An Open Letter to President Barack Obama and the US Congress:
As of tonight, a surge in troops and funding is being proposed to secure Afghanistan. A surge in New Orleans funding and security troops is equally needed. We do not expect your commitment to be open-ended, but please make it long term this time. The city is ready for fewer acts of brazen terror, and increasing safety in daily life will give us the breathing room we need to make progress in other areas such as health care, education, clean soil and life-saving infrastructure. You are invited to impose security. Strategy, slogans, a new direction, we'll take it all. You are now marching toward escalation; please escalate at home to reassure a crime-weary New Orleans.
We will forgive you for the violence overrunning our city for the past four years if the problem is addressed now. We're a very forgiving people. We re-elected William Jefferson. With the new Surge, ordinary New Orleans citizens can see visible improvements in their neighborhoods. Benchmarks could include security, a robust economy and shared oil revenues for residents. Empower more local activist leaders to enter political life. There's a crucial Mayoral election approaching in a matter of months. Expand infrastructure reconstruction teams to speed the transition to self-reliance, and let our citizens move back from Houston, Portland, points across the globe to help rebuild the city they love.
A judgment is now in place giving those who lost personal property and even loved ones to the gulf oil tanker canal justice at last. The oil canal-based salt water intrusion attack on our wetlands must be disrupted. Interrupt the flow of water into our city and seek out and destroy the networks allowing pollution to eat our coast with the momentum of two football field sized chunks of land an hour. Picture the Superdome football field disappearing in half an hour. That's happening right now in the wetlands.
Send a Surge in for our yellowcake. Red velvet cake, king cake; any cake. Many of us now live where you can't even get a king cake. Dye our fingers purple and we'll keep them that way all the way through Mardi Gras. There's your benchmark and your photo op. Work with the government of Gretna to help resolve problems along the border. In any future disasters inter-city borders must be open for evacuees fleeing a flooded city instead of being turned back again at gunpoint. Work with states like California and New York for a national compact of educational assistance. The loss of New Orleans cultural and culinary contributions would greatly affect all of these areas.
This is the decisive American struggle of our time. In fact instead of Colin Powell's Gulf War 'You Broke it You Bought It,' rationale, given the Louisiana Purchase you both bought it and broke it. The most realistic way to protect us is to provide a hopeful alternative. Millions of ordinary people citizens want peace and opportunity for their children. A rebuilt Central City will fight criminals instead of harboring them. Embed a Surge brigade with every New Orleans police patrol. Build a larger and better equipped police force.
Many American citizens think New Orleans is too dependent on United States funding, but to step back now would result in destruction on an unimaginable scale. Increase your support at this crucial moment and help us break the cycle of gang civil war. Then stay and help make Central City less like Lord of the Flies and more like a disaster zone under reconstruction. Our juvenile prison was shut down after a history of extreme brutality. Our only juvenile hospital is in danger of being closed by the state. We are in danger of losing an entire generation. This from a city where a child imprisoned for shooting a gun into the air on New Year's Eve was given a horn, and with that horn Louis Armstrong changed the world. A few thousand more soldiers in an Afghanistan quagmire may not make a difference. Ask Russia. A few thousand security forces in Central City could make all the difference in the world.
The United States has already mobilized talented civilians; selfless men and women are deploying to gut homes at Common Ground, MercyCorps, Habitat for Humanity, The St. Bernard Project and Americorps. It is noble and necessary. We mourn the loss of every fallen New Orleans hero like Helen Hill and Dinerral Shavers, and owe it to them to build a future worthy of their sacrifice. So please invest your political and literal capital to make this the point at which you support the full reconstruction of New Orleans. Because there are only so many celebrities around to help, God love them. A broad coalition of nations has sent funding, tourist dollars and heartfelt support to the best of their ability. Match their efforts. These are times that reveal the character of a nation. The ground truth of what is happening in New Orleans is not a clean victory, and it is a long process. Our Recovery Czar Ed Blakely just quit. It's a long story.
From the Map Room I ask that you tell the nation why a strategy change in New Orleans is needed. The results did not come through in the last administration, and it is time to readdress the situation with benchmarks like schools, hospitals, quality of life, a comprehensive shared list of where more than 100,000 evacuees now live and what is needed to bring them home at long last. Failure to support New Orleans would be a disaster. Gangs could gain new recruits and create chaos in the region, which would spread throughout the United States. We did not ask for our city to be pulled into the scourge of narcotics pouring into the port, complete with assault weapons in the hands of children. We did not ask for the Federal levee collapse. And we did not ask for oil canals cutting through our natural barricades, their saltwater intrusion turning inland areas into oceanfront property.
Give New Orleans a surge so that long after the guns have fallen silent, the great potential of our people can be unleashed.
Follow Karen Dalton-Beninato on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kbeninato
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/18/judge-hurricane-katrina-f_n_363218.html).
I suggest the Flood Control Act of 1965, which handed all authority for New Orleans flood protection to the United States Amry Corps of Engineers. Google "Flood Control Act of 1965."
I also suggest the Independent Levee Investigation Team report which details all the many foolish blunders committed by the Corps which caused teh flooding of August 29, 2005. Google "ILIT Berkeley."
The local government lacks the power to alter this situation.
I happened to be there at the time of the rebuilding, and recall seeing the forest of cranes rising above the city. I could not believe that there was that much "development" in an area of the country that had more ox-drawn carts than cars. It was not development - it was reconstruction. It was, in its own way, inspiring. I would take a federal tax increase in a heartbeat to help make the total embarrassment of our response to Katrina at least begin to go away. The deaths in the aftermath broke my heart. The response has pained me ever since. This is MY country - I would never have believed we could treat an entire region that way.
At least before it happened.
Their souls haunt me. Reparations? No, justice for them and for all of you.
If New Orleans had not stewed in chemically polluted water for months after a man made levee failure, and if it did not move most of the country's oil and seafood resources through its port, we would have been forgotten too. I feel that if we are securing Afghanistan, we need to secure New Orleans as well.
I wish you all the best in your rebuilding.