The destruction of Katrina shows the cruelty of new bankruptcy laws

In the aftermath of Katrina, it is painfully obvious how cruel the new bankruptcy law revisions (effective Oct. 1) are. Is this really the time to heap misery on those suffering financial problems through no fault of their own and to reward the credit card companies for their own credit evaluation failures?

At the very least, the law's effective date should be indefinitely postponed. Ideally, those provisions should be repealed.

BRAD GELDER
Point Breeze

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It's not stealing

Good thing no Associated Press photographers were present when I and a couple New Yorkers, one of whom wore a uniform, broke into a shopping market four blocks away from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and dragged out 20 cases of water. We had entered and left with goods, the definition of looting.

All of us should be damn careful next time we use the L-word about some poor washed-out guy from New Orleans. If I had been down there, I would've taken a hell of a lot more than water -- and smiled when they took the picture.

Why did I only take water from the store in Manhattan? It's what the firemen asked for, that and cloth napkins to clean their eyes. When we offered food, they said they weren't hungry.

DAVID CONRAD
Strip District

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Guns speak

What happened in New Orleans is an excellent example of what gun supporters and those who have taken civil defense seriously have been saying.

What happens when some lawless people prey upon others and there is no control? In short, the system that protects us cannot.

What do you do when someone is attempting to rob, rape or injure you or someone you know? Try to defuse the situation with some yuppy, social engineering? I don't think so.

Continued support of our rights to possess firearms is vital. Those who have not supported our right to possess firearms should take note of this because they could be the next victims. It is not a matter of if a natural disaster is going to occur, it's a matter of when.

We cannot blame the system; we are the system. And we should strive to make sure we are prepared not just on paper but in reality.

ALBERT MERRANKO
Indiana Township

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Help doctors too

Like many others, I've been glued to the news these past nine days, watching the horror left in the wake or Katrina. This past Saturday, four days after the flooding began in New Orleans, our local officials unveiled a plan to assist evacuees from that region.

Quite frankly, I'm rather impressed with the plan, so give credit where credit is due. Still, I believe there's room for improvement:

As Jack Kelly reported in "Pittsburgh Called Ideal for Secure Readiness Center," Aug. 28, one of the major reasons the Pittsburgh BRAC Task Force was successful in saving the 911th was its strategy of selling the concept of a Regional Joint Readiness Center. Under that plan, "the airlift capacity of the 911th therefore could make Pittsburgh an ideal place to evacuate casualties if the local facilities at major East Coast cities were overwhelmed by a major terrorist attack."

Given the devastation in Louisiana and Mississippi, the closed hospitals, clinics and doctors' offices, Pittsburgh needs to do what it can to make this plan come alive now.

I would also like to see our offer extended not only to the sick and injured needing medical care, but to the doctors and other medical professionals (who have also been displaced) whom we'll need to handle the increased workload. We also need to think about the families of those patients and doctors.

Provided the commonwealth chooses to streamline the credentialing process for the medical personnel, our region can soon be well on its way to providing the first-class medical care so many still urgently need, while at the same time setting a shining example for the rest of the nation.

JAY SILLA
Ingram

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Not just for kids

Regarding Sen. Rick Santorum's opposition to same-sex marriage on the grounds that marriage is "not about adults; it's about the kids" (Patricia Sheridan's "Breakfast With Rick Santorum," Sept. 5), does it need to be pointed out -- yet again -- that Santorum's faulty logic suggests marriage should not be legal also for heterosexual couples past their child-bearing years, or for heterosexual couples who cannot or may choose not to have children?

Fair treatment should not depend on how much a family unit resembles a traditional heterosexual model. Committed gay and lesbian couples should be afforded equal rights simply because discrimination is wrong.

JEFF HOWELLS
South Side

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A literary legend

America's Shakespeare is dying ("Let's Celebrate the Life That Is August Wilson," Sept. 4). August Wilson brought a new vision of this country and an absolutely essential voice to theaters from Broadway to my inner-city high school basement. If I were in Elizabethan London and heard that the author of Hamlet was on his deathbed, I would not be more moved.

Is this the Age of Bush? "The devil shout," as a character in "Seven Guitars" once explained, "but God speak in a whisper." I count myself lucky to be living in the Age of Wilson.

JOHN FULLINWIDER
Dallas, Texas

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Images of hurricane victims expose poverty and racism

Tom Barnes' story "Pa. Sending Troops, Other Aid to Gulf Coast" (Sept. 1) made me realize the power of photos and video images as cues to action. It is only human to ask how TV cameras can find thousands of people suffering in Katrina flood waters and find few figures of authority.

How can TV cameras videotape buses arriving in New Orleans from Houston, Texas, to rescue the "refugees" and yet see no caravans of tractor-trailers filled with meals-ready-to-eat and no supplies from the Strategic National Stockpile of medications? Where is the evidence of Homeland Security's command and control? Where is the satellite communication? Where is the demonstration of disaster preparedness paid for by our tax dollars in the aftermath of 9/11?

We must listen to the angry black people demanding help from the most powerful nation in the history of civilization; the whispered agony of elderly citizens left vulnerable to heat, thirst and hunger; the babies crying and the adults who love them crying like babies themselves; and the silence left by preventable death.

Katrina has exposed the ugly underbelly of poverty and racism. Race still matters in America. As a nation, we should be mindful of how the color of one's skin can predetermine where people live, the quality of their education and their capacity to survive a disaster. Many black people have lost hope. Just as they are trapped by swirling, contaminated waters, they feel trapped in a society unequal and divided by race.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, "the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice."

If America is to be a great nation, then our ship of state must catch the winds of justice and move us toward that day when we will come together as one nation, under God, in liberty and justice for all. That day cannot come too soon for the citizens of New Orleans.

STEPHEN B. THOMAS
Highland Park
Editor's Note: The writer is Director of the Center for Minority Health in the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh.