I am so pissed.

At 8am this morning, I woke up and headed to a local furniture store here in Houston to [what I thot was] help out collecting and distributing food and supplies to Katrina victims. Much to my dismay, it didn't go as planned.

Dispite having a sprained ankle, I worked outside for two hours bagging and loading supplies into trucks. Where were they taking all these supplies? To the George R Brown Convention center? Why? I thought we could help more people by keeping the supplies there for people that are bussed in or walk-ups.

After two hours, I ask to be assigned inside b/c by that time, my ankle was swollen. Plus, with everything bagged and loaded, many volunteers were just standing around with nothing to do. So they sent me inside to answer the phones. Five minutes later, I was told not to touch the phones b/c the furniture store was officially open and they didn't want us to answer "business" calls.

We started putting together packets for the victims, which included a list of shelters that were open in the local area. I asked one of the ladies in charge if I could start calling the shelters and updating their status b/c I figured we didn't want to give out-dated info to the victims. She said ok. Five minutes later, I was told to stop calling shelters b/c they didn't want it to seem like we were overshadowing our Congreeman's efforts [he was the one that put together the list of shelters].

Was this an attempt to help the victims or a ploy to win votes?

I'm confused.

I left.