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The Importance of Crisis Management from a United States President

When we go to vote in November, many of us will vote based on how much we agree with the principles of a particular candidate. Some of us may even decide to vote for a candidate because of a single issue a candidate has a particular stance on (something I strongly advise against because a president will have to deal with not one issue, but many issues). But my guess is that not as many of us will vote for a president based on how well or poorly someone has managed, or would manage, crises. And that should change.

One of the certainties of a sitting president is that the president will need to confront crises. If you’re not convinced of that, look at this list of recent presidents and the incomplete group of crises they each had to confront:

  • Donald Trump: COVID-19 pandemic, economic downturn as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hurricane Maria in 2017, and Hurricane Harvey in 2017
  • Barack Obama: Superstorm Sandy in 2012, numerous mass shootings (Pulse, Aurora, and Charleston, to name three), and the Great Recession
  • George W. Bush: The Great Recession, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and 9/11
  • Bill Clinton: Columbine shooting in 1999, Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, and Northridge, California earthquake in 1994
  • George H.W. Bush: Hurricane Andrew in 1992, Savings and Loan crisis, and Bay Area Earthquake in 1989
  • Ronald Reagan: Challenger rocket disaster in 1986 and Hurricane Alicia in 1983

And these are only the recent presidents. Going further back in history, presidencies were viewed as among the greatest or among the worst, in large part because of how those presidents handled crises. For example, Abraham Lincoln is considered among the all-time great presidents in large part due to his successful handling of the Civil War, while his predecessor, James Buchannan, is widely regarded as the worst because of his inaction as states seceded from the Union. Herbert Hoover is consistently ranked among the worst presidents due to his relative inaction when the Great Depression started, while his successor Franklin D. Roosevelt is widely regarded as among the greatest because so many thought that he responded to the Depression and World War II in a way that America became arguably the world’s strongest economic power for decades to come. A president’s response to a crisis can define a presidency, and sometimes even the course of the country for decades.

I’m not saying that one has to completely ignore the principles and positions taken up by the candidates. To the contrary, looking at principles and positions is an important part of figuring out who you want in the White House. However, figuring out how well a candidate would handle a crisis if elected is vastly underrated.

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Barriers to Evacuating From a Weather Disaster

Before every hurricane, we hear elected officials to tell people to “get out of harm’s way.” They say that “if you don’t leave, you are putting your own life at risk.” Or even more dire—I’ve heard elected officials say that “death is certain” if you don’t evacuate. People in parts of Louisiana and Texas heard all of this as Hurricane Laura was approaching last week.

Now don’t get me wrong—I appreciate the strong language. I think that when a major hurricane is heading straight at you, particularly if you’re in an area vulnerable to storm surge from the hurricane, you need to evacuate, if at all possible.

However, I beg people, including any government officials, to take notice of that final clause in my previous sentence: if at all possible.

I say that because, for some people, evacuating is not possible. And the results of this are catastrophic, even deadly.

But how could this be the case, when governments like to give a face of taking these storms seriously? Well…here are just a few major barriers to evacuating from a weather disaster:

Not enough shelters are pet-friendly.

A Reuters article some time ago put it best—pet owners often think of their pets first when natural disasters strike.[1] Now some of that is because people are that emotionally attached to their pets (and that is valid), but we also have to keep in mind that, in some cases, people literally can’t function without their pets. From people who rely on animals as a form of therapy for physical and/or mental health issues, to blind individuals who rely on guide dogs to get them around, there is a whole population of people who can’t function without their pets. Therefore, it is unacceptable for governments to either be short on shelters (as was the case with Florida before Hurricane Irma in 2017, according to the aforementioned Reuters article) or lack pet-friendly shelters in the first place (as was the case with South Carolina with Hurricane Florence a few years ago[2]). If governments want people to evacuate, they need to have evacuation shelters that allow people to be with their pets, for both people who are attached to their pets and for people who can’t function without pets.

Governments also do not provide adequate transportation for people with disabilities.

I was only eleven years old when Hurricane Katrina hit, but one of the things I remember from Katrina was how the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana did not adequately provide transportation for the disabled to get to a safe place. Depending on the disability, one may not be able to get to higher ground on their own; therefore, there needs to be help. With Hurricane Katrina, government didn’t help adequately, and the death toll was probably much higher than it should’ve been because of that lack of help.

I will end this section with a quote from a report issued by the National Council on Disability in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005: “For example, during the Katrina evacuation, many people with disabilities could not evacuate because to do so would require them to abandon support services and personnel. Moreover, since emergency transportation and shelters could not care for them, many people with disabilities were forced to stay behind.”[3]

Employee rights are inadequate.

How inadequate are employee rights? So inadequate that people can, and have, been fired because of evacuating from hurricanes. For example, a woman in North Carolina claimed that she was fired for not showing up to work after losing power during Hurricane Florence in 2018—that’s very possible because North Carolina is what’s called an “at-will employment state,” or a state where “private-sector employees can be fired for any reason – or no reason at all.”[4] There were also stories galore before, during, and after Hurricane Irma asking whether an employee can be fired for fleeing from the hurricane (by the way, the consensus answer was “yes”). Until governments have better protections keeping people from being fired for not showing up to work during or immediately after a hurricane as part of an evacuation plan, people will hesitate to evacuate for fear of missing work and being fired.

When a disaster such as a hurricane is on the way, the barriers to evacuating should be minimized to the greatest extent possible. However, that does not happen, and that likely results in preventable deaths.

Please note that I will not publish a post next Monday, as next Monday is Labor Day.

[1] This article talked about how, even for those who need companion animals, pet-friendly shelters were difficult to find: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-elderly-evacuation-pets/florida-needs-more-pet-friendly-hurricane-shelters-for-the-elderly-idUSKBN1CM2Q4

[2] https://weather.com/safety/hurricane/news/2018-09-11-where-to-take-pets-south-carolina-shelters

[3] https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED496270.pdf

[4] https://www.nbc26.com/news/national/employers-can-fire-employees-who-evacuated-for-hurricane-in-north-carolina

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Should Bloggers Blog About Politics?

As my readers, particularly my readers in the United States, would know, we have a presidential election this year.

With the election coming up, some are shamelessly blogging about politics. But many are grappling with how much to blog about politics, or whether to blog about politics at all.

If you are one such person who’s grappling, this blog post is designed for you.

Before going further, let me start by saying that if you don’t think you can handle adversarial comments resulting from what you express in your blog post, it is wisest to not publish your post on politics. Given the divisive nature of American politics (and politics in some other parts of the world), you should be prepared to handle some vitriol in the comments section of your post. It’s not guaranteed to happen, but you should be prepared for it to happen. As I’ve known bloggers brought to their knees (or even quit their blogs) over just a couple nasty comments directed at them, and as I’ve known bloggers whose mental health was negatively affected by vitriolic comments to posts, it is important to honestly assess whether you can handle sharp criticism of your political post before publishing a post on politics.

As to how to assess whether you can handle any level of challenging response to your political post, what I would recommend is this: think about how you’ve handled situations where you were in a contentious discussion online, assuming you’ve been in such a situation before (whether it be your blog, social media, or something else). If you didn’t respond well in other online situations where there was a contentious discussion, then you likely won’t respond well to it from strangers on the internet upon publishing a political post.

If you think you can handle difficult comments on a political blog post you publish, then you might be okay with publishing blog posts about politics. However, before determining for sure whether you should blog about politics, there’s one more question you must answer for yourself: What do you hope to achieve with your blog posts about politics?

If your goal is simply to vent about the current political affairs or to make your readers know where you stand on an election race, then all you need to do is write and then hit the “publish” button. Once you publish, you have achieved your goal.

If your goal is to educate people on an election issue or contest, you need to think about whether your potential post accomplishes this. If so, you can publish. If not, you shouldn’t hit the “publish” button. This is a judgement call you would have to make, and a judgement call I frequently have to make.

If your goal is to sway people to “your side,” you will likely walk away disappointed if you weigh into a race or issue where very few people are undecided. If few people are undecided about how to vote to begin with, for example, then you have few people to sway. However, I must add that if you weigh in on a political issue or race where a lot of people are undecided, then people reading your rationale for voting for a candidate or supporting an issue may be helpful to your readers.

If your goal is to grow your blog’s following through writing about politics, a blog post on politics may actually be one of the last things you want to do. Readers can, and have, unfollowed blogs because of a post on politics that one took issue with. In fact, when considering whether to publish a post on politics, you should ask yourself whether it’s a post you’d be willing to lose a couple or even a few of your readers over (and if not, don’t publish).

To sum things up, when considering whether to publish a blog post on politics, the following should be taken into consideration:

  • Whether you can handle the potential vitriol that comes from responses to the post
  • What you hope to achieve through your blog posts on politics, and whether that hope is attainable through publishing your blog post
  • Whether you would be willing to lose a couple or even a few of your readers over the political post you make

If you’ve published blog posts on politics, and have other things you’d like to add to what I said here, please comment below! I’m more than happy to hear tips from others, as well as questions from people who are unsure of whether to blog about politics.

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What Is…Intersectionality?

Today’s post is the next installment on the “What is _____?” series, where I go over terms used commonly in social justice circles that may sound like jargon to many.

Today’s “What is_____?” post will be on a very big term in social justice circles these days: intersectionality.

Intersectionality is a term to describe how different forms of discrimination overlap, combine, and yes, even intersect, with each other. While the term was originally used by Kimberlé Crenshaw 30 years ago to describe how the discrimination of women of color differed from even that of white women, the definition has since expanded in a way that the term can be used to describe how different forms of discrimination intersect to create a set of interwoven prejudices in daily life.

A few such cases where I’ve seen intersectionality at play include the following:

  • Women with disabilities of various kinds, including my mother (who has fibromyalgia and arthritis), often face ableism from people who don’t believe that they should accommodate for someone else’s aches and pains. At the same time, many of the women I know who have chronic illnesses have said quite openly that the fact that they’re women has, without a doubt, made them less likely to be believed when talking about their disabilities with friends and doctors. In the case of women with disabilities, ableism and sexism often intersect.
  • Transgender women of color face discrimination for being transgender, for being a woman, and for being a person of color. Each of these individual statuses (being transgender, being a woman, or being a person of color) is often enough, in many cases, to be at risk in certain ways, but the combination of these three identities has arguably resulted in transgender women of color being disproportionately represented in murder counts, even in the transgender community.[1]
  • Younger people with disabilities (whether visible or invisible) are often thought to be “faking it” because they look “too young” to have a disability. This attitude, and its results, means that there are a lot of young people with disabilities face discrimination at the intersection of ageism and ableism.

An understanding of intersectionality is important because, quite frankly, intersectionality also allows us to have a basic understanding of how different groups of people, even within a community that faces discrimination, can face other forms of discrimination too (or further discrimination because of another oppressed identity). Such an understanding can result in greater empathy for others on an individual level, but also hopefully better policy on the governmental level.

[1] The majority of transgender people who were killed due to violence in 2018 were transgender women of color: https://www.hrc.org/resources/violence-against-the-transgender-community-in-2019

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I Will Write Some Posts on Blogging Advice

Not too long ago, I accepted another blogging award. Between the blogging awards I’ve received and the fact that my following is growing, I am aware that aspiring bloggers may look to people like me for blogging advice.

I am more than happy to give advice. So, that is what I will do.

My blog advice posts will tackle questions that seem to nag many bloggers, regardless of how experienced the blogger is. I will address common questions such as how to handle comments and how to grow your audience. Additionally, as I have experience blogging on contentious subjects, I will also give blog tips related to blogging on contentious subjects. In fact, my tips related to blogging on contentious subjects is what I think will make my blog advice distinctive—I know many bloggers who give blog tips, but significantly fewer who give tips on how to blog on contentious issues.

As to how frequently people should expect me to publish posts on blog advice, I’m not 100% sure. However, my guess is that I will publish a post on blog tips on a Thursday every 1-2 months or so—just enough that there’s some regularity to these posts, but not so frequent that it replaces “blind injustices” as the central theme of my blog.

I look forward to doing these posts. Blogging tips from others have taught me so much about blogging, and I hope that future generations of bloggers will learn from the tips I share.

If there are any particular blogging questions/blog advice-type issues you’d like me to talk about, please let me know in the comments below!