Geneva’s Museum of the International Committee of the Red Cross [Athos99 Geneve / Flickr]
“H wally” asked some critical questions about the Red Cross on our Open Thread. (A thread which, we promise, we’re reading; more on that soon.) The questions were timely and tough, and based on the prelimnary discussion we had in our story meeting this morning, worth exploring.
“The airways are full of their requests for money and blood,” H wally wrote. “I’ve listened to many different news sources and heard a multitude of interviews with victims of both hurricanes and not once have I heard anyone mention getting help from the Red Cross.”
So, alongside the ongoing conversation about Federal preparedness for and management of disasters (which has grown to include things like questionable no-bid contracts and futile ice-trucking) is a burgeoning discussion about philanthropy, Federal reimbursements to religious institutions, and the basic effectiveness of our largest non-governmental aid agencies.
H wally kept it pretty straightforward: “Where was the Red Cross while all those people were suffering in the Superdome?” Answering that — and the attendant “Why” — will be one measure of our success for an hour-long conversation.
Some other questions to get your wheels started:
Is anyone tracking all of this money? And just how much are we talking about — how much, in other words, has the American public contributed out of its own pockets — and where is it going?
Is there a size past which bureaucracies such as the Red Cross (or FEMA, for that matter) have problems distributing resources and responding quickly? If so, and if they’ve grown past that point, to whom else can we turn?
Are small initiatives (like this, for example), massively distributed, the answer? And is there a better, decentralized model of giving?
But first things first: Who do you want to hear from on this?
My wife just returned from a 10-day stint as a Red Cross volunteer in the Gulf region (she had planned to stay longer, but like many of her compatriots left in disgust – I stayed home with the kid and the job). It was her first experience with the Red Cross, and she is profoundly disappointed and disillusioned.
Most frustrating, says my wife, was the poisonous, wasteful mix of disorganization and bureaucratic rigidity that kept volunteers from helping people in need. Out of the 10 days she volunteered, she spent only two actually in contact with evacuees. She says managers have a bizarre obsession with proceedure – dotting every “i” and crossing every “t” – yet possess a stunning inability to actually get an aid station operational.
And when a station finally does get running, regional headquarters – without warning or explanation – may order it dissolved or merged with a station 30 miles away. That seems to comport with what other witnesses are reporting. Perhaps it made sense on the map back at HQ, but to the people in the field it seemed utterly irrational, like a scene out of Catch-22. The last thing evacuees need is further confusion and dislocation.
My wife says she spoke with dozens of hurricane victims who had spent four weeks chasing phantom aid stations (and those are only the people fortunate enough to have means to travel). When they finally did chance upon a working station, they were swamped with a Byzantine series of forms and conditions. In one instance, a victim was awarded assistance but 30 minutes later her sister – who lived next door – was not. The federal registry of designated disaster areas had updated via fancy wireless setup, kicking her zip code out of the system. How does one explain that to someone who’s lost everything?
We realize my wife only experienced a tiny corner of a massive relief effort. And we understand that the organizational and logistical challenges (not to mention the risks and liability) are enormous and unprecendented. Some problems are to be expected. Yet it seemed to my wife that the very structure that was designed to address those challenges is what’s getting in the way.
We’ve heard the same kinds of stories about bureaucratic blindness to the reality on the ground again and again. We’re not certain if it’s the sheer scale of the disaster or something inherently dysfunctional in the Red Cross’ leadership and organization.
The two days my wife did manage to spend helping people was only due to the initiative of her and the dozen or so other volunteers in her group. Dispatched to a camp that was already being deconstructed, they struck out on their own to a remote replacement site ahead of schedule. They had it operational within a matter of hours. By the time managers showed up days later to muck things up with their operations manuals, they had helped hundreds of evacuees who had miraculously appeared out of nowhere.
So, yeah, based on my wife’s experience, admittedly limited and anecdotal, I’d say the decentralized model (whatever that means) works a helluva lot better.
This is not a new thing for Red Cross. I can personally trace their greediness from now to WWII.
I have had history with the Red Cross myself. Back in 1981, when I was a Marine stationed in 29 Palms CA, my dad became very ill. They gave him less than a 10% chance of making it through the night. I was notified after the banks closed, so had to borrow the money for the plane ticket, from CA to northern NY, from the Red Cross. I was informed I’d have to pay the money back. That was good with me. I signed the papers to have the money taken out of my check and I was on my way. I didn’t realize the problems that my mother had with them until I got to NY.
My mother, who was incredibly distraught, tried calling the Red Cross to get me home. That is standard proceedure. When she tried telling the woman at Red Cross what was going on with my Dad, the woman accused my mother of making up a story to get me home. This nonsense continued over a series of minutes (the nurse told me 10 minutes) until the nurse took the phone from my mother and became incredibly rude with the Red Cross woman. Then, and only then, did the Red Cross woman believe it was a real emergency and got a hold of me.
I wish I could say this was the end of the story, but the Red Cross struck again. My Dad survived and I was back at 29 Palms in a few days. A month later, I was called into the C.O.’s office. He wanted to know why I hadn’t paid the Red Cross back. I told him I signed the appropriate papers and they had already taken the money out of my check. If he wanted I would get my pay stubs and show him. He gave me a disgusted look, sighed, rolled his eyes, said he was sorry for the inconvienence, and sent me on my way.
The next time I was home on leave I mentioned this incident. My Dad laughed and said they hadn’t changed. When he was in WWII, he and his unit came out of the field for some R n’ R. They were still dirty from battle. The first table they met was the Red Cross table. The GI’s went to the table to get some coffee and donuts. They were told they had to pay a dime. They looked over and there was a Salvation Army table not far away giving away coffee and donuts. Needless to say, the soldiers were less than impressed with the treatment they recieve from the Red Cross, told them so, and went to the Salvation Army table.
You only need to look back at one of the earthquakes in CA to see that the Red Cross is not all it is cracked up to be. I remember reading stories of people being made to pay back any money they recieved from Red Cross and Red Cross executives getting in trouble for misuse of funds.
I like the blood donating thing they do. My husband is O+, so they like his blood. Red Cross has even blown that. Canada doesn’t want them in their anymore, because they didn’t check the blood right and contaminated blood got through to the public.
I will not give to Red Cross. They are not the institution they are supposed to be. The Salvation Army and local non profit groups do more for disaster victims than the Red Cross. They should be dismantled and donations sent to groups who will use the donations for the people in need.
“We’re the Working-Class Red Cross“
This may be a bit of a digression from the discussion of the capacity and organization of large beaurocracies such as FEMA and the Red Cross– I think that is a good topic. And, I think that a dialog about the responsiveness of such agencies trips right into the discussion of the role of the military. Is the military underutilized currently? Is there some kind of threat from more immediate and more dramatic military response? What are the legal and operational impediments? Or, should the Red Cross and relief agencies cultivate more of a paramilitary organizational culture to streamline their response?
The nuance that I wanted to point out in regard to the way the discussion is framed above, is that the public safety element seems to be omitted. I think the extent to which public safety concerns were driving police/government decisions to keep aid agencies out of certain areas has not been investigated. In my opinion, those concerns are bona-fide, if civilian ‘rescuers’ and aid workers are likely to be in jeopardy in certain areas, that just hieghtens the problem. Conversely, if the N/O Police or government overestimated the threat that could be posed, well then that deserves full airing and consideration as well.
I don’t think the Red Cross is useless, but I think people should have more than a little skepticism when assured by that organization that their best course of action is to sit back and send money and it will all turn out OK.
In the aftermath of Katrina, I was struck by how much more meaningful it was to connect with individuals directly rather than through a faceless intermediary. A disaster a world away where there’s no cell phone service is another thing entirely, of course. Where direct contact is possible, I think the Red Cross would be most effective providing staging areas where first responders bring rescued folks, or where evacuees bring themselves, and where they then connect directly with family, friends, or interested well-wishers who can then help them from there.
I can’t decide who the trailer ghettoes are really helping.
I see this discussion is already in the graveyard, but hope to add a note of clarity here.
Understandably, many people confuse the International Committee of the Red Cross (aka ICRC, keywords: armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, prison visits), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (natural disaster preparedness and response, umbrella for the national societies) and national societies such as the American Red Cross. They are all part of the same movement, and are supposed to operate according to the same set of fundamental principles, but there are many differences between them, too.
They have an unusual branding problem: the Red Cross is one of the most instantly recognisable symbols in the world (which is handy on the battlefield), but criticism of the American Red Cross, say, or the Congolese Red Cross, for that matter, will tarnish other parts of the movement by association.
I am very proud to have worked (briefly) for the ICRC, and happen to think it’s a very special organisation indeed.
Apologies, the link for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is here.