As far as regular "around the clock" reporting of Katrina and rescue-related efforts with more links than you can shake a stick at, I personall recommend Amy Welborn and Michelle Malkin and Bill Cork. Check their blogs and keep scrolling.
Coverage - Austin Bay recommends the New Orleans Times-Picayune for its outstanding coverage, including this article on the devastating loss of legal documents -- real estate records dating back to the early 1800s, and the loss of offices, files and other documents critical to civil and criminal legal cases, making for a beaurocratic nightmare as New Orleans' citizens struggle to rebuild.
If you live in the SouthEast and approximately 300 miles of the disaster area, HurricanHousing.org is coordinating offers of free housing to hurricane evacuees. (One of the few organizing projects by MoveOn.org that I'll support). Operation: Share Your Home is a similar project, run by "concerned Louisiana citizens who have joined together to provide an immediate response to the tragedy that has struck our beloved state."
The Knights of Columbus has pledged a minimum of $2.5 million in financial assistance and will match any funds beyond that donated to the Knights of Columbus Katrina Relief Fund over the next 60 days.
Lee Scott, President and CEO of Wal-Mart, America's largest retailer, pledged $15 million to relief efforts, along with the promise to establish "mini-Wal-Mart stores in areas impacted by the hurricane. Items such as clothing, diapers, baby wipes, food, formula, toothbrushes, bedding and water will be given out free of charge to those with a demonstrated need." This display of generosity even while its stores in New Orleans were being looted and ransacked. (Of course they announced this via press-release, but one might hope this display of generosity will spur other large retailers in "competitive charity.")
Karen W. Woods, Director for the Center for Effective Compassion at the Acton Institute, reminds us that when it comes to relief "It's in the details":The first thing to remember is the principle of subsidiarity. The idea is common sense: Nothing should be done by larger and more complex organizations which can be done as well by smaller, simpler organizations closer to the need. In other words, leave the complex problems to the complex organizations; let the simpler groups take care of the more basic needs. . . . Local charities have been meeting local needs for decades. The ABC Pregnancy Resource Center in Lake Charles, La., delivered baby formula and baby clothes from their own program to a community center that is housing 2,500 Katrina refugees, with as many as 4,000 more expected this week. This community charity had the resources on hand and simply transferred them to the place of need. "I don't even have to ask my board," said director Nete Mire. But the ABC Pregnancy Center in Lake Charles (email: abcpregnancycenter@copper.net, 866-434-2797) needs more formula, diapers, baby wipes, and baby bath products. They are trying to help serve 116 children under age 2 at the com munity center. The nonprofit Tutwiler Clinic in Tutwiler, Miss. would immediately use financial donations for prescription drugs for refugees. Dr. Anne Brooks says such donations would also help them replace household items for those in their community who lost homes. Both these programs are listed in the Samaritan Guide, www.samaritanguide.com, a reporting site for privately funded charities that serve individuals. The Lake Charles Catholic Diocese is accepting donations for Katrina refugee assistance specifically in that community. The principle of subsidiarity not only offers a more efficient means for relief of basic needs, it offers a component that no bureaucracy could provide, one that only individuals can provide: a human connection. Only an individual can provide the hope and encouragement that is as necessary to the well being of these refugees.
Assisting with the provision of goods at the ground level, somebody has set up a blog Where To Send Donations for Katrina, compiling listings from local charities and other information.
Will New Orleans Recover?, by Nicole Gelinas. City Journal Vol. 15, No. 3, Summer 2005:The truth is that even on a normal day, New Orleans is a sad city. Sure, tourists think New Orleans is fun: you can drink and hop from strip club to strip club all night on Bourbon Street, and gamble all your money away at Harrah’s. But the city’s decline over the past three decades has left it impoverished and lacking the resources to build its economy from within. New Orleans can’t take care of itself even when it is not 80 percent underwater; what is it going to do now, as waters continue to cripple it, and thousands of looters systematically destroy what Katrina left unscathed? . . .
Nicole describes NO as a city having "long suffered from incompetence and corruption", illustrating the necessity of moral renewal of local government, concurrent with economic and social rehabilitation.
Oswald Sobrino (Catholic Analysis) takes issue with the "Hurricane Finger-Pointers", the Bush-haters who lay the blame for the chaos in NO at the feet of the President. Sobrino, a native New Orleanian, describes his hometown as "the city that did not evacuate in the face of a Category 5 hurricane", and concurs with Gelinas' report:The scandalous ineptness and stupidity shown by local and state officials in failing to enforce and implement a true evacuation of the most vulnerable is, unfortunately, a continuation of the long history of misrule that has marked my native city for decades. Remember that fact when you see local and state officials lashing out at the federal response. Their lashing out is an attempt at distracting from their own obvious responsibility for a self-magnified disaster.
Peter Sean Bradley (Lex Communis also has questions about New Orleans and its tradition of local governance, noting "hundreds of school buses in dirty contaminated water. School buses which were not sent to the Superdome on Saturday to evacuate those without transportation." What happened?
From Arthur Chrenkoff:Arguably not as stupid and inane as some of the quotes following the Asian tsunami (see here and here), one of the biggest natural disasters in American history has nevertheless provided many with a delicious opportunity to bash President Bush and the right side of the politics and the country generally. Here's the selection of some of the choiciest commentary . . .
"This journal has become the Survival of New Orleans blog," says the author. "In less perilous times it was simply a blog for me to talk smack and chat with friends. Now this journal exists to share firsthand experience of the disaster and its aftermath with anyone interested."
Jimmy Akin brings his moral analysis to bear on a number of issues involving "disaster ethics" that have arisen in the past week. In part 1, he discusses "price gouging" and "the possibility, in situations of urgent necessity, of taking another's property without it being the sin of stealing"; in part two, moral situations which might justify the taking of another's property; in part three, what things you are allowed to take in such situations and what other rules there are concerning taking them".
Finally, if I may be permitted to close with a bit of humor and advice -- Sean Penn, STAY OUT OF NEW ORLEANS. Go back to Hollywood, and let the real (i.e, trained) rescue crews do their job.
