What happens to a race deferred

[Guest guest]

We must maintain our balance in these times. The

citizens of the country MUST take control of our own destiny! We must

demand that the properties in New Orleans remain in the ownership of

the people who owned them. What happens in these situations, is that,

there is a land grab by the' all ready rich' and powerful, bottom

feeders, Peria, that swoop in and take advantage of the poor and

broken. We as a nation must not let this happen! There will be many

without insurance, despondent, elderly without the will to re-build.

This is the tragedy untold. The land brokers that wait like vultures

in the shadows, to pick on the dead and desperate. We can show the

world that we will not let this happen. Also, we can, make it possible

for those who have never owned their own homes to do so!

 

In WWII, when the Japanese families were sent to camps from a little

place in the Northwest of the United States, had white neighbors who

held property for them in trust via quick claim deeds, until their

return. Let us, now, step forward and hold that hand of friendship and

neighborly respect and integrity for those on the brink. We must

insist that relatives be sought out for on behalf of an elder who may

have past on during this horrific tragedy. Let us not, let our

brothers and sisters lose their property. Let this be, an opportunity

to give back to a people we have kicked down science slavery. Take

them into our homes and give them shelter. Fight for them and their

right to a better life. It is time to make something that has been a

cancer in our hearts, a loving amends. Offer an olive branch of peace

and healing. Lets take back our nation and make it a place of peace

and prosperity, for All! It can be done, if we see in a different

alternative course. Re-build a human bridge of compassion. First we

must admit in our hearts, that we have been complacent to the bigotry

and hatred that so many of us have been sheltered from by being born

white in America.

 

This is not just a republican thrashing. Remember the HUD mess??

Taking advantage of Black and poor American citizens was a

profiteering bonanza on both political sides.

 

I haven't even talked about the military implications of what is

happening. You think it was a mistake, poor planning, that they

didn't respond? No, this is a deliberate and diabolical means to push

forward laws that would give more control to the military and the

powerful. Think about what has been happening so far! Camps being

built. Railways being forced to take more and more government

funding. Corporate back door deals. Our food supply in the grip of

corporate monsters. Who's in the wings? Who's buying stock? Who's

buying this failed and desperately needed infrastructure? Watch the

money change hands...It's always the money changers! They will make it

look like " WE " want it! Don't let this happen! Revolution can be as

simple as saying 'YES' I want to 'Look' at what change could be like.

Simple step. What would our country be if everyone was included and

not deferred.

 

***

 

Op-Ed Columnist

Falluja Floods the Superdome

 

 

By FRANK RICH

Published: September 4, 2005

 

AS the levees cracked open and ushered hell into New Orleans on

Tuesday, President Bush once again chose to fly away from Washington,

not toward it, while disaster struck. We can all enumerate the many

differences between a natural catastrophe and a terrorist attack. But

character doesn't change: it is immutable, and it is destiny.

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As always, the president's first priority, the one that sped him from

Crawford toward California, was saving himself: he had to combat the

flood of record-low poll numbers that was as uncontrollable as the

surging of Lake Pontchartrain. It was time, therefore, for another

disingenuous pep talk, in which he would exploit the cataclysm that

defined his first term, 9/11, even at the price of failing to

recognize the emerging fiasco likely to engulf Term 2.

 

After dispatching Katrina with a few sentences of sanctimonious

boilerplate ( " our hearts and prayers are with our fellow citizens " ),

he turned to his more important task. The war in Iraq is World War II.

George W. Bush is F.D.R. And anyone who refuses to stay his course is

soft on terrorism and guilty of a pre-9/11 " mind-set of isolation and

retreat. " Yet even as Mr. Bush promised " victory " (a word used nine

times in this speech on Tuesday), he was standing at the totemic scene

of his failure. It was along this same San Diego coastline that he

declared " Mission Accomplished " in Iraq on the aircraft carrier

Abraham Lincoln more than two years ago. For this return engagement,

The Washington Post reported, the president's stage managers made sure

he was positioned so that another hulking aircraft carrier nearby

would stay off-camera, lest anyone be reminded of that premature end

of " major combat operations. "

 

This administration would like us to forget a lot, starting with the

simple fact that next Sunday is the fourth anniversary of the day we

were attacked by Al Qaeda, not Iraq. Even before Katrina took command

of the news, Sept. 11, 2005, was destined to be a half-forgotten

occasion, distorted and sullied by a grotesquely inappropriate

Pentagon-sponsored country music jamboree on the Mall. But hard as it

is to reflect upon so much sorrow at once, we cannot allow ourselves

to forget the real history surrounding 9/11; it is the Rosetta stone

for what is happening now. If we are to pull ourselves out of the

disasters of Katrina and Iraq alike, we must live in the real world,

not the fantasyland of the administration's faith-based propaganda.

Everything connects.

 

Though history is supposed to occur first as tragedy, then as farce,

even at this early stage we can see that tragedy is being repeated

once more as tragedy. From the president's administration's

inattention to threats before 9/11 to his disappearing act on the day

itself to the reckless blundering in the ill-planned war of choice

that was 9/11's bastard offspring, Katrina is déjà vu with a vengeance.

 

The president's declaration that " I don't think anyone anticipated the

breach of the levees " has instantly achieved the notoriety of

Condoleezza Rice's " I don't think anybody could have predicted that

these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade

Center. " The administration's complete obliviousness to the

possibilities for energy failures, food and water deprivation, and

civil disorder in a major city under siege needs only the Donald

Rumsfeld punch line of " Stuff happens " for a coup de grâce. How about

shared sacrifice, so that this time we might get the job done right?

After Mr. Bush's visit on " Good Morning America " on Thursday, Diane

Sawyer reported on a postinterview conversation in which he said,

" There won't have to be tax increases. "

 

But on a second go-round, even the right isn't so easily fooled by

this drill (with the reliable exception of Peggy Noonan, who found

much reassurance in Mr. Bush's initial autopilot statement about the

hurricane, with its laundry list of tarps and blankets). This time the

fecklessness and deceit were all too familiar. They couldn't be

obliterated by a bullhorn or by the inspiring initial post-9/11

national unity that bolstered the president until he betrayed it. This

time the heartlessness beneath the surface of his actions was more

pronounced.

 

You could almost see Mr. Bush's political base starting to crumble at

its very epicenter, Fox News, by Thursday night. Even there it was

impossible to ignore that the administration was no more successful at

securing New Orleans than it had been at pacifying Falluja.

 

A visibly exasperated Shepard Smith, covering the story on the ground

in Louisiana, went further still, tossing hand grenades of harsh

reality into Bill O'Reilly's usually spin-shellacked " No Spin Zone. "

Among other hard facts, Mr. Smith noted " that the haves of this city,

the movers and shakers of this city, evacuated the city either

immediately before or immediately after the storm. " What he didn't

have to say, since it was visible to the entire world, was that it was

the poor who were left behind to drown.

 

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