Flood Relief

Right before school started in Winona there was some serious flooding in the area. Nothing happened to the school, but there are more than a hundred houses in the Winona area that are uninhabitable. Today some students volunteered to help the people in the area. I was assigned to a home in Minnesota City. The house was completely gutted out when we got there. It looked like they were in the building stages of the house with plywood floors and no dry wall. The owners had to completely start over on their house. It was so weird to think that your whole house could get ruined by a bunch of water. We cleaned out the basement and then we had to shovel rocks from the garden and powerwash them because they got covered in sewage from the flood. It was awesome to help someone, but it was a lot of work. At the end of the day we took a trip to the end of the road where it meets up with the Mississippi River. The water had washed out a train bridge and a road bridge and we were at least 40 feet above the river. Can you imagine the water coming that high? It also came in about a 6 hour span.

I was bothered by the fact that not a lot of upperclass people helped out with the flood relief. I know that we are busy and have a lot of work to do, but it was only one afternoon. I think that as we get older we tend to forget how to budget our time for other people. I think it's important to help out and get involved with the community that you live in. You as a community member have a voice and you should be able to make your voice heard. The best way to get your voice heard is to become involved. There were a lot of freshpeople there which was awesome to see. I know that some of them were required to be there because of Alcohol violations, so they had to do community service, but there was a good number of them that were there because they wanted to help. Another thing that bothered me was the people that signed up to come and made a commitment and then didn't show up. I think that is so irresponsible. They signed up for it voluntarily so why wouldn't you follow through with a committment. I didn't was to get up this morning, but I sucked it up because I made a committment and because I knew that these people really needed our help. I say when you make a commitment you keep it. The only thing that should keep you away is a family emergency or and illness. Otherwise you should be there if you voluntarily signed up.

The book I recommend this time is:
Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism (Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards)