Faith in the Face of Disaster: UU Response to Hurricane Katrina

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A sermon by the Rev. Susanne Nazian
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Venice, FL
Sunday, September 25, 2005

Often when grief and anger are mixed, it's one thing—one sentence, one misspoken word, one careless act that is the final straw that unleashes all that emotion. Today's sermon title comes from the news that made me most angry—that finally convinced me that not even the graphic evidence of New Orleans was able to filter through the blindness of our nation's government and many of our nation's citizens. That news was that the $2,500 debit cards being distributed by FEMA to the most needy of the evacuees were too much paperwork for FEMA and were being discontinued. Those who were most in need could thereafter apply for them online.

I hope I don't need to tell you what's wrong with that thinking. It's as if the administration is so unaware of the plight of the poor that the poor are understood as those still having dial-up internet access. I ran across this lack of awareness of class differences in a college instructor a few years ago. She was also a UU. One of the RE mothers was a welfare mother with 2 children. Our teacher was going to California for a two-week visit with family. Wistfully, the welfare mother who had been quite public with her plight said she'd love to go to California someday. It had always been a dream of hers. So, our teacher said, "Well, get a plane ticket and come with me!" It wasn't malicious or teasing, just completely unaware.

In his pastoral letter, Bill Sinkford wrote, quote... even our generosity has been tinged with the racism and classism that sullies the soul of our nation. One Unitarian Universalist wrote to me of "a disturbing message from a member of our congregation speaking from the pulpit this morning, regarding social action plans to help evacuees who reached [our town]: ‘These are people who left town in their cars before the hurricane hit. They're good families. You don't have to be afraid of them.' I listened in shock and horror but could not find words to respond. I know you can and will. And must." End quote.

That thinking is the same as the thinking that cut welfare, that cut food stamps, that cut funding for education, that cut programs for the poor across the board. Someone used the debit card for an expensive purse. Someone bought liquor. Never mind the countless people who needed medicine, medical supplies, food, and formula for the babies. Maybe it was their one and only chance to own some kind of car. If someone seems to misuse the help that's extended, it's a good excuse to look the other way while little children go to bed hungry in the richest nation in the world. It seems we'd rather spend our money and our resources, even the human power of 3,000 of the Louisiana National Guard fighting a war on foreign soil that makes no sense, and is based on lies and half truths. It seems we'd rather talk about a new trip to the moon than talk about the real and devastating issues that threaten the soul of America right here on this earth. And most of us are guilty. We don't want to talk about the crippling class structure in America, precisely because we benefit from it. But it is in our faces now.

Speaking of New Orleans, Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund wrote, "‘The chronic quiet twin tsunamis of poverty and race that have been snuffing out the lives and hopes of millions of American children were laid bare there (in New Orleans ).

The shameful underbelly of American society is graphically spread across the internet, across the newspapers, across the world by satellite television for all the world to see, friends and enemies alike. In the unwillingness to speak of it, to acknowledge its truth, we, like those other nations we so blithely accuse, have hidden it from the world as well as ourselves.

I am as angry with the response of our government as any of you. A Federal Emergency Management Agency which proved its incompetence right here in Florida—an agency managed by incompetent appointees of the Bush Administration—political hacks whose positions were rewards for services and money rendered to the Bush campaign. Brown, whose claim to ability was his chairmanship of the Arabian Horse Association, trying to run an agency Bush saw as sufficiently unimportant that he need not appoint anyone competent to the post. I'm angry at Bush's statement of surprise at the broken levee on Lake Pontchartrain . In warning after warning, in the very scenario that FEMA enacted last year, came predictions of just that tragedy. An administration that was more concerned with the saving of oil than the saving of life... Yes, I'm angry, I'm outraged!

The old, the sick, the poor---those were the 100,000 people who didn't have a way out. They didn't own a car. Most didn't have money to buy a bus or plane ticket. There was no money in the bank. It was the end of the month when food stamps had run out and welfare checks hadn't arrived. The working poor were living one paycheck from homelessness and starvation. Buses didn't come for them—they stayed in a parking lot until they were covered with water. Owners of the nursing home where 34 died turned ambulances away. Medicare doesn't send a check if the patients are evacuated. Most of the abandoned were black, most were among the 25% of New Orleans residents who were below the poverty line. Those were the ones we saw on national television standing on rooftops, sitting in the blistering sun on I-10 covering their dead with blankets while police passed by their cries for help, being brought to shelters that were poorly managed and often more dangerous than the waters.

Who are these people? Nationally, the poverty line is $19, 350 for a family of four—close to the amount some of us pay in taxes. There are approximately 36 million people who live in poverty and 45 million without health insurance. Seventy five percent of the children who live in poverty have parents who work. The largest percentage of those are African American, followed by Hispanic and non-Hispanic whites. Of more than 36 million who live in poverty, 3,428,000 are over the age of 65.

This we knew. There are literally thousands of government and private studies, literally thousands of inefficient, ineffective and unsuccessful efforts to deal with this, and our failure has created a moral crisis in America, a corporate national sin.

The minimum wage in most states is $5.15 an hour. That's 10,712 a year without taxes. With two parents working that's only slightly above the poverty line for a family of four before taxes and after taxes and social security more than $2,000 below the poverty level for a family of two parents, both working 40 hours a week each. Subtract day care or after school care for two children, the cost of housing and food... No family can live on that; much less afford payments on even the shoddiest of houses. Add to that the fact that many employers are hiring more people to work fewer hours so they do not have to offer benefits. Even when insurance is available, many families find they cannot afford their portion of the premium. And our government's tax structure gives breaks to the top 1-2% of wage earners, while punishing the middle and working class. Put on top of that the price of gasoline, benefiting who? The owners of the gas companies, of course. Fat cat profits while New Orleans burns. Then President Bush suspends union wages for construction companies and the giant contractors like Halliburton come in to restore the city. It's the surest way I know to rebuild a ghetto of substandard housing and call it affordable. And I am outraged!

Now, let me get to the public voice of religion, namely the radical right. Last week in the Venice Gondolier, there was an article by an evangelist. In that article, she blamed the sinfulness of the city of New Orleans, the sinfulness of those who looted and robbed for God's revenge that came in the form of Katrina. I want to ask her, "If your God is intent on punishing people for their sins, why did he visit most of the horror on the poor, the old and the innocent children?" If I were to think in terms of a God who is active in history, then with the liberation theologians, I'd think of a God who acts with a preferential option for the poor. Their own Bible tells them this.

It was not God who didn't repair the levees. It was not God who chose not to use the school busses to evacuate the citizens. It was not God who turned back the Wal Mart trucks carrying supplies. It was not God who refused evacuation by ambulance for the nursing home residents. It was not God who passed by many times while a man died on the interstate. It was our fellow human beings. The lesson of the Good Samaritan was forgotten, and the poor were rendered untouchable.

James Carroll, a Boston Globe Columnist, delves further into the role of religion in this tragedy and I think he has a cogent point. The reliance on faith based initiatives to come to the rescue is a way of ducking governmental responsibility for its citizens and may, in fact, have contributed heavily to what went wrong. Carroll says, "I find myself wondering if the abysmal performance of government agencies in responding to this crisis isn't related to the unprecedented emphasis the government itself has been putting on ''faith-based" groups as key providers of social services? Carroll goes on to say that the problem is exacerbated when "religiously sponsored good works supply essential needs in place of government responses: Something essential to democracy is at stake here. The rights of citizens to basic relief, especially in times of crisis, are rooted not in charity, but in justice. Charity can be an affront to the dignity of citizenship. Citizens in a democracy, after all, are the owners of government; therefore government help is a form of self-help."

How are we to respond to this way of thinking? We must be the voice that differentiates acts of nature (also called Acts of God) from acts of human beings. We must be willing and able to bring our own voice into the public square, to witness to those ethical and moral values that reflect our own highest purpose here and now. We must respond to hate with love, to mistaken interpretations of the gospels with fact, to poor government which limits the choices and denies the dignity and worth of our citizens

To do that, we must first make our own lives uncomfortable. Look at us. We all dress well, take vacations, eat well—sometimes too well—have excellent medical care, nice homes—many of us more than one—have or have had good jobs and nice salaries, drive nice cars. If we're particularly generative, we give to charities, support the causes of peace and justice, watch how we spend the earth's resources, and love our neighbors.

It's not enough.

This morning, in outrage and in guilt I bring you a message you may not want to hear. Outrage because my African American son and his friends of color who have over the years lived at our home are victims of America 's corporate sin and their plight has caused me to see more clearly the plight of all African Americans, especially those who are poor. Guilt because we cannot lay the whole blame for not seeing on one inept administration. Some of it must be borne by us.

You see, it's my experience that most of us don't get it. Until I was the mother of a black child, I didn't. Yes, I was always a liberal, always aware of disparities in the treatment of the poor and blacks. But to get the systemic nature of oppression, you have to go there to a place that is neither comfortable nor safe.

When my son was only six months old, I went to a park in Tampa with him and my 7 year old white son. Two families released dogs as we went by, saying "my dogs don't like niggers." It was only a clue of what was to come. As I watched and as my son lived through the anger and the resentment and the rebellion, it was painfully clear to me that the subtleties of racism and oppression in this nation ran deeper than I could imagine.

Now, I don't want any of you to start thinking about it being the South. I'm not letting you off on that, not when there is Watts and Harlem and the South Side of Chicago. I'm a Southerner with a Southerner's sense of place. I've lived here and I've lived in the North and the Midwest . Everywhere, I've observed how black kids are noticed when they get into trouble while white kids tend not to be. I've observed how white kids are perceived to be telling the truth while black kids are not. I've observed how explanations from white kids are heard while from black kids it's back talk from an uppity nigger. I've seen my son tracked into lower level classes where he's with underachievers, seen him tracked into being expelled from school, and seen the subtle way he was labeled a troublemaker and then a criminal. And he's not the only one. I've seen this clearly while white folks have assumed it's because I'm a lax parent or he's a bad kid, a real criminal. And do you know what? It's white bullshit. Bullshit from people who have never been there, who have never known a black kid, much less one who's poor to boot! And I am outraged!

Thursday, while I was gone to take one of the kids to work, my son was cleaning the house. He noticed a sheriff's deputy looking at his car parked in front of our house, awaiting repairs. He'd taken the license plate off to keep it from being stolen. It was in his room. He approached the deputy, said, "Excuse me, but what is happening?" The deputy threatened to arrest him if he didn't get back in the house for interfering with an investigation. He accused him of having a stolen car, told him he was issuing an order to have it towed and wouldn't let him bring out the tag. Had I been there, he would have apologized for the trouble and asked me to put the tag back on.

And I am outraged!

But my son is the child of an upper middle class family. If he's in trouble, there's a good lawyer. We've observed the poor—they're the ones without parents there—even young kids. The court appointed lawyer looks for them just before they are to go before the judge. The lawyer calls their name. They've never met them before. Most are in prison uniforms, not released to parental custody by bail or on their own recognizance. Charges are not reduced. Often they are remanded. Almost all are black or Hispanic.

It's an unjust world racially, unjust at a deep level most of us read about but few of us know as reality.

Our UUA President, Dr. William Sinkford is African American. In his pastoral letter, he had this to say: " New Orleans was too "dangerous" for the small number of National Guard troops available to enter the city. How much of that perceived "danger" had to do with the color of the citizen's skins? Why were food and water not brought in by helicopter? Did relief have to wait 5 days? How long would it have taken the people in the Superdome and the Convention Center to receive assistance if they had been middle-class White Americans?"

Yes, we say, there was looting and shooting. It would be nice to think that it was the product of Katrina but it wasn't. It was a product of the simmering rage and frustration that exists in the ghettos of so many American cities. Yes, it was against the law, and yes, it had to be controlled or anarchy would result. But New Orleans showed us in an undeniable way the future of an America that continues to bury its moral head in the sand and neglect the future of so many of its citizens.

The old, the poor, the minorities are invisible. Something like Katrina comes along and makes them visible. We can't deny their suffering then. Despite attempts by the government and by the Christian right to explain it away, it won't go away this time. We can't let it go away.

As Unitarian Universalists committed to the dignity and worth of every human being, we must dig deeper to make justice, equity and compassion a reality.

We don't speak about class because to speak of it means we must do something about it. We must look at the tax inequities that benefit the rich, even if we are the rich. We must look at the ways to redistribute the wealth, even if we are the wealthy. We must look at paying a living wage, even if we are the business operators and the stockholders. We must look at speaking out, even if we must risk to do so. And we must hold our government accountable and responsible for workable solutions.

To build a just society will require much of us. The notion of guilt and sin confound us as religious liberals. Yet, I believe we must learn to speak of it in order to name the elephant in the room. The notion that we are responsible for knowing at a deeper level than makes us comfortable is one some of us would rather leave alone. Many will be upset with me that I'd say Unitarian Universalism REQUIRES anything of us, but I'm saying just that. Without our voices, without our willingness to get our hands dirty while we grapple in the Louisiana mud, there is little hope.

Marian Wright Edelman recently wrote, "Not to know is bad.  To know and to do nothing is inexcusable. It is time to reset our nation's moral and political compass.

The work is hard and it is dirty and it is disheartening. It is also the only way to bring our republic out of the mire of racism and classism and see at the end a ray of hope.

"Whispering Hope" first 2 verses.

Faith in the Face of Disaster: UU Response to Hurricane Katrina

• In the Eye of the Storm: Resources and Commentary following Hurricane Katrina

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