudslides in Centeral America, and a volcano eruption in El Salvador. On the heels of Katrina. On the heels of the tsunami. on the heels of many others that I don't even remember--I'm vaguely remembering the recent earthquake in Iran for which I lifted nary a finger nor a dollar. Oh wait, maybe I did make a donation through an Iranian co-worker who helped organize a benefit--maybe that's why I actually remember that particular disaster.

I know that there are many, many studies about disasters and aid. We know that the people who have the least are always the most screwed over before and after a disaster. We know that much could be done to prevent the devastating consequences of natural calamities. I have a systemic analysis--we need to change the whole dang system so that people live in safe places where there are clear and effective emergency plans that will minimize death & injury, and help people impacted my natural disasters to reestablish their lives.

So when a natural disaster occurs, my general inclination is to let the relief agencies deal with it. That's not where I will put my time or resources, because I want to change the system.

yet. When the tsunami happened, I gave money--not to the Red Cross, but to the East Timor Action Network which is doing solid on the ground organziing work. And I read some articles, I probably followed up on a few action alerts--but it was far away, I don't know anyone there, and I don't know much about the organizing work happening there.

Then Katrina happened. Like many folks, it took me a few days, a week, to understand the magnitude of what this was. Unlike many friends, I was emotionally disengaged from it--largely, but not completely, because I was grieving a loss closer to me that left me little energy to grieve about the Gulf Coast. Despite my emotional detachment, it hit closer to home than the tsunami--because it is, and because I felt like our first world country should have been better prepared to deal with it. Like so many, I was outraged and deeply saddened by what I heard happening, yet my inclination was to simply make a donation and be done.

And that gets me to my main thought nugget for the moment---that I tend to not pay much attention to natural disasters. I tend to not really care [to be crassly honest]...and here katrina comes along and galvanizes incredible movement across the country.....then the floods and volcano happen in El Salvador, a place that I am more personally connected to than the Gulf Coast, and it hits me emotionally. And I am struck at the differences between Katrina response and Central American flood response in this country. It is so obvious--"our" country versus elsewhere, first world arrogance that this "doesn't happen here" yet of course it happens "there." And I am deeply saddened by the impact of the floods. And I make a donation that is much smaller than the 3 I've made so far for Katrina relief.

And then I hear about the Pakistan earthquake. A place that I have virtually no connection to. An earthquake that I would have scarcely paid attention to pre-Katrina. Yet now I think about it, and I think about what I will do in response. About what my various communities will do in response...because surely, many of the same issues will surface. Yet I don't know movement folks working in pakistan--do we even have connections to them?

What response is called for? Certainly, finding grassroots groups on the ground to donate money to. But what else? How do these disasters fit into our movement plan? How do we appropriately respond to them AND continue doing the movement building that will eventually prevent the disastrous consequences of these disasters? Finally, I am trying to put these individual disasters into a broader context--I'm getting tired of responding to one after another, and I want to bridge the huge systemic change with the immediate disaster relief. What will be the next one, and how will we respond to it?

sigh. perhaps tomorrow I will click on one of those links from that newspaper article to send a donation to Pakistani relief efforts. then what???