Although I want to shut it off and fall asleep on my keyboard, Rebirth Brass Band’s upbeat “Four Leaf Clover” is playing in the background. I am exhausted from this week, but it’s time to gear up for this weekend’s Rising Tide conference. Go over to VirgoTex‘s and read why what happened here three years ago still is a “Now! Now! Now!” wake-up call for America. Virgo is an American outside of New Orleans who gets it. That it’s never too late to turn our faces back towards the problems of this nation and face them head on, do the needful and become a superpower again, in the truest sense of the word. That it’s never too late to save ourselves. That it’s never too late to be real Americans.
… To most people going about their lives, sitting in front of their televisions, worrying about their own stuff, the disaster was over after a few weeks, when the water finally went down, when the news cameras left. In New Orleans, Katrina is still right now. Even after the changes that three years have brought, right now is a disaster. Entire communities disappeared. Families torn apart, spread all over the country. Schools, housing, crime, corruption, failure of government. The levees. The f-ing levees, inadequate before, being rebuilt at great cost, still inadequate.
There is much to do now, and when tomorrow and next month, and next year are now, in New Orleans there will still be much to do, and there will still be people in New Orleans doing it. Mostly all by themselves.
