It's two years after Hurricane Katrina and the thousands of New Orleanians and other Gulf Coast residents are still displaced.
I just came across this video and story on Alternet about the anniversary. So while you are listening to all of the media spin today, remember that there are still Americans that we should be working hard to help. In the mean time, sign the petition to support the Gulf Coast Recovery Bill.
UPDATE: If you are in/around NOLA today, consider joining in the national day of action. 8/29, A Day of Presence will take place today from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Ernest N. Morial Conventional Center.
4 comments:
And I should note - today it was leaked that Bush is seeking an additional $50 billion for the war. Sick, sick, sick.
Great post, Magda.
Think Progress had this to say on the anniversary: Two years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, “none of the 115 ‘critical priority projects’ identified by city officials” for publicly funded rebuilding efforts “has been completed.” Of the $34 billion “earmarked for long-term rebuilding,” less than half “has made its way through federal checks and balances to reach municipal projects.”
It is absolutely despicable how our government has turned its back on the Gulf Coast region and, instead, has focused its money and attention halfway across the globe to a region that we should never have entered and occupied in the first place.
I'm just glad that there are still people, regular citizens, who continue to aid the Gulf Coast and will until the redevelopment is complete. I am speaking of people like Brad Pitt and the rest of Global Green USA (www.globalgreen.org) who are working toward rebuilding New Orleans in a sustainable, eco-friendly way. I'm also talking about non-celebrities, such as my co-worker, who, for his summer vacations last year and this year, went down to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region with Habitat for Humanity to help rebuild that region which the government continues to ignore.
If it wasn't so sad and infuriating, the news that Bush will be visiting the Katrina-destroyed area would be hilarious. He has done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to help the region for TWO YEARS, and now he's going to go down there, make a little speech about hope and the promise of a new day, yada yada yada, and then get back on AirForce 1 and forget all about it all over again. Nothing will change. It is up to the rest of us to take it upon ourselves to make this nation that which we want it to be.
Coincidentally, yesterday was the 44th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream Speech." I just re-read the speech on www.americanrhetoric.com. It is still the most powerful speech I have ever read or heard. I urge you all to go back and re-read (or read for the first time) this treasure of American history. It is still very appropos of the times in which we live.
MLK's speech will always be appropriate, because, unfortunately, it may always be a dream. Race, like class, has been used by those who hope to maintain status quo entropy, and in doing so, maintain their control over the polpulace. It is tragically typified in microcosm in New Orleans, where man-made disinterest in a poor and primarily black city was left to suffer and drown, and then used as an exploitative workshop when funds started to seep in.
I have always wondered what would have happened had this hurricane, this flooding, this disaster, been in San francisco, Washington, or thinking further outside the box, in a city like London.
I also have a dream, like the Reverend King. It is for a day when those who have been put to sleep by their present and arduaous realities will awaken, organize, and revolt.
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