If you missed last week's "This American Life," well worth the listen...

[Hissyspit]

http://www.thislife.org/

If you missed the past week's "This American Life" show from WBEZ in Chicago, it is well worth listening to again. It is available online at the home page (no permanent link).

Host Ira Glass begins with an unequivicable commentary stating that after the state of Louisiana and then the next day George W. Bush had declared the area under a state of emergency, according to all the legal scholars with whom the show's producers talked, the Federal government HAD clear authority to intervene, prepare and assist in the situation.

There is the story of people who were forced to stay in the city while trying to leave having a helicopter apparently deliberately destroying their make-shift camp on a highway with its prop wash. A woman interviewed, a survivor of the convention center, says that she was shocked to hear about the victims being called "animals" when she finally heard coverage. And an 18-year-old talks about hallucinating about bottles of water and days without water: "They betrayed us... Then you hear Bush telling the FEMA man 'you're doing a good job.' What do you mean by that? People are dying. You mean by that that it's good that people are dying."

From the website:

"Surprising stories from survivors of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. A woman who was at the convention center talks about some things she says were widely misreported and misunderstood. Two people explain how armed police from Gretna actually prevented them from leaving New Orleans at the height of the crisis. A teenager talks about what it actually feels like to go without water for two days. And more.
One of the teenagers interviewed in "After the Flood," Ashley Nelson, is the author of an amazing book called The Combination, about her neighborhood in New Orleans. All the copies that were available are now underwater. But The Neighborhood Stories Project, which collaborated with Ashley and several other New Orleans teenagers on books about their neighborhoods, plans to print another run as soon as possible."