It might be called a "race" issue, but it is a "class" issue. I want you all to think - back to the days where you had no car and no money. It is the 29th of the month and your paycheck is due tomorrow or the next day. You are living paycheck to paycheck - you only have $5.00 left until you get paid. That is OK - because you are going to take your paycheck and buy enough groceries (even rice and potatoes) to last you until you get paid again. You only have enough money to survive.

The mayor says you have to evacuate the city - you have no car, no money for the bus (you only have $5.00 left) and you cannot afford to go somewhere. You don't have credit cards to pay for a hotel, you don't have enough money to pay for any housing at all. You don't even have enough money to pay for one more meal. So what do you do - you stay in your home hoping that that 10 pound bag of potatoes will last. You fill your bathtub full of water and hope for the best. You don't realise that that bathtub will fill with contaminated water and your housing development will have no walls within a day.

New Orleans has some of the poorest people in the United States. They have no means of support AT ALL!!!! You have to understand that some of these people are decendents from sharecroppers and are still living in the most sqallid of conditions. Some of the people in the bayou don't even have running water or electricity and are totally living off what they can farm or fish for.

I grew up in New Orleans and saw this every day. These are not people who live in the city - these are people who live in the bayou 50 miles outside the city and depend on the land to survive on a daily basis. The land is flooded - you can't fish or hunt anymore, your shack is gone - you have no roof anymore, your vegetable crop is 6 feet underwater. These people have no phones, no televisions, no means of communication. They probably only knew what was happening by word of mouth, and by then it was too late.

This is not California where mudslides take a $2 million dollar home - this is Louisiana where the hurricane has take your $200 shack.

Did the mayor do everything right - NO. He should have sent buses into the poorer neighborhoods and tried harder to get them out. But I do think that if we can respond to the Tsunami in 2 days and we don't respond to Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama for 5 days - there is a problem.

Think about it.

Think about it.