Katrina, Forgetting, and The Congressional Black Caucus

African American Opinion discusses - as part of a multi-part series - how forgotten post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans feels both by the president (wasn't exactly one of his top 50 subjects in his State of the Union (SoTU) address Wednesday night) and the rest of the U.S.

I know what AAO writes is true, because I "see" this lack of care or interest elsewhere yet personally, I don't think a day goes by for me when I fail to think about New Orleans and how badly the system - and America in general - failed for these people. To have had something like the NOLA disaster occur in 2005 is not only unconscionable and tragic, but outright obscene. Natural disasters will always kill and injure too many, but so much of the true horror of Katrina could and should have been mitigated by a much better federal response when we saw anything BUT a good response.

But let's put aside another incredibly horrific response by the Bush Administration (from which we have such a repository to choose); why are we letting New Orleans be redeveloped only as a rich man's paradise when the heart and soul of New Orleans was and remains largely non-white and non-affluent? Name almost anything people love, love, love about New Orleans and it almost invariably comes back to a richly mixed culture of blacks and Native Americans and French and other immigrants, etcetera, etcetera. From music to cuisine, to the nature of the Mardi Gras and French Quarter, to the voodoo and hoodoo shops right through to some of the best, yet most modest-looking restaurants in America, we won't return the NOLA we knew if we replace all of its natives with designer yuppies.

African American Opinion also discusses the story I posted yesterday about how that Congressional fool (OK, there are hundreds of them) Tancredo wants to abolish the Congressional Black Caucus (while I'm sure he's very much eager to retain some of the other specialty caucuses for right-wing Christians, etc.).

Check AAO out. Since I found them, I've become a regular.