The Houston Floods

Schools are closed, people are home from work, rescue efforts are under way...  This news should be encouraging for most, but yet the people of Houston bore witness yesterday as horses were being rescued while women and children were left to fend for themselves in the Greenspoint community.

This morning I saw for myself how residents of Houston's North side were floating in refrigerators, trying to make their way to safety.  These home made boats were the only things they could manage to put together to get them to higher ground.  But where were the city's rescue workers for these people? Thankfully they had each other, or the death toll for the city could have been much higher than five.

Not that I don't have love for animals; they are beautiful creatures, but when our city puts the lives of horses above its own people, there's a problem.  Maybe these horses just so happened to be on the right side of town.  Maybe they had the right socio-economic status.  It couldn't have been the color of their mane, because it was as brown as the people fighting for their lives over in Greenspoint.  Are these people not as worthy, even more so, of the same rescue efforts that the horses got?

There is also something to be said when a Caucasian woman living in the Cypress area, who by the way is suffering through the storm as well, gets on T.V. and says, "We are the ones who need the help, NOT the people in Greenspoint." What does that mean?  Are we ALL not in a state of desperation around the city, whether in Cypress or Greenspoint?  How much devastation has to happen before we realize there is a need for equal treatment for everyone?

The areas more severely hit should be the first on the list of rescues, no matter the economic status, race, or ethnicity of its people.  Never should there be a time when we say, "Okay everyone, horses first! Now the rich.  Next lets rescue the white. All others, we'll get to you when we can.  Its just not acceptable.