Wither Bound Are We?

[aamusedinatx]

Last week I posted an article from the SF Chronicle in which San Francisco was told they would not receive refugees from the Gulf States because it was too far from their homes and refugees had refused to come this far west.

Now, however, we are hearing many stories of victims flow into camps across the United States as far away as Boston, or up in Maine...which is no farther than San Francisco is...and most of them had no idea where they were headed when they sat on the plane.

This article, in the UK Guardian, talks about a camp now set up in a National Guard training camp outside of Salt Lake City, UT.

A snippet:

Of Utah's 2.3 million population, just 0.8% classified themselves as African-American in the 2003 census. In Salt Lake City, that figure rises to nearly 2%.

Almost all of the evacuees who arrived in Utah were African-American. Mr Smiley, a Caucasian, was one of the very few exceptions milling around the camp. Like many refugees around the world, the evacuees from New Orleans will be highly visible in their new home. But unlike most refugees, they have remained inside their own country.

Add to that New Orleans's reputation as an easy living, hard drinking, party town and contrast it with Salt Lake City's fame as the home of Mormon morals, the town where drunkenness is illegal, and you have the recipe for at best confusion, and at worst, discord.

While Utah may be an unlikely destination for the homeless residents of New Orleans, for most of them it was also an unintentional destination.

"When we got on the plane they said, 'Welcome aboard, we are now flying to Lake Salt City'," said James Jernigan, an evacuee sitting in the sunshine at the camp. "I said, 'What? We're going the wrong way. I want to get off.' They said, 'No, you can't get off.'"