Tennessean
by Tim Chavez

09/05/05

"The lesson from New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina is clear and frightening: Mother Nature can create a disaster, but it is man who makes a catastrophe. The scenes of devastating destruction and flooding by Katrina pale against the suffering caused by policymakers and leaders who failed to adequately plan for the inevitable and then decided to initially write off a whole group of people when the going got tough. Again, it was the poor and mostly African-Americans who endured the misery and indignity. Most could not evacuate because of a lack of transportation or an elderly loved one who could not be moved or would not go. It would be easy to attach the nation's long history of racism to this outrage, but New Orleans has an African-American mayor...

http://tinyurl.com/d3jnx


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp