Thursday, September 01, 2005

Bloggers Lend a Hand

Tara Liloia at 10:52 AM:
Bloggers Lend a Hand

Amid the chaos, bloggers are reaching out in different ways to offer aid from across the nation. Andy Carvin, who joined DFA last night to share the story of his "Katrina Aftermath" blog, has declared tomorrow, Friday, September 2, as International Blogging for Disaster Relief Day.

Click here for the rest.

Links, posts and diaries of interest:

Here is the link to the page on FEMA that lists organizations where you can donate or volunteer to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina

UPDATE: When I tried to check out a few of those links, I got an error message saying "Page not found" on the FEMA web site. Not sure if that happens for other people as well, but here are direct links to those organizations:

Donate Cash and/or Volunteer

Adventist Community Services
1-800-381-7171

B'nai B'rith International

Catholic Charities, USA
1-800-919-9338

Christian Disaster Response
941-956-5183 or 941-551-9554

Christian Reformed World Relief Committee
1-800-848-5818

Church World Service
1-800-297-1516

Convoy of Hope
417-823-8998

Corporation for National and Community Service Disaster Relief Fund
(202) 606-6718

Lutheran Disaster Response
800-638-3522

Mennonite Disaster Service
717-859-2210

Nazarene Disaster Response
888-256-5886

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance
800-872-3283

Salvation Army
1-800-SAL-ARMY (725-2769)

Southern Baptist Convention -- Disaster Relief
1-800-462-8657, ext. 6440

United Jewish Communities
1-800-462-8657, ext. 6440

United Methodist Committee on Relief
1-800-554-8583

New Orleans Hospital Drama by dhonig on My Left Wing

My girlfriend is a labor and delivery nurse at East Jefferson General Hospital in New Orleans, and has been camping there with her family since Sunday night. You can read more details here in my recent comment. What follows is a continuation of the New Orleans hospital drama.

Class Revolt Brewing in Mississippi by mitch2k2

The Liberal Blogosphere for Hurricane Relief by Chris Bowers

Katrina - a survey of the economic and geopolitical impact by Jerome a Paris

Also, I just got this link from Lali (who Demetrius and I met in person at an informal Chicago area gathering in 2003)

Sign the Petition of Redress. Either the Bush Kids Put Their Lives on the Line for George's "Noble War" or the Troops Come Home.
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

The following articles can be found in The Free Press:

The mothers are coming!
by Sheila Samples
August 30, 2005

"Sarah, if the people had ever known the truth about what we Bushes have done to this nation, we would be chased down in the streets and lynched."
-- Bush 41 to reporter Sarah McClendon, Dec. 1992


Rev. Jackson comments on personal meeting with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez

Upcoming events: if your group has an event coming up and you'd like to share it with others in the Blog for America community, please let me know via email (renee at bmgbiz.net) or by posting in the comments here, and I will include it in an upcoming post.

If you're looking for Oscar's cartoon roundup, click here and scroll down to his 8:43 a.m. post.

68 comments:

  1. I keep stoppping myself from jumping onto the other blog to join in the fight. The whole point of this is to treat one another with respect and try to keep blood pressure normal. I am staying here.....

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  2. liz, what is going on there now? I was just stopping here before checking out BFA.

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  3. Rich Kolker is having a go at Rennee.

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  4. I really do not understand why anyone would resent people who do not enjoy taking jabs at each other.....

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  5. I was just about to take Rich to task for having a hair across his ass today when he apologized and said he wouldn't say anything more about this blog.

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  6. There's ALWAYS something *negative* being spewed on BFA!

    Sometimes it should be named: *Bullcrap* For America.

    10:00 AM

    Ok! Well now at least I am laughing!

    Seriously though, I have been looking for an alternative to the Red Cross to send a donation. There was a list posted yesterday of charities with A ratings but none of them seem to be involved. Does anyone know of a good charity that is involved in this?

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  7. Okay, for the sake of my blood pressure, I need to stay off of Blog for America for a while. At least I figured out how to get their feed on this blog, so I don't have to physically go to that site to see that there is a new post.

    And who the hell is "Lauren"?

    Never mind.

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  8. liz, FEMA had a list but it included Operation Blessing, which is affiliated with Osama Pat Robertson.

    I sent $100 to the American Red Cross last night. I also posted the list of charities from FEMA last night; take a quick look to see.

    I use give.org, which is a service of the Better Business Bureau to evaluate charities I'm considering donating to.

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  9. Thanks Corinne. Osama PR was exactly who I did not want to fund, but my husband was growling last night about sending money to Liddy Dole's organisation......

    Will check out the Fema list

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  10. You know, liz, you can't look at ARC as "Liddy Dole's organization." That would shortchange the incredible amount of work they do.

    But donate to whichever charity you're comfortable donating to.

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  11. Corinne, I agree, but do not like conflicts at home either so I'm looking for an alternative.

    I just checked the "A" list posted last night against the FEMA list of recommended charities and found that the only one on both lists is Church World Service.

    I guess I will go with them unless I get negative feedback...

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  12. Thank you for the support, Denise. I do want to move forward and make this a positive resource. And I really want to avoid any kind of us versus them vibe.

    What would really help me is if anyone here who also posts at BFA would post a link over there every now and then so that people are aware of this blog. This morning's post was an attempt to more formally start having content here that does not come from the BFA blog. I was blindsided that it got a negative response.

    The sense of time urgency for me to get this blog online when I did stemmed from our son starting middle school this week, and all the challenges that will entail. Other things too, but in terms of stressors, this is one of the big ones. When he was in kindergarten, I actually developed a phobic response to my cell phone, because almost every time it rang it was his teacher calling about a problem.

    We haven't even met his teacher yet, or started work on the IEP for this year.

    I know that, for balance in coping with stress, I need to keep up with my exercise, make sure I have some down time, work on things that are important to me, and have some positive social interactions. The blog has been part of that for me over the past couple years--not the exercise, but those other things--and I've been less and less able to spend time there.

    So, first and foremost I created this space because *I* needed it, but I wouldn't have gone to the trouble if I didn't know that others needed something like this as well. I still wish it wasn't necessary. Maybe it won't feel as necessary once the new software is in place at BFA.

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  13. Frankly, I not all that optimistic about the effacacy of the new software - it will still be all-Oler all day, with Kolker throwing him assists all day. I'll pass - two tears in a bucket...

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  14. Okay, this is the first day I have had the syndication links on the right side of the page. Will have to watch to see how long it takes after Tara or whoever does a post before it shows up here. As of this writing, the Katrina's Aftermath post is still the most recent feed.

    Oscar, did you see I included Underground Railroad in the feed as well?

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  15. New Orleans Hospital Drama is now linked over at www.nationalnurse.info

    Thanks Renee.

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  16. Liz,
    On charities check out the Quaker one tht Puddle put up. They had the best rating of any charity I have seen and their website has a donation link for the Katrina effort.

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  17. "Bloggers Lend a Hand" is up at sBFA

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  18. Renee, what feed reader/aggregator are you using? Some will be faster than others. Some will update every hour and others every few hours or even days.

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  19. I forget what it's called, cheryl, but you sent me the link.

    Just now I was trying to check the various links at the FEMA link I just posted here, and discovering that I get an error message for each of the 3 or 4 I tried.

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  20. That is funny Renee. I got through to Church World Service by Googling. Maybe FEMA has too much traffic??

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  21. Liz, when I click on that, here is what the url looks like:
    http://www.fema.gov/goodbye/goodbye.jsp?url=http://www.churchworldservice.org/

    It seems to be coded to take you offsite and have the other site open in the same browser window, but it hasn't worked for any link I've tried.

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  22. Renee, I just tried it and the first time it did not work but the second time it did.

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  23. Bye all! Time to go home.

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  24. Hi Renee,

    Thanks for creating this space. It is a necessary and helpful addition, in my opinion. People check out the BFA blog to find out what is happening without going to the so called liberal media, to communicate with likeminded people, to find out how to help out in a positive way, among other reasons. It has turned in to a War Zone. I have tried to stay around for the positive part, but it is not fun any more to me.

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  25. Just FYI, I added direct links to the sites listed on FEMA under
    Donate Cash and/or Volunteer

    The links are in the main blog thread.

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  26. Oscar ~~ my last check at the space board indicates that Robert isn't posting there anymore. Since I suspect he has NEVER left a place volunatrily. . . . And the people running that place seem every bit as negligent as the ones running BFA, I'd say there was "hope."

    Course it took five years. . . .

    And yes I could be wrong. That's just my read. . . .

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  27. Renee, thanks for changing my link on the main page. ♥s

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  28. Liz ~~ the link cheryl mentioned for the most highly rated place to donate is the American Friends Service Committee. Click my name for the link.

    They're not big, but they definitely have staying power.

    Story: when the Quakers in PA realized that the Indians had been unfairly cheated/driven off their land, and that they were unable to "pay back" the original owners, they collected money for reparations to at least *some* indians. That was the 1700's. The fund is still operating, and they're still doing the work.

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  29. You're welcome, puddle. Could you do me a favor? In the Katrina's Aftermath thread on BFA, *after* the "Renee sucks--no, Robert sucks" skirmish, and after Rich apologized, Rich and Demetrius talked about organizing something with grocery stores for hurricane relief. Could you find that and copy it over here? I don't know that Demetrius is going to get a chance any time soon.

    He's, uh, "holding a worship service" at the moment.

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  30. rich^kolker wrote on September 1, 2005 10:27 AM:

    Re: "Things"

    I wonder if we could work cooperatively with a grocery chain to donate food and water purchased there to the effort. The chain would take on the responsibility and cost of loading up its truck(s) and driving it down. People could "sponsor" a "kit" of food, water and supplies. There could be one person, five person, 10 person, etc. "kits" of canned food, water, maybe basic medicines and water purification tablets, space blankets. The store would add everything up and ship it in "bulk" in their trucks to be broken down and distributed by someone at the other end.

    Just some ideas.


    Demetrius wrote on September 1, 2005 10:41 AM:

    "rich^kolker wrote on September 1, 2005 10:27 AM:"

    That's a good idea. Local contributions to the relief effort could take advantage of supply and shipping infrastructure that already exists. Would they need to coordinate with FEMA?


    Demetrius wrote on September 1, 2005 11:03 AM:

    "rich^kolker wrote on September 1, 2005 10:27 AM:"

    I'm trying to find info on local grocery store chains to see if they are organizing (or even open to) anything like you suggested. I have to admit I'm in WAY over my head on this. I don't really know where to start. But, I'll send some e-mails and/or make some phone calls. Maybe someone who knows who to contact can catch wind of your great idea and nudge it along to the right decision maker.

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  31. http://www.afsc.org clicky (I messed it up before)

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  32. Darn, JC. I just read about your Vespa. I have been wanting to get one for ages. People here use them all the time as well as other brands of motorscooter.

    With the soaring gas prices I may have to break down and get one (although they cost more new than what I paid for my vehicle).

    Too bad I didn't know you then. I would have made good use of it, lol.

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  33. Thanks, puddle. Demetrius had to go out and get school supplies for the kids, so I don't know when he's going to have a chance to look into that any further.

    Click my name for gasbuddy.com, which is supposed to help find the lowest gas prices in your area.

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  34. As for who is 'Lauren', a rethug troll based on how the comment was written. Coward regardless. Amazing how certain people are so threatened by this blog when they simply have the choice not to come here.

    I have some ideas of what we can do for also using this space as an organizing tool to and break down by state as well as have national efforts for the political stuff but I will wait until after October to set it up and present to Renee and all. I would like to see part of the purpose to be what we did during Dean's campaign with utilizing people's talents and sharing but having a simpler way to do it than sorting through blog posts.

    There are a lot of services that will let you set up opt in mailing lists free too, and that could be a good tool for us to have if we want to make annoucements to this community too...and members will always have the choice to be added or not.

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  35. Cheryl, "Lauren" reminds me a lot of "Keli". Whatever.

    The issue, though, is how to maintain communication, and have people aware that this blog is here. But I don't feel like going over to post again right now after this morning.

    Some articles of interest:

    Time to cancel the 9/11 propaganda event by kos

    Hurricane Katrina causes toxic cocktail of chemicals
    by Greenpeace

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  36. Also, for those who can stand the rudeness, The Rude One is prescient once again.

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  37. Hey, gang-o-rama,

    I've got a new diary up at Kos called "Katrina Economics: Stop bankruptcy "reform" now"

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  38. corinne,

    Give us a direct link.

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  39. Oscar, I was setting up to include this in the next main blog post, but since I've got it coded already, I'll go ahead and post it here in the comments:

    Blog family diary to read and recommend...

    Corinne Marasco (aka mini mum at Kos) has a diary up
    Katrina Economics: Stop bankruptcy "reform" now

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  40. Just please promise me one thing. Can the shadow blog stomp trolls into little greasy smears instead of allowing them to spew?

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  41. I see that this area might evolve into one where most of the 'active' people come to in wanting to connect and not just the ones who spend all their time on the blog and never do anything in their communities. Of course, if they get the DFA-link and new software to create the right tools than that might be doable at BFA.

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  42. Susan, lol. Shadowblog will delete them. I am one of the few who said I am all for partial censorship when it contributes nothing to the dialogue but rancid toxicity. We all differ on our views, but when it is just a cockfight amongst a dozen egomaniacs, I get bored really quickly.

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  43. $.25 more in gas from a week ago, $.40 from a month ago in Tucson and rising.

    Guess all Cheney's friends are going to profit again bigtime off of this one.

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  44. Whoops. Looks like I got booted. Center has been deleted too. I'm not surprised. It is fair that it was both of us. I'll knock that little twerp out if I ever see him face to face.

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  45. I'll hold him for you.

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  46. Hey cheryl, I'd be more than happy to add you to the list of people who "have the power" here. I was supposed to start a full time project next week, but that's been postponed for at least a week. Still I know that there are stretches of time when I will not be around to scoop up the troll droppings, either due to work schedule or one of the internet outages we seem to be blessed with in this household. So I'd like to have enough concerned community members on the cleanup crew so that stuff won't have a chance to sit and smell up the place.

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  47. Today is the last date to vote for your favorite Demfest location so please do if you haven't already. Click

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  48. Andrew, what do you mean booted? You got banned from BFA or just a post deleted? What was the post regarding?

    So, they let the toxic one go on and on but delete the less offensive ones?

    Something is really wrong with that.

    Oh, well. Not our problem as long as we have this space.

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  49. Oh no. I was offensive. I'll own my part. I'm surprised I didn't get it any earlier.

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  50. ok... I just had posts deleted but I can still post. I think I'm done for now though. I'm too hot under the collar.

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  51. Last night I posted, as Shadow DFA Blog, some of the lyrics to "You're Not the Boss of Me" and told "airplane man" to "get ovah" himself. It was when he was doing one of his, "Stay on your own blog" routines.

    The post was deleted. That surprised me--I thought it was pretty mild.

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  52. My horoscope says good fortune and even better news will come my way today. Well, I didn't win the powerball yesterday, lol. However, my stock just went up 80 cents a share, so that is good.

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  53. Andrew, do you remember when you got made at me? When I told you I voted for Nader. :)

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  54. Thanks, Renee. I'm supposed to be doing my day job (!) and I neglected to include the link.

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  55. Renee, it probably got deleted because you did not use your regular name. I read somewhere about a month ago that those will be deleted.

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  56. Did I? That's a different kind of mad. You voted nader in 2004? I don't get mad at the one's that did it in 2000. 2004 is another story but even that doesn't get me the way that racist militaristic callist manure like the blog trolls spew.

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  57. I got a CNN news alert that FEMA suspended boat rescue operations in New Orleans because of dangers to rescuers. I wonder what dangers they mean. I will have to research. Be right back.

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  58. It surprises me that it was deleted too, Renee. "Airplane man" has made much of the fact that he "went to Iowa on his own dime", but people who were there reported he just sat around telling tall tales until the media showed up. He's dissed our man Howard on the public airwaves twice, and just last month crowed about making a BIG donation to McCain when he gets home. How does any of that jibe with being a DFA supporter? Oh, yeah, and I forgot his references to "liblabs".

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  59. I don't think so, Cheryl. I think it's okay to post under a different name unless you actually try to spoof someone. Then the deal was that Tara would change your blog name on that post to show your usual identity.

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  60. Meant to add to that last comment...
    New thread!

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  61. I vote for Gore in 2000, Nader 2004. I knew Kerry would lose because of voting machine issues and fraud that the Democrats chose not to invest in adressing when we begged them to since 2000...but instead aimed it at Nader. So, I was pissed off enough to volunteer to get Nader on the ballot, but I didn't really think I would vote for him until I saw how terrible Kerry was running his campaign and I didn't want another corporatist government. I don't care if there is a 'D' or 'R' behind their name...I care about what they will or won't do for the country. Even though I have voted mostly Dems, I have crossed the line and voted independent, republican, etc. if a better candidate runs and is more focused on helping the populus versus their own destructive agenda. So, I guess I am really an independent in that sense. When I got to hear Nader speak here and meet him, it sealed the deal for me. He doesn't have Dean's charisma in his old age but his intellect and ability to cut through the crap surpasses any politician I have heard or met. He's had the same message for 50 years and has been right about it all along. Much of Dean's positions are the same as Nader's but Nader was speaking out about it in his 20s already.

    Ironically, I was furious for my mother for voting for Nader in 2000, lol.

    Ultimately, both elections...beyond the obvious fraud and stolen elections...the high number of Democrats that voted for Bush is the real issue. I kept the stats from the FEC site and polls and Nader didn't take anything 'away' from the party as the myth both sides generated would have us believe. I'm not that easily fooled...I do my own research.
    250,000 Dems in Florida alone voted for Bush. Those are the ones the Dems should have been worrying about, not the tiny fraction that may have voted for Nader.

    Frankly, if Nader had not run, I would have written someone else in. I never would have voted for either Bush or Kerry in this election. I had too much invested in it. I also predicted Bush would steal it again, and it would actually help the progressive community in the long run because people would stay pissed enough to stay active...not like 2000 where they all just went back to apathy.

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  62. Do I dare to eat a peach?
    Thursday, September 01, 2005
    Riding on the City of New Orleans

    Yes. Lest you think I live in ZuluLand: I do know about New Orleans. I've scarcely slept since last week. Right now, 'bout running on empty, haven't slept for more than twenty four hours, and that's following two forty-eight-hour periods without sleep.

    I kind of think it's a kind of PTSD, I was in the Russian River flooding of '95, and though that was not nearly as bad as this, New Orleans brings up feelings, images, anger that I thought had long gone away.

    for the rest: clicky

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