In Cedar Rapids, poor and dense residential neighborhoods were hit hardest, and the governor waited three days to send the National Guard and a week to ask for help from FEMA and the President. the streets are still full of debris, houses caved in with full trees still inside them, power lines in the street.
The Des Moines Register estimates that in Cedar Rapids alone, the storm left 1,200 refugees homeless. Whole apartment complexes were destroyed. Aid has been delayed and prescriptive, to the point that the refugees are having to organize with EMBARC, a refugee group in Des Moines, to work for their own survival by forming the Emerging Communities Relief Coalition. I'm posting a link below to donate to EMBARC.
If you LOOK at a map of power outages, you'll see how it matches up to property values, to racial segregation, with arrest rates. If you go into the city, you'll see with your own eyes how racism and classism have manifested in the material effect of who is LITERALLY without power and often, especially now, homeless. And the Governor refused to ask for personal, individual aid for recovery -- the mayor of Cedar Rapids, who himself originally claimed nobody needed federal assistance, got so tired of people demanding help that he himself asked for individual aid.
That request has been denied by the President, who flew in recently, stopped at the airport for a speech, and left without stepping foot outside the airport grounds.
The police are maintaining racist curfews, looking to arrest people, manning SPEED TRAPS in the region. That's what people are getting.
This is likely to result in higher arrests with lower chance of posting bail, job loss, a massive boost in homelessness first immediately and then over time with the loss of job and income possibilities, a pileup of COVID-19 infections, chronic medical conditions getting to their worst, secondary infections, undiagnosed and untreated injuries leading to permanent disabilities, all while so many disabled and chronically ill people and elders have no power to run medical devices, to stay cool and keep cooking hot food, and have critically limited food and medicine access.
It's not just a disaster. it's allowing systemic violence to do its worst. The delay in aid isn't just a failure: it's a hate crime at scale.
PLEASE post more resources to directly aid those affected worst if you have them.
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