Jack Shafer discusses the (invisible) issue of race and class in the news of Katrina.

Also, see Amardeep's post about the AFP pictures with blacks "looting" and whites "finding". Just disgusting.

Speaking of looting and finding. I think if I were in one of these devastated places I might find some dry clothes or food however I could.

And, also, the idea of the Bush administration making poor choices prior to this disaster. What did we know about New Orleans?

1. New Orleans is below sea level and meteorolgists, geographers, and others have been warning about what a direct hit from a Category 5 hurricane would do (level the place).
2. Hurricanes have been more active in recent years, especially in those years of the Bush presidency. Global warming, which the Bush adminsitartion has done less than nothing about (it has actually regressed on envirnmental stewardship) has been cited as a probable cause for this increase in hurricane activity.
3. FEMA lost a director that was an experience emergency management professional for a political crony.
4. FEMA's budget was decimated by Homeland Security. The projects that needed to be built or improved where cut from the federal budget.
5. The Iraq War took away the backup plan of calling in the National Guard in case the preparations didn't hold.

King Kaufman is spot on today. He opened my eyes to just how great a year Ken Griffey Jr is having. He looks like the Griffey you remember from Seattle. Griffey's year is what should be considered a great year but isn't anymore because steroids have made 40 homer seasons seem ordinary.

Also, King documents the rise in ratings for Canadian Football League games now that they don't have announcers. I have to agree that I would love to watch a game without an announcer or all of the stupid gimmicks that are on tv. I especially hate Fox broadcasts with all of their different sounds and images. Just show the damn game and get out of the way please. I like the corner scoreboard and the ticker. You can keep those. Everything else can go.

You can write in to Senate Democrats and tell them what you would ask John Roberts. I'm guessing they're looking for simpler questions but mine was:

In much of America, structural inequality directly and indirectly frustrates the rights of individuals. For example, in many metropolitan regions, patterns of racial and ethnic segregation create a structural barrier to community development and personal improvement including access to quality education, employment, and government services. These patterns did not appear out of thin air. Individuals and governments shaped these patterns over decades. The federal Fair Housing Act and Amendments of 1988 (as well as the Community Reinvestment Act of 1973 and other federal laws) requires the federal, state, and local governments to affirmatively further fair housing. Yet, governments at all levels do not seriously engage in affirmative measures. One response to this is to bring cases against governments charging them with policies and practices that have disproportionately negative effects on minorities, families, and persons with disabilities. Given that the facts of a case proved a government did have a policy with a disparate impact on protected persons, what is your opinion of whether federal law allows for such a lawsuit where an individual sues a government for structural inequality that leads to restrictions on individual rights?

Well, it's about time someone pays attention. David Brooks urges young minds to enter the field of cultural geography. Too bad his alma matter doesn't take it very seriously. Then again neither do these big Chicago universities.

Oddly, in a city that owes its success almost entirely to its relative geography and that also continuously parades its cultural geographic importance, its major universities all but ignore the subject of cultural geography. It's all sociology, public policy, and social work in the City of Broad Shoulders.

Instead, you have to go to the west coast if you want to join the elite geography schools.

Anyway, back to Brooks. He's almost right. There are a lot of great brains in cultural geography already. But, it is true that there's a lot of room to grow and a lot of topics waiting for a dominant author.

But, Brooks will be disappointed to find that the best schools embrace the neocon-dreaded notions of multiculturalism and poststructuralism. And, that geography is also an important point of critique on Empire and globalization.

In New Mexico, they claim to have a monsoon season. I only witnessed one actual day during our two years there that I would consider monsoonish. The streets flooded almost immediately. You'd be amazed at how fast rain can fall and cause havoc. Of course, that was nothing compared to 26" in one day!

Crooked Timberers are discussing Jared Diamond's, Guns, Germs, and Steel. It's an interesting debate on what environmental determinist perspectives might be omitting. It seems for the most part that certain people are upset with how this alters the colonialism debate.

My biggest issue is what the popularity of Jared Diamond means for geography in the public sphere. I'm afraid too many people will think geography is what Jared Diamond does. Instead I'd rather people looked to this guy, this guy, this gal, this gal, this guy, or this guy.

HUD, the Urban Institute, and Access Living conducted some testing research on discrimination against persons with disabilites in the Chicago region. As the Tribune describes the story in today's paper based on today's press release from HUD.

The study showed people with disabilities being discriminated against in 30% to 50% of the time based on type of disability. For example, blind people with service animals were not given an opportunity to rent because of no-pets policies. Under the Fair Housing Act, service animals are not to be considered pets. Deaf persons were often cut off on the phone when using relay services. People in wheelchairs were told they couldn't rent in some buildings without entering into reasonable modification or reasonable accommodation negotiations. In fact, they were not even allowed to state a case for why they wanted to live in the units they called on. By law, disabled persons are allowed to make reasonable modifications to inaccessible units if they are willing to pay for installation and (in some cases) removal of them.

Disability is a protected class at all levels of government in Chicago (federal, state, county, local). And, HUD plans on using the information gathered to actually enforce the law. So, there should be some good case law or ALJ agreements on disability rights in the near future.

This report came out to identify the costs of transportation in metropolitan areas. turns out that not having viable mass transit alternatives makes it more expensive to get around in a region.

Because I lived in and loved living in London for six months in my twenties, I often feel more when a tragedy happens there than in New York which I've only been to as a tourist. I lived very close to Russell Square and crossed it often to go to a favorite pub. (Russell Square is where the double decker bus was blown up today.)

London is such a wonderful place and I have very fond memories of walking along the Thames, long converations in pubs, lazy days in art museums, and just having that ex-pat feeling with others from the US and elsewhere. London is also the most cosmopolitan city I know of. Certainly, this is partly an echo of the British Empire. But, no other city I've spent a lot of time in has as many people from different cultures interacting with one another. It was so common for me to see kids of different colors and languages playing soccer together. Or, to see people of different races holding hands while walking down the street. In other words, if London is a target then the target is a liberal lifestyle.

Sure, this might sound a little too Hitchensian for some. But, unlike Christopher, I do not see the West as faultless freedom fighters. In fact, I think this problem is exacerbated by extremists on both sides of the issue. Do I possibly have a little more in common with the Western interests? Yes. Do I think that fighting violence with violence is the solution though? No. Indeed, I think one of the solutions is exactly what was interrupted by these bombings. Aid and fair trade and an equitable set of possibilities for all the world's people is what I think will make a difference.

Which is not to say I think people only become al-Qaida recruits because of poverty and despair. It's not that simple. Some people believe in fundamentalism per se. But, poverty and despair make it a lot easier to coax recruits into an extremist ideology that targets an other as the source of that recruit's problems.

Of course, this is just a small bit of the problem. There are also the follies of our leaders, the dictatorial regimes in too many countries of the world (that we have and have not supported), our own fundamentalisms that offer a point to be countered, and other things I can't think of right now.

But, the bottom line is that violence is not the answer. It won't stop us and it won't stop them. I just hope that this will not derail the momentum to offer more aid to African nations. Because, that is part of the solution. It would be sad to see the terroists win this battle.

ADDENDUM: This dispatch from London over at Slate is worth a read.

Here's some good news! The National Fair Housing Alliance and its member organizations led a campaign to get ABC to pull a reality show called "Welcome to the Neighborhood" from its schedule. The story is here.

The show created a rule that allowed three white Christian families in an Austin neighborhood to decide who would be their neighbor among half a dozen families. The deciding families made discriminatory statements during episodes of the show and the criteria they used to select their neighbors were in violation of the federal Fair Housing Act and the Texas equivalent.

Specifically, we contend that the show violates the Fair Housing Act by "otherwise making unavailable". The Act does not require a monetary transaction in order for a violation to occur. Any entity that "otherwise makes housing unavailable" because of a person's protected status (race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, disability) is subject to the Act. The contestant families fell into almost all of these categories.

ABC pulled the show after opposition from NFHA, GLAAD, the National Association of REALTORS and others (including my organization and our regional fair housing alliance.

To me, there are still questions. This show won't air but the contest already happened. Who got the house? Who at ABC allowed this show to be produced? Who gave it the okay to air? Will ABC do anything else to remedy the situation? Maybe they could talk about fair housing in an episode of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition".

Anyway, the good guys got a victory this week.

Not sure if the youngsters out there know how big the first Live Aid was. (They re-united The Who and Zeppelin!!! You can't imagine how big that was in 1985.) I remember being glued to the TV and having a huge pit in my stomach because I wasn't there. It was a huge huge event -- so many big names and such hype. I taped as much of it as I could and played it back a bunch of times. It just made me feel so good to hear all these great bands and know that it was for a good cause. I even liked the cheesey video David Bowie and Mick Jagger made of "Dancing in the Streets".

Sometime this decade, I read an interview of Bono talking about how little help it really was. The money they raised -- while very substantial -- just didn't go very far. And, the logistics of getting the food to starving people was extremely complicated.

Sir Bob Geldof is doing it all over again. This time, it's even bigger and hopefully the idea behind it is even more powerful. It's called Live 8 (as in the G8) and is meant to emphasize justice over charity. You can read a brief summary and a list of the line-ups so far at Radio 1. It's going to be in five cities with London as the main venue. The BBC will be broadcasting the whole thing for those of you in the UK or with broadband or Satellite Radio.

Parks are more than just pretty places. They are public space that becomes a place for relationships, organization, and leisure. And, they tend to bond neighbors and people who normally wouldn't get to know each other.