Lets Go Girl

May 17, 2008 by Kingston

Noted without comment:

Ending speculation about the fate of the Rio Grande Valley's undocumented immigrants during a hurricane evacuation, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has confirmed it will check the citizenship both of people boarding buses to leave the Valley and at inland traffic checkpoints.

Those determined to be in the country illegally will be taken to detention centers away from the hurricane's path and later processed for deportation.

"It's business as usual at the checkpoints," said Dan Doty, spokesman for CBP's Rio Grande Valley sector. "We'll still check everybody."

Locals responded with predictions of humanitarian disaster.

"We can't wait to see the helicopter photos of us sitting on roofs," said the Rev. Mike Seifert, a priest and activist based in a colonia outside Brownsville. The many area families with one or more undocumented members would just refuse to evacuate, he said.

"Imagine," Seifert said. "We're all in an uproar, everybody's in an enormous hurry, there's just a narrow window of opportunity and you get to the place with the buses and the Border Patrol's checking people. You're not going to go."

In the disastrous wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, officials in the Valley have pondered the politics of mass evacuation, illegal immigration and the checkpoints that filter northbound traffic every day.

Posted in Katrina, Texas, federal disaster, humanitarian disaster, hurricane, public service announcement  | Comments (0)

May 9, 2008 by Kingston

On Thursday afternoon I lost my internet connection because someone did something stupid and set the power lines in my neighborhood alight. Across the street from our building, someone who didn’t know what they were doing failed to survey the environment and didn’t act cautiously while trying to take down a tree in an urban environment with a lot of overhead lines, and got into a very dangerous situation, and at this writing I don’t know if the person up on that ladder was hurt - or even killed. (The picture of burning lines at the left was taken with my cell phone, and isn't the best resolution.)

I was in the middle of editing the profanity from my previous post about Matt Blunt to post it at Show Me Progress, when I heard a noise that sounded like the biggest, loudest arc welder ever was in the corner of the room, and the lights flickered. I don’t know if it was 30 seconds later or two minutes later, but I heard it again - longer and louder this time, and then the lights went out.

The “crew” that was doing the work scattered - we don’t know if the person who was on the ladder was hurt or not. We don’t know if he left under his own power or was thrown in the truck and taken to the hospital. But stuff like this kills too many people every year and injures even more.

Now I am going to beseech everyone to please, please, please, be careful. If you aren’t qualified to tackle a job, or you don’t have the right tools to do the job, don’t wing it. Hire a professional. The money you save trying to do something you know fuck-all about won’t resurrect your dumb ass if you kill yourself.
Posted in public service announcement  | Comments (0)