Here at the Democratic National Convention, there's action far afield from the Pepsi Center, including a number of vital panel discussions hosted at The Big Tent, where issues that may get underplayed on the convention floor take center stage. One such topic is the recovery efforts in the Gulf Coast region, three years and counting after Hurricane Katrina devastated the area.
James Rucker, the man behind Color of Change, led an insightful exchange with Scott Myers-Lipton of the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project, Jonah Goldman of the National Campaign for Fair Elections, and Stephen Bradberry of Louisiana ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). Titled "Left Behind," the panel used Katrina as a jumping-off point to dig into another poignant topic for people of color -- voting rights and fears of voter suppression.
On both scores, the panel found Democratic leadership sadly wanting. Goldman expressed his frustration at the uphill climb voting rights activists have faced. Insisting that the solutions are easy to implement, he bemoaned the lack of priority, the scarcity of issue infrastructure, and the inability to truly deal toughly with those who would undermine voting rights through dirty tricks. Myers-Lipton, whose Gulf Coast Civic Works Project is styled on the New Deal-era WPA, criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for not putting her weight behind H.R. 4048, the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act. He drew a comparison to the quickly-passed economic stimulus package.
To bypass the roadblocks, the panel put forward many suggestions, ranging from embracing emerging technology and depoliticizing the process, so that a mainstream need doesn't get crushed in the left-versus-right debate. Bradberry noted that concerned progressives need to do a lot more writing, saying, "The Right does a lot of paper...we end up having so little to say while [they] produce a vast amount of material."
But one thing everyone agreed upon is that the news media needs to be prodded to air these concerns. Bradberry pointed out the nagging tendency of the network and cable news to depict a national problem, such as the failed response to Katrina, as a local concern. He also made sure to note that the lack of awareness of positive developments in the Gulf can have a deleterious effect on public support. One story that is getting lost, he said, is that the residents of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, are hard at work rebuilding their communities, a fact that helps defeat the notion that NOLA has become a de facto welfare state. "If my aunts and uncles in Chicago could see" the work being done by the community itself, he said, "they would have a different opinion on the matter." Spring-breaking college volunteers, he lamented, tended to look "sexier."