Star Spangled Death

Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?

I see faces crying for help. Afraid to pass another night in hunger and fear. The most prevalent words I'm hearing on tv are:

-Crimminals
-Thugs
-Looters
-Rioters

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?

A country that should have responded immediately dragged it's feet and now the suffering has multiplied. Accounts of National Guard convoys driving by without helping, military helicopters flying overhead without rescuing women and children and without immediately dropping food and water.

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

There are images on my tv of dead bodies lying on the streets of New Orleans. Images of dead bodies propped up in wheel chairs. Images of small children clinging to their mothers. I cry every time I turn on the tv when I see those children. Children that look like my children. Hungry. Thirsty. Despairing.

The poverty that thousands of visitors to New Orleans have been able to ignore for years has now floated to the surface. We cannot ignore it. The world sees us for what we are...a nation of hypocrites with extremes of wealth and poverty that are a disgrace.

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