Levees Not War

‘Barack Obama has been running away from New Orleans for his entire campaign.’ —Naomi Wolf

Palin and McCain at Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, Jackson, Aug. 31.

Is this true? In all our excitement about Barack Obama (and lately the convention and Gustav), for some reason it hadn’t occurred to us to ask: Why doesn’t he come to New Orleans? Why doesn’t he talk about us more, and make New Orleans at least one example of the nation’s desperate need for change and hope and some expert community organizing?

In a powerful article in The Nation (9/22), Naomi Klein points out that “The City That Won’t Be Ignored” is being neglected by Obama—who blew it when he let McCain and Palin fly down to Mississippi to show their concern while he stayed away. Maybe McCain’s act was lame, but at least he came. Gustav didn’t inconvenience the Grand Old Party so badly after all. Maybe McCain’s visit was only setting the stage to demand new offshore drilling, as Bush did the very day after the storm, while more than half a million were without electricity and New Orleanians weren’t yet allowed to return home. Great: Republicans got credit for caring about storm victims.

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