Texas, USA: "You are on your own.... You should have evacuated.... You should not have returned.... You are burdens.... You are hindering the clean-up efforts.... Get out of town." Guy GOodson, Mayor, Beaumont TX

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The following report, dated Monday, September 26, 11 AM CDT, comes from two citizens in the North End of Beaumont, Texas, suffering from the aftermath of Hurricane Rita.

Guy Goodson, mayor of Beaumont, held a press conference this morning, Monday, September 26, on Clear Channel AM 560, the only media available here. Goodson stated, "You are on your own.... You should have evacuated.... You should not have returned.... You are burdens.... You are hindering the clean-up efforts.... Get out of town."

Yesterday the National Guard and Red Cross started giving out supplies in Beaumont. Today we know from citizen reports on Clear Channel AM 560 that all such operations have ceased. We have reports of trucks on Interstate 10 trying to come in with food, water, ice, and generators; we have reports of offers of church and private aid. People have called city hall seeking permission to open businesses or provide volunteer assistance of all kinds, and they are being told no.

Yet two grocery stores in the mayor's part of Beaumont, the affluent West End, are open. We are in the North End, the poorest part of town. We don't have fuel to travel to the West End grocery stores. At Ford Park, just outside of Beaumont, the Feds have massive amounts of supplies which they will distribute to those who can get there. However, even if we can get there, we will not be allowed back into Beaumont from I-10. We are in a "closed city." The Beaumont Police Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety have barricades on all exits of I-10 in the Beaumont area.

Other area cities, including Lumberton, Newton, West Orange, Pinehurst, Woodville, Vidor, Jasper, and Orange, are making sure their citizens have access to the aid that is available. Note that Orange was the worst hit in the area, yet the Orange mayor is allowing aid supplies to get to his citizens.

To follow the mayor's orders and get out of town would require fuel, supplies, and a place to go. We would be following in the footsteps of those who obeyed the original evacuation order and are now homeless without money, fuel, power, or aid of any kind. Those who remained in the city or who managed to return after the storm passed are being denied access to MOUNTAINS of federal and private aid.

The citizens of Beaumont need ice, water, MREs (Meals Ready to Eat from the military), mosquito repellant, and gasoline.

We hope that if we can make the state and national media aware of the situation, we may shame Mayor Goodson into releasing the desperately needed aid to the poorest parts of Beaumont.

Sincerely,
Names are being withheld due to fear of retaliation.

Submitter: Rob Kall

Submitters Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

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Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

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