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Farmer tracked down the man who ‘accidentally ’ left tyres on his land.    

This is only a fraction of the issues the world is facing. This is not to say that Muslim’s are only facing hardship, I am simply trying to raise awareness about these specific countries. This post doesn’t cover all of it. Our brothers and sisters in Syria, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Albania, Kurdistan and so many more are still suffering. ⁣These are beautiful countries that are masked by war and famine.

All I hope from each of you is that you learn something new each day. If you’re reading this right now it is likely you come from a place of privilege. Use that privilege to educate yourself and stay informed on the issues this world is facing today. ⁣

The morning of August 10th a massive storm called a derecho plowed through the midwest, devastating Southern Wisconsin, Northern Illinois, and the entire state of Iowa, which is where I live. Iowa was hit the worst. A derecho is basically the equivalent of a hurricane. Our highest recorded wind speed was 112mph.

1/3 of the state lost power, and almost 3 days later, roughly 400,000 people still don't have power. We have approximately 23 million acres of farmland, and approximately 10 million were destroyed by the storm. That's not good at all. Our crops are one of the state's main sources of economic development, and we lost so much.

The light green area inside the circle is all of our damaged crops. We lost a lot of silos and grain bins as well

Outside of our local news stations, there's barely any national media coverage on this. Ive only seen a couple, and the only ones I have seen weren't even that in that depth.

The above screenshot was from today(Aug. 12th, 2020) at 9pm CST. 2 days had passed before either of them wrote anything about it.

We have some cities that are either partly out of power or entirely out of power. One of the worst hit cities was even still recovering somewhat from a F4 tornado that went through it 2 years ago.

Iowa is a disaster zone. I’m missing parts of my roof, probably need a new garage, new windows, new siding. My patio door was literally blown off its hinges.

My small town has no power, because the electrical poles were snapped in half like toothpicks. My parents live in Cedar Rapids, and they are completely cut off from the modern world at this point. They can’t make any phone calls because the cell towers were destroyed.

We are running out of fuel. There are still hundreds of thousands of us without power. Everyone has rancid food sitting in their freezers. People on wells literally have no access to running water. Generators and tarps are almost impossible to find. Banks are closed, and businesses aren’t taking debit/credit cards. The only way for most of us to charge our phones is to sit in our vehicles with the engine running.

We NEED aid.

This is still going on. It’s 8/15 and about 150,000 households are still without power, including almost 60% of Linn County which has the 2nd biggest city in the state. See those big streaks on the satellite image? Two of them pass directly through major cities.

Out by Cedar Rapids, at least 75% of the county still doesn’t have power. They’ve pulled in electrical line workers from as far as New York, Texas, and California, and we used up (checks notes) all of the spare electric poles in Texas to replace fallen or damaged ones. They’re scrambling to ship in more from California and Canada now, as well as wire and transformers. 

Oh and yeah, a third of the crop people depend on is destroyed. 

People have lost fridges and freezers full of food, and it was just after most folks stocked up because their EBT cards got refilled for the month. Some renters and home insurance is replacing it, but that’s only if folks have it. 

The Des Moines Register estimates that in Cedar Rapids alone, the storm left 1,200 refugees homeless. Whole apartment complexes were destroyed. Aid has been delayed and prescriptive, to the point that the refugees are having to organize with EMBARC, a refugee group in Des Moines, to work for their own survival by forming the Emerging Communities Relief Coalition. I'm posting a link below to donate to EMBARC.

If you LOOK at a map of power outages, you'll see how it matches up to property values, to racial segregation, with arrest rates. If you go into the city, you'll see with your own eyes how racism and classism have manifested in the material effect of who is LITERALLY without power and often, especially now, homeless. And the Governor refused to ask for personal, individual aid for recovery -- the mayor of Cedar Rapids, who himself originally claimed nobody needed federal assistance, got so tired of people demanding help that he himself asked for individual aid.

That request has been denied by the President, who flew in recently, stopped at the airport for a speech, and left without stepping foot outside the airport grounds.

The police are maintaining racist curfews, looking to arrest people, manning SPEED TRAPS in the region. That's what people are getting.

This is likely to result in higher arrests with lower chance of posting bail, job loss, a massive boost in homelessness first immediately and then over time with the loss of job and income possibilities, a pileup of COVID-19 infections, chronic medical conditions getting to their worst, secondary infections, undiagnosed and untreated injuries leading to permanent disabilities, all while so many disabled and chronically ill people and elders have no power to run medical devices, to stay cool and keep cooking hot food, and have critically limited food and medicine access.

It's not just a disaster. it's allowing systemic violence to do its worst. The delay in aid isn't just a failure: it's a hate crime at scale.

PLEASE post more resources to directly aid those affected worst if you have them.

https://waterprotectorlegal.org/red-fawn-fallis/

https://www.freerattlernodapl.com/

https://www.nodaplpoliticalprisoners.org/8-people/3-dion

https://freelittlefeather.org/who-is/