Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action - www.jewishalliance.org.
18 Tremont Street, Suite 320, Boston, 02108 - tel: 617-227-3000 fax: 617-227-3453

28 Av 5765 Hurricane Relief September 2, 2005

It's not what one says, but what one does,
That makes all the difference in the world.
Baba Batra (Talmudic tractate)

Dear Friends:

The news from the Gulf Coast is overwhelming, both the natural disaster plus what seems to be
an unbelievable paralysis of the government institutions we would have expected to have been
ready with a more rapid response.

Many of us have personal stories; people we know who have sustained great loss. Our family
has tracked a young couple from New Orleans to Austin, Texas, to Atlanta, Georgia, to family
in Greensboro, N.C., with nothing but the clothes on their backs. And our greatest concern has
been a 90 plus cousin (Holocaust survivor) who only recently moved to New Orleans to be closer
to his children after the death of his wife. He was evacuated to Houston and is now on a
plane to Boston. His children are in Tennessee now assuming their home is lost since it was located
close to Lake Pontchartrain.

Our relatives have families to help pick up the pieces. But, thousands and thousands of
New Orleans and Mississippi residents do not have extended families that can help. We are
facing a huge movement of refugees with the need to find short-term shelter, food, and clothes,
and long-term aid.

Please give to the agencies you trust, and urge others to give as well. We've included some
of the agencies we know below. In the weeks ahead, we will be facing hard questions
about the immediate response. Those of us who are particularly sensitive to social justice concerns
will be asking especially difficult questions as to whether race and class were factors in the slow
government response or a general failure to prepare for catastrophe. But, at this point,
the Jewish tradition of tzedakah must be foremost in our minds.

Sheila Decter

Relief Agencies

American Red Cross
www.redcross.org. or calling (800) HELP-NOW
Locally, both Sovereign Bank and Citizens Bank have indicated a willingness
to accept donations for the American Red Cross.

United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
E-mail for more information: kunoff@uscj.org.
Website: www.uscj.org.
Phone: 212-533-7800 ext.2402
Direct: 646-519-9280
Credit card donations can be made online at www.uscj.org. just click on the link to the Hurricane Disaster Relief Fund. When you make a credit card donation you must write in the designation box that the donation is for the Hurricane Disaster Relief Fund.

Donations by check can be made payable to "USCJ"; indicate in the memo section that the donation is for the Hurricane Disaster Relief Fund. Checks should be mailed to USCJ Hurricane Disaster Relief Fund; 121 Congressional Lane; Suite 210; Rockville, MD 20852. In order to reduce administrative costs, they will not send an acknowledgement of the donation unless required by law or requested by the donor.

Union of Reform Judaism
Special hurricane relief website
http://urj.org/relief/index.cfm?.
Regional directors have been reaching out to congregational leaders in the affected communities and they have set up this website for updates on news from reform congregations. In addition, there is a place for individuals to share information in a timely way, including notice of their whereabouts for colleagues and friends.

They have also established a hurricane relief phone line (212.452.6526) and email (hurricanerelief@urj.org) where individuals can leave messages with specific questions or offers of support.
Donations can be made online
https://esite.uahc.org/edonations2/mainpage.aspx?.
or sent to:
Union for Reform Judaism
Hurricane Disaster Relief Fund
633 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
The Union will forward the entire amount of donations, less any fee charged by credit card company, to appropriate relief agencies.

United Jewish Communities (UJC)
Donations may be made online
https://secure.ujcfederations.org/ft2/form.html?__id=7500.
General information available at:
http://www.ujc.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=161563.
This will serve as a conduit for distributing all funds for humanitarian aid.
Funds will help members of the Jewish and genera l communities touched by
Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and the Western Florida
panhandle. Federations in the storm region ask that donations NOT be sent to
them directly, as they are unprepared to handle these efforts.

Please mark all donations: UJC Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief, and send them
to UJC, Inc. Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief
P.O. Box 30, Old Chelsea
Station, New York, NY 10113.

American Jewish Committee

Initially, AJCommittee plans to distribute funds to those relief organizations that
are on the ground and proving their effectiveness to provide necessary
services. Thereafter, they will dedicate available resources to
helping repair and rebuild churches, synagogues, and other houses of
worship that were damaged and are in need of financial help. (Needless
to say, appropriate due diligence will be done before any grants are
made.)
Online: www.ajc.org/katrina.
or by mail to: Ms. Brenda Rudzin, AJC
Hurricane Katrina Fund, 165 East 56th Street, NY, NY 10022.
AJCommittee will absorb all administrative costs, ensuring that donated funds
are used solely for their intended purpose

For rebuilding of domestic abuse shelters in the hurricane area
www.JaneDoe.org\hurricanerelief.htm.
Checks can be mailed to
JDI Hurricane Relief Fund
14 Beacon Street Suite 507
Boston MA 02108.

Offers of housing in the southeast part of our country:
www.MoveOn.com.
Move On is gathering offers of housing in the Southeast.
Tens of thousands of newly homeless families are being bused to a stadium in Houston, where they may wait for weeks or months. At least 80,000 are competing for area shelters, and countless more are in motels, cars, or wherever they can stay out of the elements. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Red Cross are scrambling to find shelter for the displaced.

Move On has launched an emergency national housing drive to connect empty beds with hurricane victims who desperately need a place to wait out the storm. Individuals can post offers of housing (a spare room, extra bed, even a decent couch) and search for available housing online at:
http://www.hurricanehousing.org.

Other websites where housing and jobs are now being listed
www.Nola.com. which has a "Homes Available" link on its home page
People are listing opportunities for specific housing

Craigslist
Jobs and homes
http://www.craigslist.com/about/help/katrina_aid.html.

Useful Viewing
This week on NOW:
Tonight, Friday, September 2, 8:00 pm., WGBH

Aftermath. What you don't know about Katrina and the Gulf Coast. Why
was the devastation so bad? NOW investigates in LOSING GROUND.

With the death toll rising and the damage estimates in the billions, NOW
examines why New Orleans was virtually defenseless against hurricane
Katrina. The report explores how one of the biggest civil engineering
projects in U.S. history-the leveeing of the Mississippi River-set off
an environmental chain reaction that helped destroy the natural barrier
protecting New Orleans from catastrophic storms.
See additional information on the NOW website: http://www.pbs.org/now/.

Useful Reading on disaster relief, preparation, and long-time pundits
on the vulnerability of New Orleans.

"No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming"
By Sidney Blumenthal

In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.

Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.

A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast

Full article: http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,372455,00.html.

June 8, 2004 Tuesday

Shifting federal budget erodes protection from levees;
Because of cuts, hurricane risk grows

By Sheila Grissett, East Jefferson bureau
For the first time in 37 years, federal budget cuts have all but stopped major work on the New Orleans
area's east bank hurricane levees, a complex network of concrete walls, metal gates and giant earthen berms
that won't be finished for at least another decade.

"I guess people look around and think there's a complete system in place, that we're just out here trying to
put icing on the cake," said Mervin Morehiser, who manages the "Lake Pontchartrain and vicinity" levee
project for the Army Corps of Engineers. "And we aren't saying that the sky is falling, but people should
know that this is a work in progress, and there's more important work yet to do before there is a complete
system in place."

In reality, levee building is a long-term undertaking. Section by section, earth is piled into walls as high as
20 feet to protect land on the east bank of the Mississippi River from water that a slow-moving Category 3
hurricane could shove out of Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne. But the levees gradually settle into
southeast Louisiana's mucky subsoil, and every few years, the corps comes back, section by section, to pile
on more dirt in what insiders call a "lift."

full article: http://jewishalliance.org/info/0000009f.htm.

Published on Wednesday, August 31, 2005 by the Editor & Publisher
Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen?
'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues
By Will Bunch

PHILADELPHIA - Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city, the waters may still
keep rising in New Orleans late on Tuesday. That's because Lake Pontchartrain continues to pour through a
two-block-long break in the main levee, near the city's 17th Street Canal. With much of the Crescent City
some 10 feet below sea level, the rising tide may not stop until it's level with the massive lake.

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact,
the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on
major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six
people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA
.
Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million
on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million
in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and
and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide
the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same
time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from
2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

full article: http://jewishalliance.org/info/000000a0.htm.

August 30, 2005
latimes.com : National News

KATRINA HITS THE GULF COAST
Storm Turns Focus to Global Warming
Though some scientists connect the growing severity of hurricanes to climate
change, most insist that there's not enough proof.

By Miguel Bustillo, Times Staff Writer
Is the rash of powerful Atlantic storms in recent years a symptom of global
warming?
Although most mainstream hurricane scientists are skeptical of any connection
between global warming and heightened storm activity, the growing intensity of
hurricanes and the frequency of large storms are leading some to rethink
long-held views.

Most hurricane scientists maintain that linking global warming to
more-frequent severe storms, such as Hurricane Katrina, is premature, at best.
Though warmer sea-surface temperatures caused by climate change theoretically
could boost the frequency and potency of hurricanes, scientists say the
150-year record of Atlantic storms shows ample precedent for recent events.

Full aritlcle:
www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-warm30aug30,1,2676962.story?coll=la-headlines-nation.

And apocalyptically,
When you think the following article was written?
National Geographic

"It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV "storm teams" warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.

But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however-the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.

The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level-more than eight feet below in places-so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the
Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.

Full text: http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/.
October 2004.

Lost in the Flood
Why no mention of race or class in TV's Katrina coverage?
By Jack Shafer
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2005, at 4:22 PM PT

What the newscasters didn't say
I can't say I saw everything that the TV newscasters pumped out about Katrina, but I viewed enough repeated segments to say with 90 percent confidence that broadcasters covering the New Orleans end of the disaster demurred from mentioning two topics that must have occurred to every sentient viewer: race and class.

Nearly every rescued person, temporary resident of the Superdome, looter, or loiterer on the high ground of the freeway I saw on TV was African-American. And from the look of it, they weren't wealthy residents of the Garden District. This storm appears to have hurt blacks more directly than whites, but the broadcasters scarcely mentioned that fact.

Now, don't get me wrong. Just because 67 percent of New Orleans residents are black, I don't expect CNN to rename the storm "Hurricane" Carter in honor of the black boxer. Just because Katrina's next stop after destroying coastal Mississippi was counties that are 25 percent to 86 percent African-American (according to this U.S. Census map), and 27.9 percent of New Orleans residents are below the poverty line, I don't expect the Rev. Jesse Jackson to call the news channels to give a comment. But in the their frenzy to beat freshness into the endless loops of disaster footage that have been running all day, broadcasters might have mentioned that nearly all the visible people left behind in New Orleans are of the black persuasion, and mostly poor.

Full article: http://www.slate.com/id/2124688/?nav=navoa.

Published in the Boston Globe

Katrina's real name
By Ross Gelbspan | August 30, 2005

THE HURRICANE that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the
National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming.

When the year began with a two-foot snowfall in Los Angeles, the cause was
global warming.

When 124-mile-an-hour winds shut down nuclear plants in Scandinavia and cut
power to hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland and the United Kingdom, the
driver was global warming.

When a severe drought in the Midwest dropped water levels in the Missouri River
to their lowest on record earlier this summer, the reason was global warming.
In July, when the worst drought on record triggered wildfires in Spain and
Portugal and left water levels in France at their lowest in 30 years, the
explanation was global warming.

When a lethal heat wave in Arizona kept temperatures above 110 degrees and
killed more than 20 people in one week, the culprit was global warming.
And when the Indian city of Bombay (Mumbai) received 37 inches of rain in one
day -- killing 1,000 people and disrupting the lives of 20 million others --
the villain was global warming.

As the atmosphere warms, it generates longer droughts, more-intense downpours,
more-frequent heat waves, and more-severe storms.

Although Katrina began as a relatively small hurricane that glanced off south
Florida, it was supercharged with extraordinary intensity by the relatively
blistering sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.

The consequences are as heartbreaking as they are terrifying.
Unfortunately, very few people in America know the real name of Hurricane
Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to
keep the public in doubt about the issue.

The reason is simple: To allow the climate to stabilize requires humanity to
cut its use of coal and oil by 70 percent. That, of course, threatens the
survival of one of the largest commercial enterprises in history.

In 1995, public utility hearings in Minnesota found that the coal industry had
paid more than $1 million to four scientists who were public dissenters on
global warming. And ExxonMobil has spent more than $13 million since 1998 on an
anti-global warming public relations and lobbying campaign.

In 2000, big oil and big coal scored their biggest electoral victory yet when
President George W. Bush was elected president -- and subsequently took
suggestions from the industry for his climate and energy policies.

As the pace of climate change accelerates, many researchers fear we have
already entered a period of irreversible runaway climate change.

Against this background, the ignorance of the American public about global
warming stands out as an indictment of the US media.

When the US press has bothered to cover the subject of global warming, it has
focused almost exclusively on its political and diplomatic aspects and not on
what the warming is doing to our agriculture, water supplies, plant and animal
life, public health, and weather.

For years, the fossil fuel industry has lobbied the media to accord the same
weight to a handful of global warming skeptics that it accords the findings of
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- more than 2,000 scientists
from 100 countries reporting to the United Nations.

Today, with the science having become even more robust -- and the impacts as
visible as the megastorm that covered much of the Gulf of Mexico -- the press
bears a share of the guilt for our self-induced destruction with the oil and
coal industries.

As a Bostonian, I am afraid that the coming winter will -- like last winter --
be unusually short and devastatingly severe. At the beginning of 2005, a deadly
ice storm knocked out power to thousands of people in New England and dropped a
record-setting 42.2 inches of snow on Boston.

The conventional name of the month was January. Its real name is global
warming.

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