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: Never In Our Names

I'm Depressed......

By Louisiana 1976

because of the

"Great Forgetting."

That's how commonscribe eloquently and originally described what has happened regarding Katrina and New Orleans.

The Great Forgetting can be seen in how BushCo has been successfully keeping Katrina and New Orleans on the back burner in the hope that nobody recalls how Bush was responsible for New Orleans' flooding. Or for letting New Orleans languish afterwards...

The Great Forgetting can be seen in how the mainstream media has been doing BushCo's bidding by keeping New Orleans out of the news...it can be seen in the way New Orleans and Katrina almost never come up in debates...it can be seen in the rejection by the Commission on Presidential Debates of New Orleans as a venue when Ole Miss made the cut...
The Great Forgetting has made me very upset. It can even be seen in the way NPR, in its Democratic debate Tuesday, did not ask about Katrina or New Orleans. And you know something's really wrong when an allegedly "liberal" news outlet doesn't even ask the candidates about New Orleans or Katrina when you'd think that they would. It makes you wonder if BushCo might have had somehow persuaded whoever came up with their questions not to bring up Katrina or New Orleans.

And no, Katrina is not "so two years ago." It makes me physically ill as well as very sad to hear people say things like that. Katrina will still matter 50 years from now--if not longer.

Katrina can be seen in anguished Louisiana children who've been suffering the same symptoms as war vets;

Katrina can be seen in their parents or caregivers, who, depressed or otherwise in poor health themselves, are in no shape to ease the pain of their agonized children;

Katrina can be seen in normally peaceful, law-abiding people who "snap" from the stresses and strain of what the storm did to them and coping with the hardships and frustrations afterwards;

Katrina can be seen in mental health workers doing the Lord's work, ministering to their troubled clients as they themselves are healing their own traumas;

Katrina can be seen in the persons who commit suicide--either by actively killing themselves or by just giving up on life, curling up and dying. What BushCo and their toadies in the MSM and Paul G. Kirk, Jr. and the rest on the Commission for Presidential Debates seem to want New Orleans to do so she remains forgotten forever;

Katrina can be seen in those now seriously ill from or dying from illnesses which, had they been caught sooner, could have been treatable or even curable--due to New Orleans' severe shortage of medical care;

Katrina can be seen in the many who are still living in cramped, crowded FEMA trailers--when FEMA ironically is not letting its own workers go near stored trailers because of danger--yet has delayed testing trailers in which people are still living, for formaldehyde;

Katrina can be seen in those who have developed cancer or other serious ills from living in those FEMA trailers;

Katrina can be seen in the diaspora--New Orleanians disenfranchised, homesick for Louisiana yet being forced to live in the far-off places to which Katrina had made them evacuate--not being able to afford to return due to the lack of affordable housing;

Katrina can be seen in New Orleans' many homeless, unable to find affordable rental housing. And in the fact that because BushCo won't help, New Orleans needs at least a thousand Brad Pitts to build homes for the homeless already there and for evacuees wanting to return.

Katrina can be seen in the children, now orphaned or who've lost either parent--who are now experiencing sad lives without this parent or parents. Would that Brian Williams would air a sensitive caring report on children of the storm who are now facing a third Christmas without mother, father or both--the way he did last night on children who've had a parent or parents die in the war in Iraq. But for Williams--who aired last night his 66th newscast without a report out of New Orleans--Katrina is so 2 years ago.

The Great Forgetting cannot be allowed to prevail. We must do what we can to call attention to New Orleans and how all the above problems--and more--prevail there. We must see that New Orleans and Katrina start being treated as valid campaign issues--and not be forgotten or otherwise lost in the shuffle. New Orleans has been the "canary in the coal mine." We must see that New Orleans gets the attention she should be getting from the MSM. And we must continue in our drive to get a debate for New Orleans. For only at a New Orleans debate will these issues be talked about--they'll be ignored at a debate held elsewhere. Because not only do these problems and issues affect real people in New Orleans--they could eventually affect people elsewhere in the country--even without any major disasters' taking place--the way things have been going. Never forget Katrina and New Orleans.

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on December 07, 2007 (boomark / email).