Mildred Borden
“We don’t plan. We need to plan. After Katrina, black folks know they got to have a plan, especially under Bush. We do pay taxes, so we should expect something in cases of disasters, but it’s better to have God bless the child that got his own.”
Myrtle McCree
“Well I had a few things left over from the big scare of Y2K. It scared everybody. I went out and bought items, and some of it I still have. After what happened to the people in the South I started looking around because things had gotten scattered and I wasn’t using it. So I had this waterproof plastic bag, and I made sure my important items, social security card, birth certificate, deeds and bank records are in there. If there was a disaster, you couldn’t get very far trying to carry cans of food. But I do have just a little put away in case of emergency.”
Irene Baker
“No. However, since Katrina I’m thinking more and more. What I saw was the same suffering that Christ went through. I saw this again with those people suffering. When Christ spoke to the people and said, ‘When I was hungry, you didn’t feed me, and when I was naked, you didn’t clothe me,’ when I a saw people being pushed aside, I said, my God, there is the image of Christ, right there. So when the time comes to be judged, they’re going to asked, ‘When I was in that storm with no place to go, you didn’t offer your home.’ … ‘When did I do that?’ … When you did it to the least of those in New Orleans.”
Pat Anderson Williams
“When my children were younger, I had a plan, but now that they are older and have children themselves, I don’t. But after this event, it made me realize that I really do need to have a plan. As far as what has occurred, there was a conciseness that resurfaced. We as a community woke up and realized that the support we’ve always given to each other, even from the times when we had extra people in our household?”I believe the black community rose to the occasion.
Lawrence Butler
“If there would be anything of a Katrina magnitude in Chicago, I think we would be fairly well prepared. I’m the kind of person, I believe in gas type generators for light purposes, and my wife is the kind of lady that believes in keeping additional water around the house. By the same token, I am a avowed listener to weather reports, news forecast and all kinds of things where there might be something of a destructive magnitude. And I don’t wait until everyone starts leaving. When they say there is a possibly, I leave first.”
Daryl Thompson
“No I really don’t, but since Katrina I think I’ll try to make sure I have more bottled water in the house. As for my personal papers, I’m starting a new business, and one of things I’m doing is opening up a safety deposit box to put important papers in, so they are separate from the house. So those are two actions I’m doing?”renting a safe deposit box and making sure I have more bottled water in the house.”
