©2010 Chicago Tribune/Alex Garcia
A staff employee at a Chicago Christian Industrial League shelter, left, says goodbye to a Haitian evacuee before a CTA bus transports about 25 Haitian evacuees to the airport for a flight to New York after an overnight stay at the shelter. The evacuees all had dual citizenship. So many thoughts running through my mind about this. I was happy for everyone who were still alive and made it to the States, where most of them live. I was sad too for all that they had gone through, many of them losing family members under tragic conditions that shocked the senses. I was, honestly, a wee frustrated that we did not send a reporting team to the biggest humanitarian disaster in our hemisphere, given the marshalling of resources by other corporations throughout the city. I am afraid that Haiti will drop off the radar of news pages everywhere, even as there are still bodies in the streets. Coming back to the photo, I am encouraged by the connections perfect strangers can make who are of racial, generational, and geographic differences. Sometimes it takes just a simple and honest click of personalities, as it did here, to remind me that we are not very far apart from each other as human beings.