A Moment of Silence

For the 1,836 Americans who lost their lives in the man-made disaster that unfolded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. And the hundreds of thousands of other who died, were left homeless, and otherwise distressed along the Gulf Coast.

That we have moved so pitifully in reconstruction and relief efforts in the year since the storm is revolting. Yesterday The Yes Men had to shame the nation by pulling a stunt that highlighted just how damaged our government really is, if this is thought of as "obscene":

A prankster posing as a federal housing official took centre stage at a New Orleans event with the city mayor and the governor of Louisiana, controversially promising to throw open closed public housing to thousands of poor former city residents.

The stunt, which the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development called a "cruel hoax," was the latest by an activist group known as "The Yes Men" who have previously masqueraded as World Trade Organisation officials announcing they were disbanding the body.

Activist Andy Bichlbaum, pretending to be HUD "Assistant Deputy Secretary Rene Oswin," told hundreds of businesspeople at a forum the agency would reverse policy and reopen housing units now targeted for replacement by mixed-income development.

He promised to "fix New Orleans, not just for the benefit of a few but for everyone."

[...]

A fake release from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson announced the purported change.

"Today, it is my great pleasure to announce to you that HUD is reversing our policy. From now on, and beginning at all Orleans parish housing communities, our policy will no longer be to destroy much-needed housing, but to do all in our power to make it work," said the statement.

Later, the group provided barbecued chicken and ribs to contractors at an open public housing development while a brass band belted out New Orleans jazz.

One contractor lured to the event told Bichlbaum he thought the buildings could be fixed for less than half the cost of new construction. "The main thing is to get in here and get it done," said Jeff Perryman of B3 Construction.

Mike Bonanno, the second "Yes Man," told Reuters the hoax was a bittersweet achievement. "It's helped us to become the people we wish we could be to correct the problems," he said.

It's considered a sick joke to offer New Orleanians a ray of hope and a means to rebuild their shattered lives. That's how up-is-down we've gotten in this country.

As the President brings his travelling road show to the region this week, to try and, in the words of Frank Rich, "make us forget the first anniversary of the downfall of his presidency," we really should collectively be reminded of the fact that there's still a lot of suffering down there, a lot of people who need help. It's an open question whether or not this Administration, which focuses entirely on politics in virtually every other aspect, even WANTS to provide help there:

Douglas Brinkley, the Tulane University historian who wrote the best-selling account of Katrina, “The Great Deluge,” is worried that even now the White House is escaping questioning about what it is up to (and not) in the Gulf. “I don’t think anybody’s getting the Bush strategy,” he said when we talked last week. “The crucial point is that the inaction is deliberate — the inaction is the action.” As he sees it, the administration, tacitly abetted by New Orleans’s opportunistic mayor, Ray Nagin, is encouraging selective inertia, whether in the rebuilding of the levees (“Only Band-Aids have been put on them”), the rebuilding of the Lower Ninth Ward or the restoration of the wetlands. The destination: a smaller city, with a large portion of its former black population permanently dispersed. “Out of the Katrina debacle, Bush is making political gains,” Mr. Brinkley says incredulously. “The last blue state in the Old South is turning into a red state.”

We can band together as Americans always do in times of trouble. The donations by schoolchildren to the Gulf Coast region have outpaced the donations by all but 10 American corporations. We the people are all that's left to get this done, just like we the people are the last hope to vote out the corprocrats and get some sanity into our government. This is a very nice thing MoveOn is doing to raise continuous awareness of the struggle in the region, and to get some much-needed funds down there. Most Katrina survivors have not seen a check cut for their housing. They're being fought tooth and nail by the insurance industry. But HurricaneHousing.org placed 30,000 survivors into a place to live in a matter of days.

They wrote a book about it, It Takes a Nation, and a $20 donation to ongoing relief efforts will net you it. I plan to give. Do you?

UPDATE: Think Progress has a very helpful factual timeline of the events of Katrina that could put some of the spin to rest.