Wednesday, October 31, 2012

The Hideous Inequality Exposed by Hurricane Sandy


The Hideous Inequality Exposed by Hurricane Sandy

Share16OCT 31 2012, 9:34 AM ET 41
In Manhattan, the storm revealed a city more economically divided than it has been in a decade
Reuters
A hotel bellman said he was worried about his mother uptown. A maid said she had been calling her family in Queens. A garage attendant said he hadn't been able to contact his only relative - a sister in New Jersey - since the storm hit. Asked where he weathered the hurricane, his answer was simple.
"I slept in my car," he said.
Sandy humbled every one of the 19 million people in the New York City metropolitan area. But it humbled some more than others in an increasingly economically divided city.
Hours before the storm arrived on Monday night, restaurants, corner grocery stores and hotels were open in the Union Square area of Manhattan. (My wife and I moved to a hotel there after being ordered to evacuate our apartment in lower Manhattan.) Instead of heading home to their families as the winds picked up, the city's army of cashiers, waiters and other service workers remained in place.
Divides between the rich and the poor are nothing new in New York, but the storm brought them vividly to the surface. There were residents like me who could invest all of their time and energy into protecting their families. And there were New Yorkers who could not.
Those with a car could flee. Those with wealth could move into a hotel. Those with steady jobs could decline to come into work. But the city's cooks, doormen, maintenance men, taxi drivers and maids left their loved ones at home.
New census data shows that the city is the most economically divided it has been in a decade, according to the New York Times. As has occurred across the country, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Twenty-one percent of the city is in poverty, and the median household income decreased by $821 annually. Per the Times: "Median income for the lowest fifth was $8,844, down $463 from 2010. For the highest, it was $223,285, up $1,919."
Manhattan, the city's wealthiest and most gentrified borough, is an extreme example. Inequality here rivals parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Last year the wealthiest 20 percent of Manhattan residents made $391,022 a year on average, according to census data. The poorest 20 percent made $9,681.
All told, Manhattan's richest fifth made 40 times more money than its poorest fifth, up from 38 times in 2010. Only a handful of developing countries - such as Namibia and Sierra Leone - have higher inequality rates.
In the Union Square area, New York's privileged - including myself - could have dinner, order a food delivery and pick up supplies an hour or two before Sandy made landfall. The cooks, cashiers and hotel workers who stayed at work instead of rushing home made that possible.
They were a diverse group. Some were young people in their twenties. Others were middle-aged Americans who had never landed white-collar jobs. Most were immigrants.
On the other end of the wealth spectrum, New York's age-old excesses emerged. Some families brought their nannies to the hotel to help care for their children through the hurricane. Others panicked when the power went off. All the while, waiters, maids and doormen continued to help them.
The storm affected the affluent as well. Tourists and business people from Boston, California, Britain and Japan were stranded in our hotel. They found themselves without power, water or transportation, and completely at the mercy of strangers.
But the city's heroes were the tens of thousands of policemen, firefighters, utility workers and paramedics who labored all night for $40,000 to $90,000 a year. And the local politicians who focused on performance, not partisanship, such as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Newark Mayor Corey Booker.
Twenty-four hours after the disaster, ugly political lines were already being drawn. Democrats pounced on astatement by Mitt Romney in a Republican primary debate last year that disaster response should be shifted to the states and, where possible, privatized. Michael Brown, the much criticized director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under George W. Bush, argued that the Obama administration had responded more quickly to Hurricane Sandy than it did to the terrorist attack in Benghazi.
"One thing he's gonna be asked is, why did he jump on this so quickly and go back to D.C. so quickly when in ... Benghazi, he went to Las Vegas?" Brown was quoted as saying to a Denver alternative newspaper. "This is like the inverse of Benghazi."
Over the next few days, Obama's and Romney's reactions to the storm will be parsed. The role of the federal government in covering the costs of the disaster will be praised and assailed. Politicians, as always, will jockey for advantage.
The storm showed many things about New York. It exposed the city's vulnerabilities. It also displayed its strengths. And to me, it showed New York's growing economic divide. I'm sure that many of the people who remained at work yesterday chose to do so voluntarily. But I fear that many of them did not.
This post originally appeared at Reuters.com, an Atlantic partner site.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Consul: Immigrants killed by DPS leave wives, children behind


Consul: Immigrants killed by DPS leave wives, children behind

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Posted: Monday, October 29, 2012 6:06 pm | Updated: 6:41 pm, Mon Oct 29, 2012.
McALLEN — The Guatemalan consul here says two countrymen who were killed by an airborne DPS sharpshooter last week have been identified as family men who were seeking a better life for their children back home.
The illegal immigrants were shot with a .223-caliber rifle, said Guatemalan consul Alba Caceres, who identified the men as Jose Leonardo Coj and Marco Antonio Castro.
Both men — who hail from San Martin Jolitepeque, Chimaltenango, Guatemala — were with a group of seven others riding a red Ford pickup that was being chased Thursday afternoon by Texas game wardens, state troopers and other law enforcement officers. A Department of Public Safety helicopter joined the chase as the truck traveled near the intersection of Farm-to-Market Road 2221 and Mile 7, north of La Joya.
The trooper in the helicopter was cleared to fire in order to disable the vehicle. A photograph taken byThe Monitor shows the rear left tire blown out, but it also shows what appear to be various bullet holes near the rear of the truck.
The bullets fired from the helicopter killed Castro and Coj, Caceres said. A third Guatemalan immigrant was shot in the arm and also had some shrapnel injuries from the missed shots, she said. That man was treated and is recuperating from his injuries.
The Texas Department of Public Safety has placed the trooper on leave following the shooting. The agency said the sharpshooter opened fire thinking that the chased pickup truck was carrying drugs — not people.

VICTIM FAMILIES
As Texas Rangers investigate the shooting, DPS has remained tight-lipped about the case, which has Caceres very concerned.
“Sadly enough, we have not been given access to pictures of the bodies so that we can send them to Guatemala so the family can do a full identification at home,” she said in Spanish. “We have identified them through their IDs, but I am worried by the lack of communication.”
Caceres’ staff has notified the families and said she was heartbroken upon hearing their stories.
Coj didn’t want to travel illegally to the U.S. to work, but he was pushed to do so by the medical needs of his 11-year-old son, who needed surgery, the consul said. The father, who hails from a very poor region, resorted to seeking work illegally to cover the costs.
“He leaves behind three little orphans: his 11-year-old son, a 7-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old boy,” the consul said. “When I contacted his wife late Friday night to tell her that her husband had died, she was leaving the hospital where her son was at.”
The other victim, Castro, is survived by a wife and two children, Caceres said.
The consul is preparing the necessary process to have the bodies of the two men sent back to Guatemala to be buried by their families, but because of the ongoing investigation that process may be delayed for weeks.
“While to some, these cases are numbers and statistics, each one of these individuals has a story and a family,” Caceres said. “We must not forget that.”
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