The Friday night NBC evening news led with New Orleans, and showed President Bush, showed him saying that New Orleans would be a great place to have a convention, or as Markus pointed out in The Wetbank Guide, a "heckuva place to bring your family." No matter what your political affiliation is, no matter where your opinions lie as to what kind of president he's been, his obvious confusion, his complete lack of grasp of what is going on in New Orleans was just plain hard to witness. Still, I'm glad he went, even if he only saw the good parts, because his attention can keep New Orleans top of mind, top of the newscasts, not forgotten, and they need all the help they can get right now. Unfortunately, unless I somehow missed it, last night, NBC did not show the Catholic school students, protesting peacefully in their school uniforms, wearing waders and goggles and life vests, carrying signs that read, "Category 5 Levees - Coastal Restoration Now!" (Editor B)
There are a few things that must be taken care of in New Orleans, sooner rather than later, by whomever will step forward and lead and see that this is done. Stabilize the levees immediately for the short term, and begin the process of working toward Category 5 levees. Simultaneously, add hospital beds and emergency services and a trauma center. Now. There are children and young people going to school there, who have moved home with their parents going back to work or gone themselves back to college, determined people and communities who deserve reasonable safety, people and businesses who had to go ahead and get on with the work of living and couldn't wait for the divided leaders and their various groups to complete the competition of complicated strategies. They went home or back to school, and, putting one foot in front of the other, doing one little seemingly insignificant thing at a time, they started working, and they deserve the rest of the country's attention. They deserve a moderately safe environment. All the commissions are talking about what to do next. The good citizens of New Orleans just did it.
On his Nameless Blog Tim asked us all to write on behalf of coastal restoration and adequate levees. What else are we to do? I don't hear any hue and cry that the city be permanently and officially abandoned. I have not heard one single person suggest that Tulane, Loyola, Xavier, Dillard or the University of New Orleans (or Benjamin Franklin, Evangeline, or de la Salle) should shut down because conditions in the city are not safe for students. I have to think that, as a nation, if we're going to allow schools, any schools, to reopen and students to return, whether with the blessing of or in the care of their parents, then we have an obligation to make this city safe for those students, starting today and for the future.
In January 2006, schools for every age student all over New Orleans are reopening, and it seems to me that they are the ones leading right now, filling the void of indecision created by those who were elected to lead. Every elementary school teacher setting up her classroom, every parent volunteer, every university faculty or administrator, every member of support staff, every student that has been a part of getting a school up and running in New Orleans this January, is stepping up to the plate and leading, and if they're allowed to do this, every one of them and all of their families deserve levee protection now.
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