COMMUNITY :: You Can’t Get What You Can’t READ
Post by T Cole Contact flytcole@gmail.com
This week marks the three year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, one of the nation’s biggest tragedies. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes, family members, and possessions. There was nationwide controversy about the government’s reluctance and delay in delivering timely aid to our nation’s own. But it doesn’t stop there…
Literacy is something that we take foregrangted in the Midwest, especially in Ohio. The National Adult Literacy Survey indicates that 25% of US adults read at the lowest functional level. In New Orleans, however, that number nearly doubles at 44%. It is estimated that 100,000 people in New Orleans have had assistance delayed or have never applied because they cannot read the forms. One 51-year-old woman stated “I didn’t get a lot of school when I was a child. I guess they didn’t have enough to go around.” The storm itself destroyed 27 Adult Literacy Programs, leaving only 13.
Appeals to the government to write forms in “plain language” have met resistance, with claims that vital information can be lost, and that people who are functionally illiterate will have trouble with any form. The largest neighborhood rebuilding efforts is the $10.3 billion Road Home Program which requires the comprehension of dozens of government documents and finishing with the signing of 18 final legal forms before an application can be approved. For nearly half of New Orleans natives, completing this process is nearly impossible. We can’t get what we don’t have the means to access. We’ve been hoodwinked and bamboozled again, people.
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