Heroism on Hold for Masses of Red Tape

I went down to the Red Cross this evening for my "Family Services" training, scared and expecting that I'd get a ship out date, all ready to go do my bit for the Gulf.

Ooops. Turns out the Red Cross is pretty much a major mess right now, what with the actual crisis and all. Disorganized is a kind and mild adjective. There were a LOT of people there - there are a lot of people who really want to help out, which is heartening. The only trouble is, I'm still not sure if/how/when any of us will actually be going down. I was there for almost 3 hours and the only thing I know is that I'm going back on Monday morning to answer the phones for 4 hours. Hopefully I'll do better than whoever answered the phone for me on Wednesday, since she apparently had no clue what she was talking about. Which isn't surprising, because nobody who was there this evening seemd to know either.

The class was in Family Services. This translates into filling out an insane amount of bureaucratic forms for refugees, who you better hope come in a classic American nuclear family shape, because if they don't those forms are going to be hell to navigate. The lady who taught the class walked us through each and every form, each with its own special set of acronyms. The big picture seems to be that people walk into a Red Cross headquarters, which could be anywhere, and then they get handed over to me or someone like me, who fills out insanely repetitive (you have to put their names & address - or what used to be their address before it was sunk under 20 feet of water or swirled up into the sky - on every. single. form. before they get any kind of actual help and there are about 15 forms. The lady said that we would probably do like 12 families a day. Given 500,000 refugees, that seems a bit slow! All these forms are set up for places where there is infrastructure: to wit, the refugees get credit card type things, which will of course only work if there are phones, to take to the grocery store and the Wal Mart and the motel. If there were grocery stores and Wal Marts and motels this would be tee-fucking-riffic. But, of course, there aren't, and our trainer at least didn't seem to have a bit of a clue what would be done then.

Who are the brain police? What do you do when the plastic's all melted and the chromium too? /zappa

They give you $115 a week for groceries for a family of four. The lady next to me was outraged and I was outraged that she was outraged, since that's about - or more - what I've raised my kids and often a no-count boyfriend or two on. And I said that, too - "hey, that's damn generous! More than you get working for an Asheville salary, that's for sure." She looked all shocked at me. Must be nice. Her husband probably pays his employees $5 an hour and tells them they're lucky to get it. /class rage rant

The trainer was worried about fraud though. She told us about how people would try to cheat this "gift from the American people" and use it illicitly. Yeah okay. And she spoke several times about how rough it was down there: no electricity, no water, nowhere to stay - and there was a sheet in our handout of forms that said that as well, and that you had better be prepared to carry all your belongings on your back. Most of the people there looked like they could do it, although most of them looked like they'd never actually done it, and some of them looked like, well, no elevatahs? Dahlink! I could see that the concept of actual no water, no electricity which equals no showers, no a/c was not quite making it through the entire brain. Idealism is great, but mascara on that level can be a problem with no bathrooms.

So finally I - or maybe it was somebody else - raised a hand and said, "Well, what about going to the Gulf? How does that happen? What do we do?"
"You have to fill out an application form and a volunteer form and a blah blah form, and then they go off to National, and they check your references and then if they want you they'll call you."
"Do you have those forms?"
"No, you'll have to come back tomorrow."
I badgered her until she got me some forms. I filled them all out and left them there, with still no idea how it all works. I do know that they pay to fly you in and out, they pay for your food, and they pay for your lodging, if there is any. At the Gulf they're anticipating that there isn't any lodging, so you're supposed to bring a sleeping bag & etc. That I knew.

I'm ready to go, and I feel like I'm needed now. I don't want to lose my initiative and not make it, wait too long, or even, heaven forfend, find a job or something and not be able to go. But apparently I'm now deep into the wait-and-see bureaucracy. They'll call me. I shouldn't call them. So I'm not a hero yet. Or maybe ever. I'm just trying to do whatever I can.