I've been away from the political spin this past week, thankfully, but from what I'm reading in the blogosphere the administration is up to its same old-same old (or as Basquiat said, SAMO) crap of diverting attention away from their failures while simultaneously politicizing all aspects of tragedy. Phila has an excellent post on the ongoing discussion prompted by the stark image of school buses floating in toxic soup, and questions the logic of those who are fixated on the ability of a handful of buses to miraculously avert disaster. I can tell you that if we let the right steer us to meaningless arguments about minute details within this larger scheme, we will have learned nothing from this and have changed nothing, leaving us no better off than those stranded buses.

The focus must be on FEMA and Homeland Security and their failures, which are a direct result of the failures of this administration. Bush must be impeached. Mike Brown and Mike Chertoff must be fired. It's not that complicated.

Speaking of FEMA, they're busy making life more difficult for many here in Houston, just as the Red Cross and the local community are getting more and more organized and helpful to evacuees. Part of the parking lot has been cordoned off for FEMA, who seem much more concerned with snacking and looking important in their secluded 2nd floor hallways (no longer open to evacuees, btw) than actually working. All of the makeshift federal offices at the dome close down precisely at 5, regardless of how many people are still standing in line waiting (often for hours and hours) to talk to someone about housing, unemployment, insurance, or whatever the hell FEMA is in charge of. In order for the bureaucracy to maintain itself it must obey all the rules, and the rules say that they work from 9 to 5 and not a minute later, no matter the need or situation.

The good news is the local government is doing an amazing job of making up for much of this nonsense. There are stations set up to register kids for local schools. Surrounding the dome and Center are signs -- printed, not hand-written -- for kids to line up for specific schools at specific times. "Jones Elementary, 7:50 a.m.", that sort of thing. Outside of the dome yesterday, a crew was setting up a playground and basketball courts for the kids. One of the guards said Oprah was funding it, but who knows. This place is alive with rumor, most unsubstantiated. The dome is still the ragged step-sister in this whole project, full of dark hallways and has a dank, leaky feel because of its age. Unfortunately, it was the first shelter evacuees were taken to, so those with the most needs are there, including a number of wheel-chair bound people. I say unfortunate because the difference between the dome and the center is stark: at the dome, food service is on the fourth level, which means that people have to walk up a number of slanted walkways to get to breakfast, lunch, and dinner (the red cross is bringing meals down to immobile evacuees on the floor); by contrast, the center, a large convention hall, has food service at one end of the room and dozens of round lunch tables that each seat 10 or so, making it a snap for someone in a wheelchair to get dinner and roll over to a table and eat. There are no tables at the dome. You have to eat on your lap.

Every day brings major changes, some good, some nonsensical:

All evacuees have been moved out of the arena and into the center now, and many of the medically needy have been moved to the Brown Convention Center. The Arena is now used for quarantined evacuees. They're trying to rid the park of dysentery and quarantine is the only way to do it. On first glance, it seems there are more evacuees at the center than at the dome now, but it is hard to tell because there are still hundreds of families and single people staying in the ringed hallways above the floor of the dome.

There is a security entrance into the Center now, where they frisk everyone before letting them in the building. But in our nonsensical world, just down the building a short way there are entrances that aren't secure at all and that are open for evacuees and volunteers to go in and out of freely. Maybe that security entrance was set up for a photo-op with a politician or FEMA yahoo. This administration is all about the illusion of competence and control, like PRI governors in Mexico erecting massive hospitals in the middle of Chiapas, equipping the place for one photogenic day, then clearing the place of all staff and supplies. FEMA has taken over the second floor of the center and set up their little meeting tables and snack areas in the hallways. Evacuees aren't allowed up there at all anymore, even though this place is their house.

Continental Airlines has been contracted by FEMA (they do know how to draft contracts, that's obvious) to fly evacuees one-way to anywhere in the US, so there are Continental travel agents set up at computers in the dome to assist evacuees with connecting with their families. Rebecca and I both noted how positive it is that they contracted a local airline. I have no idea if the other shelters across the states have this too, but my guess is no. I think Houston is the most organized and most supported. We have a friend, Angela, working at a shelter in Pensicola and she says things are basically in disarray there. Angela is an Africanist (a cultural anthropologist) and by default she is now in charge of the daycare facility though she has zero experience running such an operation. Today we're going to stop by the daycare center set up at the Reliant Center here in Houston and pick their brains for info to pass on to her. Angela says that materiel is not being passed out to evacuees either. It's being horded and guarded, though all of it was donated in the first place. (There is such a feel of "by the seat of your pants" leadership across the nation, it seems, because we have suffered such a profound failure of leadership the past five years. And yet still 40% of Americans think Bush is the man. Go figure.)

The Red Cross continues to bus people to their families anywhere in the country for free. So just because Continental got that contract, don't think the Red Cross doesn't need your help. They're the glue that's holding this whole enterprise together. Honest.

We found out yesterday that the computer labs at the park (there is a large one at both the dome and the center and a smaller one at the arena) were set up not by Yahoo but by Technology for All, a local NGO focused on bringing technology opportunities into low-income Houston neighborhoods. (Like everything in the dome, their center is hidden away and difficult to see, and like everything in this whole operation, it is not even known of by half the volunteers running around the place. Rebecca and I noted, though, that many of the evacuees do know about it. The volunteers might be the last to know!) At the center last night, hey were adding more computers and sectioning off an area just for kids, leaving more computers for family searches. Family reconnection remains the most important issue. We talked to a gentleman last night who had family living on the east and west banks of New Orleans, but hasn't been able to find anyone. He is alone in the world and heartbroken over it. There are new "families" being formed on the floor of the dome and at the center, as evacuees band together to help one another, but those are now being torn apart as evacuees link up with their blood families. The gentleman said two of his friends from the center had left in the morning, bound for Wisconsin on a Red Cross bus.

We had excellent news about Milton, who in my tired daze of a couple of days ago I called Winston. He is the blind and immobile diabetic whose brother Ernest had been hospitalized somewhere (we didn't know where). It seems a man from Dallas who is an expert in elder care came down to Houston and took Milton and two other evacuees and placed them in permanent, long-term care facilities. He worked out their social security and medicare benefits and also located Ernest, who was in one of the local public hospitals. Rebecca's cousin drove to the hospital and picked up Ernest and brought him back to the dome, where he was reunited with Milton before they were both transfered to the care facility. It if weren't for the ingenuity and generosity of everyday Americans thousands more would have died and would still be abandoned today.

(Think that there are over 600 shelters across the US housing Katrina evacuees. 600!! It's overwhelming.)

Yesterday the red cross started handing out pre-paid debit cards to evacuees. Our friend Louis stood in line for four hours but didn't get one. They had run out by the time he got to the front of the line. Hopefully he'll be able to get one today. Our so-called president said that the government was going to give $2000 to every evacuee family, a paultry sum given that these people have lost everything: house, furnishings, clothes, community, job, etc. It makes sense, I guess, given what kind of family Bush was raised in, one of such privilege as to be completely and utterly disconnected from reality.

Louis. We found him asleep last night and woke him up to get him dinner. We were worried he would miss it because in the dome they run out of food sometimes and they stop serving at 7 p.m. As it turned out we had no reason to worry because everything is better at the center and dinner is served until no one is hungry and when one kind of food runs out (last night was lasagna) then another main course is brought in (fried chicken). If it weren't for the men who have taken Louis in at the center, I'm not sure what he would do. He is incapable of taking care of himself. After he ate, we took him to the computer lab and checked his email. A volunteer from Dallas, a different one than the one we'd talked to the day before, emailed him (we'd posted his email address on the family messages site) and said that she'd talked to his mother Hilda. The volunteer wanted Louis to know his mother was safe and signed the not "God Bless." I emailed her back and asked that she talk to Hilda and the local red cross about how to connect the two of them together. Frankly, they don't need more blessings, they need action. Louis needs to be sent to Dallas or Baton Rouge to be with his family. He can't be here alone. We're going back over there today to find a national red cross person to take over his case since I'm going back to Chicago on Monday. And he is a "case"; volunteers who have no training except big hearts are being deputized as social workers, Rebecca and I included. We don't have the knowledge or resources to really do it, though, unlike that man from Dallas who knew how to get things done for Milton. Imagine how many of us are out here in the country, desperate to help but unable to.

The good news is here in Houston the situation is well under control. Students started school yesterday and today. People are being moved into permanent housing or reconnected with their families. Systems are finally in place and running smoothly. Even the national red cross volunteers are getting some rest, now that there are others here to replace them every 12 hours or so. We were both amazed and heartened by the dramatic change of just one day. We were hardly needed at all. Rebecca feels like it's okay for her to get on with her research and head over to Africa. And I feel like it's okay for me to go home on Monday to prepare our house for S's visit. It really is all good.

There will be a lot to do in the coming months as many of these evacuees try to make new lives for themselves away from New Orleans. Health care, jobs, assistance, education, decent housing. There are so many issues at work here. I don't know if Houston or Dallas or San Antonio or Pensacola or any of the other areas of shelter are financially and politically ready for what will come next, especially given the nature of our facade of a federal government and their habit to take pictures and get the hell out. I suspect we will need to keep on the government in the coming months. Hopefully we'll get Chertoff and Brown fired (and then there's the pipe dream of impeachment...as if that would ever happen); that is step one. But soon after will be the hard work of welcoming in thousands and thousands of New Orleans' poor and making them a part of our communities. Maybe we'll do it right for once. I hope so. But I won't be holding my breath on that one.

Matt emailed me (yesterday? the day before?) and asked me about rumors he'd heard coming from the dome that rapes and murders were happening there and the military were recruiting heavily. I emailed him back and told him that I'd heard of only one rape that happened late last week, and that now the dome was crawling with law enforcement and military. I told him, too, that I hadn't seen any recruiters, only groups of soldiers bored out of their minds mulling about in hallways and leaning against stadium chairs. Yesterday, though, I think I saw two recruiters. I didn't ask them if they were, but they had the hallmarks: pressed camos, shined shoes; hungry, salesman eyes; packets of papers in their left hands; and they were quick to smile and say hello, making eye contact right away. Since I didn't ask, I can't confirm that they were recruiting. But of all the rumors Matt presented to me, it was the one I was most likely to believe because it's so likely to be true. If I see those guys again today, I'll go up and ask.

Oh, and Tom -- The levees broke. If our presence in Iraq is compared to those levees, what does that say?

Thanks everybody for your kind words and encouragement in the comments. I'm not special, you know. People are taking days off work to help at these shelters. It goes to show that right now we are not living in a representative democracy. Our heartless government does not represent its compassionate people. Let's change that, shall we?