How can we unicyclists help the hurricane victims?

Thanks for posting that Gild! Always new Micheal Moore was a good guy…maybe he’ll make another video of the real reason New Orleans was/is such a disaster (not cause of the hurricane cause of other reasons like Bush & Co. and etc.) so the general population know the truth!

As far as any other ideas to help the victims, I can’t think of anything else besides what has been posted.

Re: From Michael Moore’s Mailing List

This doesn’t help the victims, all it does it satifies someone’s political cravings. It’s stupid and wrong.

Re: Re: From Michael Moore’s Mailing List

stay the course
play to the whistle
run to the line
read the whole article

Re: Re: From Michael Moore’s Mailing List

Don’t want to get off topic but you think it’s wrong that he’s trying to help? You don’t think his letter helps any victims at all? Come on. So he (as well as tons of others) thinks that man is responsible for many of the deaths and thinks something needs to be done about it in the future to prevent this from happening again. Like he said, he’ll deal with Bush and Company later, but for now he’s helping the victims. I think it’s great and couragous what he’s doing.

Re: Re: Re: From Michael Moore’s Mailing List

No, I think it’s wrong that he’s trampling on the dead bodies of New Orleans residents to gain political advantage. And that’s what he did in the first part of his message.

Re: Re: Re: Re: From Michael Moore’s Mailing List

OK, fair enough now lets get back on topic. Weather what he’s doing in the first part of his letter is good or bad, the rest of it is for helping people and that’s the bottom line. Please lets not post anymore political stuff in this thread, start a new one of needed. This should be only about “ways to help the victims”. Thanks.

oh boy

i’m walking away

there’s no talking to this dude

Feedback From Michael Moore

hopefully this will help settle the ‘it’s-michael-moore-so-he-must-be-wrong’ mania that errupted since i first posted his call for katrina-assistance

Friends,

Last week I closed my New York production office and sent my staff down to New Orleans to set up our own relief effort. I asked all of you to help me by sending food, materials and cash to the emergency relief center we helped set up on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain with the Veterans for Peace. We did this when the government was doing nothing and the Red Cross was still trying to get it together. Every day, every minute was critical. People were dying, poor people, black people, left like so much trash in the street. I wanted to find a way to get aid in there immediately.

I hooked up with the Vietnam veterans and Iraqi war vets (Veterans for Peace) who were organizing a guerilla, grass-roots relief effort. They were the same group that had set up Cindy Sheehan’s camp in Crawford and now they had moved Camp Casey to Louisiana.

I have good news and horrible news to report. First, your response to my appeal letter was overwhelming. Within a few days, a half-million dollars was sent in through my website to fund our relief effort. This money was immediately used to buy generators, food, water, a mobile medical van, tents, satellite phones, etc.

Others of you began shipping supplies to our encampment. People in communities all over the country started organizing truck caravans to us in Louisiana. Twenty-two trucks from southern California alone have already arrived. A semi-truck from Chicago delivered ten tons of food. A group of friends in New Jersey got two 24 foot trucks, got their community to load them up with goods, and arrived in Covington tonight. Fifteen iMacs are inbound from California. One man gave us his pick-up truck and another donated truck is en route from Houston.

Your response to my appeal has been nothing short of miraculous. And it has saved many, many lives.

A number of you decided to just get in your cars and drive to our camp to volunteer to help. We now have had 150 volunteers here doing the work that needs to be done. Last night they unloaded twenty tons of food from a tractor trailer in under two hours. Each day more volunteers arrive. Everyone is sleeping on the ground or in tents. It is a remarkable sight. Thank you, all of you, for responding. I will never forget this outpouring of generosity to those forgotten by our own government.

My staff and the vets spend their 18-hour days delivering food and water throughout the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. What they have seen is appalling. I have asked them to post their daily diaries on my website (www.michaelmoore.com) along with accompanying photos and video so you can learn what is really going on. What the media is showing you is NOT the whole story. It is much, much worse and there is still little being done to bring help to those who need it.

Our group has visited many outlying towns and villages in Mississippi and Louisiana, places the Red Cross and FEMA haven’t visited in over a week. Often our volunteers are the first relief any of these people have seen. They have no food, water or electricity. People die every day. There are no TV cameras recording this. They have started to report the spin and PR put out by the White House, the happy news that often isn’t true (“Everyone gets 2,000 dollars!”).

The truth is that there are dead bodies everywhere and no one is picking them up. My crew reports that in most areas there is no FEMA presence, and very little Red Cross. It’s been over two weeks since the hurricane and there is simply not much being done. At this point, would you call this situation incompetence or a purposeful refusal to get real help down there?

That’s why we decided not to wait. And we are so grateful to all of you who have joined us. The Veterans for Peace and my staff aren’t leaving (and that’s why we are hoping those of you who can’t get to Covington will make it to the Veterans for Peace co-sponsored anti-war demonstration in DC on September 24: www.unitedforpeace.org.)

If you want to help, here’s what we need in Covington right now:

Cleaning Supplies (glass cleaner, bleach, disinfectant, etc.)
Aspirin and other basic over the counter drugs.
Bottled Water
Canned Goods
Hygiene Supplies
Baby Supplies - Baby Food Formula, diapers #4, #5, Wipes, Pedialyte
Sterile Gloves
Batteries - All kinds, from AA to watch and hearing aid batteries.
Volunteers with trucks and cars
Self contained kitchens with generators, utensils, workers

Consider sending supplies in reusable containers. List the contents on the outside of the package so the folks in the warehouse can easily sort the items.

Clothes are not needed. If you go, keep in mind that you MUST be self-sufficient. Bring a tent and a sleeping bag. People are driving to Covington from across the country and often have extra room in their cars for you or for an extra box of supplies. For more information, go to the Veterans for Peace message board: www.vfproadtrips.org/katrina/.

Send supplies via UPS to:
Veterans for Peace
Omni Storage
74145 Hwy. 25
Covington LA

Thanks again for funding and supporting our relief efforts. It has been a bright spot in this otherwise shameful month.

Yours,
Michael Moore
mike@michaelmoore.com

we could send the refugees to schools where they won’t get into fights with local kids, or at least not blow it out of proportion when it happens by making that the top story…

Gild,

Wrong or right, Michael Moore is a Politically polarizing individual. By posting his “letters” in this thread, you have taken the focus away from helping the people affected by Katrina, and made this into a political thread.

Lets get the focus off of politics, and back on helping the evacuees, refugees and all others that have had their worlds turned upside down by this tragedy.

i posted the original letter in this thread because it outlined specific and practical steps people could/can take to get involved in helping the people most directly affected

right or wrong, there are people involved in this discussion who value the opinion of people like Michael Moore and when trying to find avenues into which to channel their contributions, would value his suggestions or ‘endorsement’, if u will

it was only “proudyankee(sic)'s” irrational outbursts that turned it into a political issue

i tried to indicate to him that he was missing the point

when it became obvious that he was ideologically unable to seperate his political views from the practical ones at hand, i walked away as that was the very last discussion i wanted to see in this thread
that discussion is well served in UniZorro’s Has Katrina Changed Your Opinion Of Bush thread where i’m still trading op-ed piece for blog-post with john childs, both of us waiting for the other to blink first, or wear out our Copy/Paste buttons

when i received the follow-up piece from Moore this morning, i considered posting it in that thread and decided against it for the very reasons that lead me to posting the original letter here
concrete steps are being taken to help people in need and there are several suggestions of actions to answer the question: How can we unicyclists help the hurricane victims?

by dismissing them based on the politics of the person organising such action, u are taking a step in the direction of a frighfully slippery slope and running the risk of undermining legitimate aid projects

if the organiser was a woman and u rejected it, u would be reviled as a sexist
if the organiser was an African-American and u rejected it, u would be reviled as a racist
but because it’s Michael Moore, suddenly i’m the bad guy?

we should talk about this at the halfway stop on our ride

Yes and No. He has in a way made this thread more political than it was but he is still trying to help the evacuee’s by posting this letter. It states what we all can do to help people immediately which is very important in this case so I think that the posted letter is definetly a way to help the people of New Orleans. No need to complain about someone posting a letter of how to help (even if it’s by a political person). The only way to make this a political thread is if people start responding about it (which they shouldn’t), so don’t. Start a new thread if you want to talk politics. For now keep the letters pouring in as long as they state how you can help victims.

At the risk of waking the sleeping dog…

My decision to post Moore’s call for assistance in this thread came in for some criticism.
I do not wish to restart that discussion.
In fairness I did want to post an update to indicate what kind of assistance his efforts managed to generate. If you feel it is tainted and doesn’t count as ‘real help’, please take it up with the recipients.

This is an excerpt from his most recent newsletter.

Selah.

How much of that aid came from unicyclists after reading your posts?

While you trumpet the point that “good work was done”,
you clearly are overlooking the point that your posts may
have been inappropriate, a distraction, as well as an
undermining force for aid from THIS forum.

I can understand why you posted, and even how one
can overlook political correctness in dealing with others.

My hope is that you can also see that while your posts
highlight good things (while including politics) there may
have been a net NEGATIVE effect by posting them.

Note:
Please note that I’m barring the observation that this
board was slow to respond and many of the ideas for
assisting the victims were unicyclist based. In other
words, we may not have made a difference sans Moore,
and thus no real harm was done by posting his letters.

How much of any aid came from unicyclists after reading this thread?

I don’t think ‘trumpet’ is entirely fair.
‘Mention’, ‘point out’ or ‘bring to attention’ covers it in my mind.

Far from ‘overlooking’ it, I engaged in spirited discussion/debate with other members of these fora about those specific topics. That we all left the discussion with nary a mind changed is hardly proof that it was ‘overlooked’.

Pray tell how?
Are you actually suggesting that by posting those calls for assistance, I caused members of these fora who were about to make donations or lend aid to organizations of their choice to stop and say :“No, if Michael Moore are helping those people, I want nothing to do with it” and withhold their support?
The idea is preposterous.

I don’t quite get the drift here. Are you suggesting that I behaved in a ‘politically incorrect manner in my dealings with others’?
That’s funny. As a matter of fact, that’s so funny it’s almost gay. (insert ironic smiley of your choice.)

I’m sorry but this post made no sense to me. Could you explain it better? I agree with Gild on what he said in response.

How much, you ask, did his post of Micheals letter help? Well, at least one person, myself, after reading his letter, I went to his website and donated. How can unicyclists help? By doing what Micheal Moore’s letter said=very very appropriate for this thread.

OK.
You (unicycle6869 GILD) really believe that posting the inflammatory letter
was appropriate?

Without counting, I’m going to guess there are more posts that
mention the politics than there are posts without politics.

That’s good? Sure. If that was the purpose.

If that’s “OK” with you, and you really feel that it was in the best interests
to post an inflammatory message (with the inflammatory parts included)
then fine.

The words “Shame” and “Opportunist” come to my mind.
I have nothing more to say on the matter.

// not a bush (current administration) appologist or supporter.

I don’t accept your attempt to frame this discussion by unilaterally declaring the letter to be ‘inflammatory’.

This is no way to be taken seriously in any discussion. If you couldn’t be bothered to check your fact before making accusations, it might not be the best idea in the world to broadcast the fact before making the allegations.

What you will find is repeated calls from all parties for this discussion to remain politically neutral. This does not mean that people with a political profile are automatically disqualified from assiting in the aid efforts.

No it was not and you’ll find ample evidence of that. If you could be bothered with the facts in question before sprouting opinions. Not a likely scenario.

My ‘framing’ comments at the beginning of this post refers.

You don’t automatically become right simply by stomping off in a huff of righteous indignation. Not do you neccesarily become wrong either. Frankly, you don’t achieve much really. At the time of 'Proudyankee(sic)‘s’ original outbursts, I chose to walk away from the discussion because I felt the whole situation was much to sensitive to have a discussion about the impact of knee-jerk reactions to genuine aid efforts organised by people with whom you have personal and/or ideological differences.

Fair enough.
You have some moments of sounding like some of them tho.

I don’t accept your attempt to frame this discussion by unilaterally declaring the letter to be ‘inflammatory’.

This is no way to be taken seriously in any discussion. If you couldn’t be bothered to check your facts before making accusations, it might not be the best idea in the world to broadcast that before making said allegations.

What you will find is repeated calls from all parties for this discussion to remain politically neutral. This does not mean that people with a political profile are automatically disqualified from assisting in the aid efforts.

No it was not and you’ll find ample evidence of that. If you could be bothered with the facts in question before sprouting opinions. Seemingly not a likely scenario.

My ‘framing’ comments at the beginning of this post refers.
I’ve also never been involved in a ‘name-calling’ exercises on these fora in the past and I don’t intend to start now. I can only respectfully request the same approach from yourself.

You don’t automatically become right simply by stomping off in a huff of righteous indignation. Nor do you necessarily become wrong. Frankly, you don’t achieve much really. At the time of 'Proudyankee(sic)‘s’ original outbursts, I chose to walk away from the discussion because I felt the whole situation was much to sensitive to have a discussion about the impact of knee-jerk reactions to genuine aid efforts organized by people with whom you have personal and/or ideological differences.

Fair enough.
You have some moments of sounding like some of them tho.

I do believe that posting the letter (unflammatory or not) was very appropriate because it did exactly what this thread is titled: “How can unicyclist help…?” And this was just one of the many ways unicyclists could help. And it worked/helped because it got at least one person to donate. Now if you didnt’ agree with it you didn’t have to donate but could choose to ignore it and do some of the other ideas. And simply think, “I don’t agree with Michael Moore or what he’s doing but at least he’s trying to help and if that post gets at least one person to help, then I’m fine with that and happy it helped”.