[AGL] Euless Texas

[Igor Loving]

First-hand reaction to Katrina refuges

Anne Gervasi is a licensed psychologist. She donated her time and her talent 
working with Katrina refuges at first, Reunion Arena and then, the Civic 
Center. This is her first hand account and reaction to what she had to deal 
with. If you blog, please put this out there. We want everyone in the 
country to read this first-hand account of the horror that is Dallas. If you 
have an extensive mailing list, please forward it, too.

There are so many words that come to mind. As a scholar I am thinking 
diaspora, social displacement, systemic disruption, mass trauma, pandemic 
and unbelievable chaos. As a clinician, I am looking at something that we 
have never been trained to handle in this country—a level of victimization 
and its resultant psycho-social ripples that mandate a whole new field of 
clinical practice-mass victimology. Katrina kicked the top off of a racist 
and social termite's nest that has been growing beneath the ground since 
Reconstruction. These were deeply religious people who have lost God and for 
that matter, faith and hope. Hope has been replaced by magical thinking that 
augurs a second and more terrible level of social disruption and anger
not far down the road.

Over and over, I kept hearing a framing of self that puzzled me until I 
realized that this is how it must have been for blacks after Reconstruction. 
Over and over, people said, "everyone has been so wonderful, thank you, 
thank you." When I said, "there is no need to thank us, you are our fellow 
citizens and we want to help you--American to American," there would be a 
long pause as if the idea of being the same never struck them before.

They are angry and it is growing. The system failed them. For that matter, 
there is no system because all the safeguards and preparations that we 
thought were in place aren't there. I have been begging anyone who would 
listen over the past two years for a program in mass victimology to prepare 
for the next tragedy after 9/11. Now it is here and the lack of 
organization, science, and preparation are going to result in terrible 
consequences for us as a nation.

Imagine sending people who have been assimilated into the most stable 
demographic population in America into cities and towns all over the US who 
are as unprepared as the victims to understand their sense of dislocation 
and their support needs. The lower Gulf States have a language, a history, a 
social dynamic, a faith, a societal structure, and a ritual system unlike 
any other in America. These people have lived in and been acculturated to 
this system for generations. When the dust settles and the mud dries, we are 
going to see all over America, a nation that will lose patience with the 
needs of a foreign refugee population. Abandoned once again, the fury and 
the trauma that have been momentarily quieted by the outpouring of empathy 
and support post-crisis, will arise larger and more terrible than we have 
been equipped as a nation to handle. I hear it now, over and over, in the 
survivor stories, in the loss of self, and the need to reclaim dignity and 
power.

Right now, numbness is being replaced by magical thinking. "People want me 
here--here is better. I think I'll stay here." What is going to happen when 
reality sets in? The bulk of people who are planning to stay don't 
understand the system here. Even though we abut borders, we area vastly 
different nation. At least we are southerners. What is going to happen to 
the thousands being sent to Connecticut or Illinois or New Jersey? They are 
being offered free apartments, furniture etc, by generous and well meaning 
people who haven't thought the long term consequences through very well. A 
lot of the apartments are in areas where they won't have transportation or 
jobs. What is going to happen six months down the road when the magic wears 
off and the help slowly fades? How about the holidays for a people who 
thrive on ritual, tradition, and celebration? The trauma they are 
experiencing is so profound that we have no cultural
term or machinery set up for it. The dead and nameless bodies by the 
thousands rotting in the water, arriving dead on the buses with them, or 
dying next to them in the shelters are a huge festering wound that no one 
dares mention. This is a true Diaspora the likes of which we haven't seen 
since Reconstruction. The immediate needs that are being addressed ignore 
the greater traumas yet to be spoken. No governmental system can survive the 
number of wounded and disillusioned people that we are going to see 
sprouting up all over America. Something far greater and more organized has 
to be done.

Then to the helpers and what is happening there. Turf wars have already 
sprung up. In the name of "I know better than you do," chaos and wasted 
energy are multiplying. The Red Cross was initially in charge of certifying 
the credentials of the helping therapists. After Oklahoma City and the 
pretenders who arrived there, this seemed like a wonderful clearing house. 
Everyone who wanted to help had to go through a brief orientation and a 
thorough checking of credentials. Only licensed professionals were allowed. 
Driver's licenses were checked for criminal records. This seemed to be a 
common sense excellent approach to the question of rapists, pedophiles, and 
other thugs being denied access to a vulnerable population. Actually, things 
ran better than I expected at the beginning. Then in came the physicians who 
I guess felt that their non-existent coursework in this area qualified them 
to better run things. Immediate chaos, disorganization, and all sorts of 
ersatz "helpers" began running around. They grabbed our current Red Cross 
badges and then stopped us from going back on the floor to finish seeing our 
patients without the new badges, which they just happened to be out of. We 
had an optometrist with prescriptive lenses but no glasses or readers and no 
idea when he'd ever see any. We had a deaf booth but no deaf helpers.

In the midst of all this chaos, thousands and thousands of the walking 
wounded mixing with the powerless well-intentioned came the whispered word, 
pandemic. Lots of people are suddenly getting sick, and we have to have 
precautions. Don't eat or drink or touch the patients. We only have one 
bottle of disinfectant in the mental health section, so come back here--the 
length of the Convention Center--after each patient. "What of the people who 
are being cycled out of here?" "What are we sending into the population?" If 
people are sick and contagious, where are the precautions to separate the 
vulnerable? What of precautions such as masks and gloves to keep the medical 
professionals and first responders safe? All the here and now is suspended 
in the hope that maybe tomorrow will take care of itself and the worst won't 
happen. Those are the questions we asked on the first day. NO ONE IS IN 
CHARGE.

Therefore, there is no consistent answer or approach or forethought. I am no 
infection guru but as soon as I heard on day one that people with no water 
were forced to drink water with bloated bodies, feces, and rats in it, the 
thought of cholera, typhoid, and delayed disease immediately occurred to me. 
What if the fears of disease are correct? People are fanning out throughout 
America. Where is the CDC?

In the age of computers, we are doing worse than the pencil squibs and the 
rolls of paper to log in the displaced after World War II. Literacy and 
computer access seems to be considered as a given for people who have lost 
it all. Accessing FEMA is through a website. People are in shelters waiting 
for FEMA to come "in a few days." "Be patient." The Lieutenant Governor of 
Louisiana pumped my hand and replied to my desperate queries about how to 
help people find their parents and babies, "Be patient--give us a few days." 
The mothers who have lost their children, and there are many, and the 
children who have lost their parents, have had it with the "be patient" 
response. The shelters are surprisingly silent. It is hard to find the 
traumatized mothers because they cry silently. One mother asked how patient 
I would be if my five-month-old was somewhere unknown for over a week. Over 
and over, others would ask," Do you think my baby has milk and diapers?" "Do 
you think they are being kind to my baby?" And then, so softly that I would 
have to ask them to repeat, "Do you think my baby is okay?" My response--the 
convenient lie. Every time I said, "of
course"; I prayed to God that it was true.

I am sure that there is a special ring of hell for the media: The survivor 
stories end-on-end for the titillation of the public. I heard Soledad 
O'Brien say something about the still unrecognized need to address the 
psychological trauma. I sent a response to the CNN tip-line that there were 
hordes of every manner of mental health professional working 24/7. CNN's 
response? Dr. Phil and the stories of the survivors" on Larry King. They 
went to the guy who lost his clinical license for serious professional 
infractions to tell the stories? I could see the "entertainer" down there 
gathering tales of the already exploited so that he and Larry could both 
pimp their ratings. The real unsung mental health heroes, the counselors, 
psychologists, social workers and psychiatrists dealing with un-medicated 
psychosis and severe traumatic responses were represented by Dr. 
"Keep-It-Real"? We don't need tabloid help from the media. Scream about 
accountability and point fingers for those who can't.  Where is the real 
help from the media? Help us find those babies and parents and missing 
family. We have a man in one of the shelters who is caring for four kids. 
They call him uncle. He is actually the cousin of the fiancé of the mother 
who is probably dead. The children are silent. They sit and play and weep 
with open mouths that can't scream. Where is the media to scream for them?

Finally, to hell with this "no blame game." The stories that I know to be 
true are enough to make me boil. The compassionate foreign doctors who can't 
find anyone to validate their credentials, the expensive mobile hospital 
still sitting parked waiting for federal paperwork to move into Louisiana, 
the five C130s sitting on the Tarmac in San Diego since the night of 
Katrina, still waiting for orders to move. Where the hell are the beds? We 
have some old people sleeping on hot plastic pool floats with no sheets. 
There are still no showers for people who have walked for hours through 
fetid waters. Their skin is breaking out in rashes. Still no showers. Where 
the hell are the DeCon showers bought with Homeland Security money that can 
shower 30 people at a time. The convention centers have no bathing 
facilities so the filth and skin reactions are getting worse. What of lice? 
There are no clothes for the really heavy and large. I was reduced to 
writing the women I knew who went to Weight Watchers to comb their attics 
for "before" outfits. When I arrived with the sack of my gatherings, I had 
to engage in a full scale battle and puff myself up to all my red-headed 
doctor fury to get them distributed to the women still sitting there in 
their stinking clothes.

The survivors are like the Mayor of New Orleans who apologized to George 
Bush for his anger. "If we tell the way we feel, maybe help will stop." All 
the apologists on the air distancing George and his co-vacationers and idiot 
appointees should be impeached. I liked Nagin when he called it all 
bullshit. He was right. How about Haley Barbour complaining about the lack 
of support for his state? Did he so soon forget his past life and what he 
did to set up this government of spin artists? If they had acted like a 
government the body count would be less. The aid would be better managed. 
The days of filth, and feces, and death would have been ended sooner. God 
help all of the poseurs in charge when these folks finally get in touch with 
their justifiable rage. Did you see the White House's logo for the 
hurricane? George and some asshole in a ball cap against a background of 
Katrina waving the flag. They had the energy and time for a nice logo but no 
time to get the elements of help in gear?

The tragedy is leavened by some moments of farce, the guy who arrived with a 
case of Gucci shoes in various sizes that he "saved" from his closet. The 
man wearing twelve expensive watches up his arm. I guess he is a punctual 
sort.

There are the too-poignant-for-words vignettes. I saw a lady sitting on a 
blanket holding a photo of two children that she had pulled from the water.  
She kept crying and looking at it. I thought they were her children. She 
didn't know whose they were. They were just losses and she mourned them.

Of course there were the criminals, thugs, and mobsters. One of the greatest 
indictments of the "spin machine" that is going to come from this situation 
will be the repeated characterizations of the victims as lawless and 
criminal. Over and over I heard people tell me about how ashamed they were 
to be portrayed that way. Ninety-nine percent of these people never were 
characterized as anything but lawful and good citizens. In their most 
desperate hours to be reduced to taking food and water to survive and then 
to be lumped with the television thieves and the shooters is too shameful 
for most of them to bear. I heard from hospital employees that survived on a 
cup of watered grits so that the patients could make it. And then I heard 
had they had to hide the ones that didn't in closets to keep up the morale 
of the others.


The people that survived this tragedy and the people who help them all know 
one truth. The help and the love and the care that has been extended to them 
have been on a citizen-to-citizen basis. The churches, doctors, therapists, 
and ordinary citizens who are giving all they can in time and resources are 
managing to band-aid at the most elementary level-neighbor to neighbor. The 
government has failed. We are more vulnerable now than before 9/11 because 
faith in the system is gone. No system can sustain itself as a viable entity 
when the citizenry are the walking wounded. Victims implode a system from 
within and expose its decay. This is the beginning of the end unless we can 
get a drastic change of philosophy and restore the government to a system 
"by the people for the people." Right now nobody down here believes we have 
that.



Anne Gervasi

agervasi at sbcglobal.net
gervasi at dal.devry.edu
Euless, TX 76039

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.
Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
>From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
--Wislawa Szymborska



Charlie Loving