I suppose this is more of a GQ than a debate, but since it has the potential to turn partisan, I will put it here to save the hamsters the trouble.
MoveOn.org is mobilizing their considerable mailing list to secure temporary housing for hurricane evacuees. Anyone willing to open their house to a displaced family can register, and evacuees will be placed with them. 122,332 beds have been volunteered so far.
Speaking of political groups jumping on the hurricane-aid bandwagon, there is also the Liberal Blogosphere for Hurricane Relief, where liberal bloggers devote web space and column inches to mobilizing aid contributions. Their goal is to raise $1 million and they’ve got about $150,000 so far.
It isn’t quite the same thing, but I seem to recall seeing a donation effort by a group of republican bloggers. They also seemed to take the tijme to claim how little democrats helped in this situation. :rolleyes:
It has been suggested that blog-aid could be turned into a fundraising contest between progressive and conservative blog-groups. But it doesn’t appear to have been put in place. (Apparently there have been complaints about the idea, but I don’t see what’s so wrong with it. Vying with your political opponents to see who can donate the most help to suffering victims of a catastrophic disaster? Sounds like a wonderful new definition of “good-natured rivalry”.)
There’s a non-political Katrina Blog Relief effort which accepts participation from blogs of any kind.
And AFAICT, lots of conservative blogs have linked to or put up banner ads for relief organizations. I think all these ideas are great ways to leverage internet activity to increase the flow of aid.
Slashdot noted that “…tech companies across the country are maintaining pages with ties to respected charities. Yahoo is maintaining the Red Cross donation page, and everyone from Microsoft to IBM has a message on their frontpage.”
Also in MPSIMS, grienspace challenges the doper community with, The SDMB Katrina donation File. Links to organizations, along with pledges from Dopers can be viewed there.
There are a bizzillion threads on Katrina, so I thought I’d pull a little of the material together.
Right wing people tend to be more religious, on average, than left wing people, and would prefer in many cases to let their church handle hurricane relief rather than political organizations they’re affiliated with.
That is the case with me, for instance. I belong to several organizations. But my hurricane relief check is going to Catholic Charities.
Wow, I just saw FoxNews list hurricanehousing.org among other sites that are providing relief. If they know MoveOn.org is behind that site, I give them credit for more non-partisanship than I would have expected.