Ode to Haiti: What Bothered Me, What Didn't

by Kari Ross (originally posted at her blog, Ode to Patriarchy)

As I assume most of you know by now, there was a massive 7.0 earthquake in Haiti Tuesday at 4:53 pm local time. The earthquake was strongest near Port-au-Prince, the nation's capital.

Right now, relief supplies are just starting to reach Haiti, but it's taking time for supplies to travel from around the world. Support is being rallied from every direction, and a lot of supplies have already been gathered.

But, I'm bothered. A lot actually.

Yesterday afternoon was when I really found out about the earthquake. It wasn't by watching the news, reading the newspaper, or by seeing a new website. I found out about Haiti through various feminist blogs and websites, as well as a few status updates. Every email I had about Haiti came from one of many mailings list of feminist foundations that I belong to and from friends whom I would've expected to know about it. I looked at major news sites and engines that have running news feeds in order to get more specific information.

I couldn't find it. On Yahoo!, where I normally find news topics that I'm interested in, the earthquake was about three panels in which is about 12 or so news topics. The article had the reoccurring quotes regarding "serious loss of life" but ex-convict NHL stars placed higher.

I went to CNN. I didn't find it on the main page. If it was there, it was too small for me to be able to locate amidst the MASS of text that is CNN.com. I gave up on trying to find it on my own, and googled "Haiti earthquake." I then found roughly the same article in the various news sites that I did on Yahoo!, most likely due to the lack of available information than anything else.

Now almost every website, from news to gaming, has some message about Haiti. It's practically the only thing you can read about.

Why is it that feminist sites and organizations had to tell me about Haiti, considering it's a massive natural disaster of global proportions and also the first of 2010? Especially about a country that is as far away from Miami as I am from my home town?

I will concede that I do not watch news on TV. I watch very little TV at school and what I do watch consists of the same regular programs. There may have been better coverage of the earthquake on the CNN channel or NBC or ABC. HOWEVER, there was surprisingly little coverage from my resources for general news. It was covered and then dropped, and only picked up again when everyone started to care that massive amounts of people were dead.

When it's something that big, why isn't in the news... the WHOLE DAY? It's estimated that 50,000 were killed in a span of about a minute and this is getting pushed down in your news feed? By sports news? I think some websites need to re-evaluate their priorities.

What did NOT bother me, however, was the quick and immediate response on my college campus once the news got out. A friend of mine spoke to me about getting something started to help our Haitians students and their families during this time, and within an hour or two we collected $14 from one residence hall and by lunch the next day we had almost $100. While we were starting our coin drive, Intervarsity (one of our campus' most prominent religious student organizations) was working to get donations of food and supplies for the Red Cross. Our Student Activist Movement and Salem AntiWar had begun to plan donations boxes to set up in every residence hall by Monday. This has been one of the strongest, quickest, and most effective responses that I have seen from my campus in the two and a half years that I have been here, with a majority of the work coming from students. My college can be very aware and active at times, but it takes a lot to get the majority of student body involved, and this did.

This did make my realize and evaluate feminism's position in my life. The fact that my nation's news agencies and even the agencies of other countries could not and did not provide me with information about the year's first major tragedy, but my fellow women at Feministing.com and Feminist Majority Foundation did framed the media in a different way for me. As soon as the information was available, feminism showed me how I could help, but the news media just said what the organizations I wanted to donate to were doing. It was through my feminist sisters (and those who may not consider themselves "feminists" but seem very feminist to me) and myself that we were able to get a coin drive started. And my previous involvement with other feminist actions around campus helped me to be able to get started quickly, and not wait around while I figured out how I wanted to do this. I feel renewed in my belief in feminism (not that I necessarily needed renewing). I feel very renewed in my appreciation of those people around me at my college as a whole.

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If you would like to donate or become involved in any of the efforts at Salem College, please contact me on Facebook, Twitter, or through email. Any spare change, even if you have given already is desperately needed and would go to a good cause. For those of you outside of Salem who read this, please keep those affected by the earthquake both in Haiti and around the world in your thoughts.

Also, here's a Community Feministing.com post with various resources on how to help, where to get news, and how this is affecting women: "How to help out in Haiti: thinking about women's and reproductive health"