2005-09-01 - 5:43 a.m.
What does the law mean to you?
I have a request for my readers: If you're going to assume that I have not considered the ramifications of looting, 1. Please link me to something more readable than a snotty little diatribe about how poor people are, so that's why they're looting, and
2. Give me more credit than that. I don't recall writing about people stealing food, I recall (and let me go back and check... yes, I did) writing about people taking advantage of the disaster to help themselves to expensive electronics and other non-essentials. And now, some alternative food for thought: Every person who steals takes that resource away from someone else. In a disaster of these proportions, local resources are the first thing that relief agencies turn to. When those resources are looted, that means all the poor people - you know, the ones who *didn't* take the law into their own hands - have to wait longer for essential items such as clean drinking water and baby diapers and food. The people who were too poor to leave the city of New Orleans and went to the Superdome are short of things like diapers, too - and if the local stores are picked clean, that means the supplies have to be shipped in from other parts of the country - which takes longer. All the people who *didn't* steal are now going to suffer because of the people who did. The majority of the people in this disaster did what the authorities have told them to do, and made an attempt to obey the law. When something of this magnitude strikes, resources become very thin on the ground, and people get stressed, and when they're told that supplies will be longer in coming because the local supplies have already been looted, they get (understandably) upset. Not to mention that police are not able to assist rescue personnel as much as they would like, because numbers of them are required to attempt to stop people looting. This is a civilized country, and looters are not shot on sight (at least, not by the police), and this means that more time is spent on law enforcement - time that would have been better spent assisting the vast numbers of confused, lost, and now homeless law-abiding citizens who could do with extra assistance. Many of those people will now come home to a house that has not only been destroyed, but picked over by scavengers who think it's okay to take other people's things. Thinking it's okay to steal means that all the just as needy people who will *not* steal are put into greater jeopardy because resources that should have been available are now no longer there - looters are remarkably poor at allocating resources fairly. The extra stress caused by looters and opportunistic scavengers almost resulted in people rioting after hurricane Andrew - there's no reason to think this disaster will be any different. A number of relief agencies are now working down there - they need money. Money buys resources, money buys food. Money buys time for all the people who evacuated to government-assigned shelters with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Money makes sure that they get the supplies they need faster, even if looters have stolen everything in that area. Give.
Dorsal - Ventral
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all words copyright Laura Mellin 2000-2005
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