Katrina survivors rebuke Bush

new orleans after the storm 180, originally uploaded by "SIR: Poseyal.

George Bush is touring New Orleans again. While the public schools of New Orleans rot, he's decided to include a charter school on his agenda.
Scout Prime and Humid City are spreading the word about the ceremony of rebuke planned for 2pm this afternoon:

JOIN THE KATRINA SURVIVORS' REBUKE OF PRESIDENT BUSH
2:00 PM  THURSDAY MARCH 1
SAMUEL GREEN SCHOOL
2319 VALENCE ST.
(Near Freret and Napoleon)

NEW ORLEANS

New Orleans Needs Federal Aid, Not Presidential Photo-Ops.

Mr. President: Katrina Survivors Do Not Welcome You, We Rebuke You!

We live in a devastated city and you are a big part of  the reason why it sill sits in ruins.  Your administration has abandoned our children by savaging their public schools.  Your administration has
tortured our working class people by refusing to reopen the city's
public housing developments.  And your administration is fully
complicit in placing our uninsured in harms way by ruthlessly
pursuing the privatization of local public healthcare in the
aftermath of Katrina.  And, finally your administration is guilty of
sending our sons and daughters of to war for oil and empire just when
we need them most to help us rebuild our community.

Mr. President, we, Katrina Survivors all, do not welcome you to our
city, we rebuke you!

Sponsored by Survivors Village, United Front For Affordable Housing. (504) 587-0080

I hope the president doesn't manage to slip away again. About the only thing he's good at is dodging protesters.

Comments

[norbizness]

Maybe some whiteness vouchers will get them to the top of the Administration's agenda. Free market solutions, people!

Hey, I'm not Kanye West, so it's all good.

[Fitz]

I attended my undergrad down in New Orleans. My heart weeps for that (once?) so great & unique of American cities.

Its fair to point out… while down there, (years before this ever occurred) all the elite circles I traveled in had pointed out to me how the eventuality (of a Hurricane Katrina) was a forgone conclusion. They remarked how the city was simply living on borrowed time. How the levee system could never stand up to “the big one”. How the city government and citizenry had lived through so many “close –calls” that when the “big –one” hit they would never be adequately prepared. (And how inept & corrupt local government was not up to the task of preparing)

Other remarks I recall included the statement – “a knowledgeable camper wouldent pitch a tent here”, “we’ve built a city.”

[Robert O'Brien]

Why anyone would choose to remain in that glorified shanty town is beyond me. How many times does Vesuvius have to erupt before you abandon Pompeii for Ostia?

[cf4]

About the only thing he's good at is dodging protesters.

That is completely unfair. He's good at dodging draft boards, too.

[Left_Wing_Fox]

They couldn't leave when they actually had something. What the hell makes you think all these people have the resources to pack up and leave now that they have even LESS?

[Maitri]

Robert O'Brien and Left Wing Fox, obviously you BOTH don't know New Orleans very well and simply like to make unqualified comments from the hip. Robert, ask the same question to people living anywhere on the American Pacific rim. LWF, those who didn't have the resources to leave were forcibly evacuated and may or may not come back. Most of us have the resources to stay and fight, just remember that it is a choice. But, you are right in that some (very few) who wish to leave cannot because a) they just don't have the energy left to start from scratch elsewhere and b) times are hard in the blue-collar, service-sector industry.

[Fitz]

The depth of the poverty I experienced in Louisiana was/is some of the worst I have seen In America. I simply have never encountered this level of material deprivation in the North.

There is some worth in noting that bluer horizons lay elsewhere. I am not such a person: the attachment to place and home and history should not be dismissed. It has real value.

My point was that the Cities elites knew beforehand exactly how the “Big One” would go down. Every aspect of what happened was understood well ahead of time. It is patently unfair to blame ANY federal administrator for what was so obviously going to happen one day.