As you probably know Puerto Rico recently suffered devastation at the hands of Hurricane Maria. It’s a natural disaster of incalculable scale made infinitely worse by the federal government's point-blank refusal to help Puerto Rico in the manner that would befit our so-called leaders. If you’re at all able to give please consider donating to organizations like United for Puerto Rico, Americares, Convoy of Hope, Direct Relief, Catholic Relief Services, International Medical Corps, or Unicef. The people of Puerto Rico are in desperate need of help and it’s painfully clear that it’s going to have to come from us because those in power are too cruel or incompetent to take action.
This idea of being abandoned by our own government has been a running theme in 2017, especially with the way the natural world seems to be coming apart at the seams. More and more, the organizations we once trusted with our basic safety and day-to-day concerns have turned on us with, at worst, a predatory maliciousness and at best a blind idiocy.
In that power vacuum citizens have had to rely on one another to fight the battles we can’t as individuals, be that in the form of mass demonstrations and call-in over healthcare or the civilian fleet that went to Houston after Hurricane Harvey. This blend of federal abandonment with the greater need for joint community action seemed fairly familiar to me because it’s also the core of my favorite Batman comic of all time- No Man’s Land.
