emergent ink

I see two things in the pictures coming out of Haiti over the past week, and they contradict each other.

The first thing is the resilience of humans confronted with overwhelming adversity. Haiti is one of the poorest nations in the world. More than 80% of the population was already living in poverty before this disaster. Tonight I saw pictures of children receiving a bottle of water – that’s it, no food was available – and they were saying ‘thank you’ and smiling.

There is a fear that hunger and thirst is going to lead to violence. Seven days after the earthquake most of the survivors were holding on, waiting patiently for the help that was coming. But violence and anarchy were spreading.

The second thing that is clear in the pictures, the one that makes me worry, is how hard it is going to be to get enough food, water, and medical aid to the survivors, no matter how patient they are.

When disasters get this big, they become hard to comprehend. There have been reports that the number of dead from this earthquake is anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 people.

Haiti has a population of 10 million, and the area around Port-au-Prince holds between 2.5 and 3.5 million people. The government didn’t function well before the earthquake and doesn’t seem to exist now.

Many nations have sent rescuers, equipment, food and water, and medical supplies (including field hospitals) but the port is damaged and the airport can hold less than ten large planes at any one time. Air traffic control is being managed by United States Special Forces using a folding table on the side of the runway.

One report from the UN announced that 130,000 food packets and 70,000 water containers were distributed by Saturday. That’s four days after the earthquake. When you compare those numbers to the three million people in the disaster area, you start to comprehend how difficult the situation is.

The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson arrived loaded with 600,000 emergency food rations. It doesn’t seem like enough.

Almost as soon as the news of the disaster spread around the world, nations responded with pledges of aid. But it is starting to seem like we can’t move fast enough, even when we want to.

People are fleeing the city, and one report said that few of them had access to a “traditional food source.” Which got me thinking: who does, these days?

Words fail. They fail to describe the suffering – and strength – of our fellow humans. And sometimes words fail because the actions they promise are beyond our means.

Words fail us in other ways, too.

Actions speak louder than words, and sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can never harm us. Right? Wrong.

Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic. Columbus claimed the island for Spain in December 1492. (Columbus lied about lunar eclipses, but that’s another story.) The original population of the island was almost completely wiped out by a combination of guns, germs, and steel.

Haitians are descended from African slaves brought to the island, the remaining natives, and Europeans.

French pirates settled on the island too, in the part that is now Haiti. The French word for pirate is flibustier, or freebooter.

A filibuster is a way to pirate or hijack debate. The Constitution specifies that a simple majority is required to conduct most Senate business, and gives the Vice President the power to break ties (those times when the vote is split 50-50).

But any one senator has the right to talk about anything for as long as he wants with a filibuster. The Senate can stop a filibuster only if 60 Senators agree to something called cloture to end debate. These things are not in the Constitution; they are Senate rules.

So even though it only takes 51 votes for the Senate to take action, filibusters and cloture requirements keep the Senate from approving anything that has less than 60 votes. To make matters worse, Senators don’t even have to actually talk – they just have to threaten to do so.

No matter how you feel about the bills currently being debated in the Senate, it is clear that over the past thirty or forty years, government has failed us. And this may be the reason for it.