Attitude Adjustments
Sep. 22nd, 2005 10:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ciroccojWell, this is something to think about as we watch Rita sweeping ashore and hope for the best for those in its path:
Poll: Storm Changed Americans' Attitudes
By ERIN McCLAM, AP National Writer
A 64-year-old Alabamian frets about frayed race relations. A Utah software programmer ponders the slow government response to Hurricane Katrina and decides he'll turn to his church first in a disaster created by nature or terrorists.
A woman scraping by on disability pay in northern Virginia puts her house on the market because of surging post-storm gas and food prices. Cheaper to live in Pennsylvania, she figures.
As the Gulf Coast braces for another monster storm, a new Associated Press-Ipsos poll shows Katrina prompted a rethinking of some signature issues in American life — changing the way we view race and our safety, how we spend our money, even where we live.
The poll shows that issues swirling around Katrina trump other national concerns.
Asked to rank eight topics that should be priorities for
President Bush and Congress, respondents placed the economy, gas prices and
Iraq high. But when Katrina recovery was added to the list, it swamped everything else.
Like bands of the storm itself, Katrina's reach in American life is vast: 1 in 3 Americans believes the slow response will harm race relations. Two-thirds say surging gas prices will cause hardship for their families. Half say the same of higher food prices.
In Las Cruces, N.M., Ariana Darley relies on carpools to get to parenting classes, or to make doctor's appointments with her 1-year-old son, Jesse. Before, she chipped in $5 for gas. Now, she pays $10 to $15.
"I didn't think it would affect me," she says by telephone, with Jesse crying in the background. "But it costs a lot of money now. I have to go places, and now it adds up."
After a crisis with indisputable elements of race and class — searing images of mostly poor, mostly black New Orleans residents huddled on rooftops or waiting in lines for buses — some Americans worry about strains in the nation's social fabric.
Women were especially concerned. One of them is Sue Hubbard of Hueytown, Ala., 64 years old. She does not believe race played a deliberate part in who got out of New Orleans, but she is deeply worried about tensions inflamed by those who do.
"I just think it took everybody by surprise," says Hubbard, who is white. "I don't care if it would have been the president himself, they couldn't have gotten there to those people. Some people — not everybody — are trying to make a racist thing out of it."
The poll underscores the literal reach of Katrina as well: 55 percent of Americans say evacuees from Katrina have turned up in their cities or communities, raising concerns about living conditions for the refugees, vanishing jobs for locals and — among 1 in 4 respondents — increased crime.
Among respondents with incomes under $25,000 per year, 56 percent were concerned about living conditions for refugees in shelters; that was higher than among those who make more money. And the poll indicates people in the South, which has absorbed huge masses of evacuees, are most concerned about the costs to their local governments.
Ann McMullen, 52, of Killeen, Texas, who works as a school administrator at Fort Hood, says she worries about gang violence, simply because of the prodigious numbers of people flowing into Texas communities.
"They can't even locate the sex offenders," she says. "And every population has gang members. It's theft, it's murder, it's more chaotic crimes in the community. Hopefully we'll be able to put these people back to work."
The poll also exposes a divide among Americans in how the government should respond when disasters strike areas particularly prone to catastrophe — landslides, earthquakes, hurricanes. Half say the government should give people in those zones money for recovery, but almost as many say those people should live there at their own risk.
About 4 in 10 say the government should prohibit people from building new homes in those endangered areas in the first place. As McMullen puts it: "You're asking for another disaster to happen."
Katrina has also raised grave doubts among Americans about just who will protect them in the aftermath of a natural disaster or a terrorist attack.
Only about a quarter of Americans believe the federal government was as prepared as it should have been to cope with a disaster of Katrina's magnitude. Only slightly more than half, 54 percent, are confident in the federal government's ability to handle a future major disaster.
Reed Chadwick, a 33-year-old software programmer from Herriman, Utah, has made a mental list of the organizations he can count on should Mother Nature or terrorists strike — church first, then local government, then the feds.
"I think a lot of people have been yelling at Bush," he says. "But I think they're not looking at their local leaders for answers or reasons why things did or did not work. A lot of people are asking questions."
As for other personal effects of the storm, rising gas prices have not been crippling for his household yet, he says. "But I know it's going to put a dent into my budget. I won't be able to do dinner as much, maybe take only one vacation, if that."
For Pam Koren, the storm's impact has been more immediate — and more drastic.
Suffering from low blood sugar, spasms of the esophagus and nerve damage, she exists now on disability pay and contributions from her daughter, who attends college and works as an assistant youth minister.
With gas and food prices rising after the storm, she says, she was forced to put her house in Burke, Va., on the market. She is considering east-central Pennsylvania, and a less expensive home.
"I'm a wreck because I'm not sure I'm making the right decision," she says. "I didn't want to have to do this, but things have become so tight I have not had a choice. I did not expect things were going to get this bad."
The poll of 1,000 adults conducted by Ipsos, an international polling company, had a margin of potential sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Link to the actual article:
Poll: Storm Changed Americans' Attitudes
So, informal poll time: did Katrina change your attitude(s)? How/why, or how not/why not?
And do you think there will be any long-term fallout from Katrina? Or Rita, for that matter? Or do you think that in a few months it'll all be forgotten as the latest fashions roll off the Paris runways and Ben Affleck simultaneously announces his divorce and unveils his new girlfriend, Jennifer #3?
Poll: Storm Changed Americans' Attitudes
By ERIN McCLAM, AP National Writer
A 64-year-old Alabamian frets about frayed race relations. A Utah software programmer ponders the slow government response to Hurricane Katrina and decides he'll turn to his church first in a disaster created by nature or terrorists.
A woman scraping by on disability pay in northern Virginia puts her house on the market because of surging post-storm gas and food prices. Cheaper to live in Pennsylvania, she figures.
As the Gulf Coast braces for another monster storm, a new Associated Press-Ipsos poll shows Katrina prompted a rethinking of some signature issues in American life — changing the way we view race and our safety, how we spend our money, even where we live.
The poll shows that issues swirling around Katrina trump other national concerns.
Asked to rank eight topics that should be priorities for
President Bush and Congress, respondents placed the economy, gas prices and
Iraq high. But when Katrina recovery was added to the list, it swamped everything else.
Like bands of the storm itself, Katrina's reach in American life is vast: 1 in 3 Americans believes the slow response will harm race relations. Two-thirds say surging gas prices will cause hardship for their families. Half say the same of higher food prices.
In Las Cruces, N.M., Ariana Darley relies on carpools to get to parenting classes, or to make doctor's appointments with her 1-year-old son, Jesse. Before, she chipped in $5 for gas. Now, she pays $10 to $15.
"I didn't think it would affect me," she says by telephone, with Jesse crying in the background. "But it costs a lot of money now. I have to go places, and now it adds up."
After a crisis with indisputable elements of race and class — searing images of mostly poor, mostly black New Orleans residents huddled on rooftops or waiting in lines for buses — some Americans worry about strains in the nation's social fabric.
Women were especially concerned. One of them is Sue Hubbard of Hueytown, Ala., 64 years old. She does not believe race played a deliberate part in who got out of New Orleans, but she is deeply worried about tensions inflamed by those who do.
"I just think it took everybody by surprise," says Hubbard, who is white. "I don't care if it would have been the president himself, they couldn't have gotten there to those people. Some people — not everybody — are trying to make a racist thing out of it."
The poll underscores the literal reach of Katrina as well: 55 percent of Americans say evacuees from Katrina have turned up in their cities or communities, raising concerns about living conditions for the refugees, vanishing jobs for locals and — among 1 in 4 respondents — increased crime.
Among respondents with incomes under $25,000 per year, 56 percent were concerned about living conditions for refugees in shelters; that was higher than among those who make more money. And the poll indicates people in the South, which has absorbed huge masses of evacuees, are most concerned about the costs to their local governments.
Ann McMullen, 52, of Killeen, Texas, who works as a school administrator at Fort Hood, says she worries about gang violence, simply because of the prodigious numbers of people flowing into Texas communities.
"They can't even locate the sex offenders," she says. "And every population has gang members. It's theft, it's murder, it's more chaotic crimes in the community. Hopefully we'll be able to put these people back to work."
The poll also exposes a divide among Americans in how the government should respond when disasters strike areas particularly prone to catastrophe — landslides, earthquakes, hurricanes. Half say the government should give people in those zones money for recovery, but almost as many say those people should live there at their own risk.
About 4 in 10 say the government should prohibit people from building new homes in those endangered areas in the first place. As McMullen puts it: "You're asking for another disaster to happen."
Katrina has also raised grave doubts among Americans about just who will protect them in the aftermath of a natural disaster or a terrorist attack.
Only about a quarter of Americans believe the federal government was as prepared as it should have been to cope with a disaster of Katrina's magnitude. Only slightly more than half, 54 percent, are confident in the federal government's ability to handle a future major disaster.
Reed Chadwick, a 33-year-old software programmer from Herriman, Utah, has made a mental list of the organizations he can count on should Mother Nature or terrorists strike — church first, then local government, then the feds.
"I think a lot of people have been yelling at Bush," he says. "But I think they're not looking at their local leaders for answers or reasons why things did or did not work. A lot of people are asking questions."
As for other personal effects of the storm, rising gas prices have not been crippling for his household yet, he says. "But I know it's going to put a dent into my budget. I won't be able to do dinner as much, maybe take only one vacation, if that."
For Pam Koren, the storm's impact has been more immediate — and more drastic.
Suffering from low blood sugar, spasms of the esophagus and nerve damage, she exists now on disability pay and contributions from her daughter, who attends college and works as an assistant youth minister.
With gas and food prices rising after the storm, she says, she was forced to put her house in Burke, Va., on the market. She is considering east-central Pennsylvania, and a less expensive home.
"I'm a wreck because I'm not sure I'm making the right decision," she says. "I didn't want to have to do this, but things have become so tight I have not had a choice. I did not expect things were going to get this bad."
The poll of 1,000 adults conducted by Ipsos, an international polling company, had a margin of potential sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Link to the actual article:
Poll: Storm Changed Americans' Attitudes
So, informal poll time: did Katrina change your attitude(s)? How/why, or how not/why not?
And do you think there will be any long-term fallout from Katrina? Or Rita, for that matter? Or do you think that in a few months it'll all be forgotten as the latest fashions roll off the Paris runways and Ben Affleck simultaneously announces his divorce and unveils his new girlfriend, Jennifer #3?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-09-23 02:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-24 01:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-24 04:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-23 03:24 am (UTC)And do you think there will be any long-term fallout from Katrina? Or Rita, for that matter?
I hope to hell so. I hope people are so pissed off that there's an asswhipping at the polls come next election day.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-24 01:20 am (UTC)Yeah, I think I went from 'little or no respect' for Bush & his cronies to 'no respect whatsoever.'
I hope people are so pissed off that there's an asswhipping at the polls come next election day.
From your lips to the electorate's ears.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-23 04:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-24 01:21 am (UTC)Ouch. Yeah.
::hugs::
no subject
Date: 2005-09-23 04:31 am (UTC)Out here on the west coast, gas prices were up around $3 a gallon before the hurricane. They've actually dropped in the weeks since then. Gas is expensive, but we're used to it.
In a few months, Katrina will not be forgotten, but it will be background noise, in the same way the for most people the War in Iraq is now background noise. Unless, of course, Rita is followed by Hurricane Tammy wiping out Miami, and then Hurricane Wilma brings devastation to the Carolinas. There are still six weeks in the hurricane season, after all. September is the worst month for hurricanes, historically.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-24 01:25 am (UTC)Ouch and double ouch. I so hope you're proven wrong - and not by Hurricanes Tammy and Wilma.
And it's so upsetting to realize that I think you're absolutely right :(
no subject
Date: 2005-09-23 12:08 pm (UTC)I have no confidence in my government now. I feel like if the terrorists come back, we're just screwed. Would Georgie even know or care if the terrorists blew up Spartanburg? Or does it have to be a big city in the NE to get his attention?
As someone said earlier, there needs to be an ass-whoppin in the next election. And I'll agree that it needs to be on many levels.
(And personally, not knowing the level of suffering a major American city is going through, and not confronting it for 3-4 days, is---in my mind---a 'higher crime and misdeamour' than someone trying to weasel out of admitting he got serviced in the Oval Office.)
no subject
Date: 2005-09-24 01:31 am (UTC)A big, rich, white and Republican city.
Oops - is that too cynical?
::pause::
Didn't think so.
(And personally, not knowing the level of suffering a major American city is going through, and not confronting it for 3-4 days, is---in my mind---a 'higher crime and misdeamour' than someone trying to weasel out of admitting he got serviced in the Oval Office.)
::snicker:: And how.
John Stewart said something along the lines that this was a big enough screw-up that even people on Bush's side had to acknowledge it was a screw-up, or risk losing all credibility. He said it was like when the Monica Lewinsky affair came out, even Democrats had to admit that had been a serious lapse in judgment. The difference being, Stewart said, that thousands of people were not stranded in Monica Lewinsky's vagina.