Since we started the Clearinghouse, Emily and I have made a commitment to sticking to what we are doing here, focusing on getting help to those who lost so much in the hurricanes and staying away from the politics of the situation. Having just returned from New Orleans I can’t stay quiet anymore. What is happening in that city is so very, desperately wrong.
Guided by Reverend Marlon Yarbrough, a native of New Orleans, as well as a minister and practicing lawyer, we toured the most devastated areas of that city, mainly the 9th Ward.
Six months later, not much, if anything, has been done, let alone cleaned up or rebuilt. The housing aid is locked up in the legislative process and families are struggling, through their own initiative alone, to put their lives back together. Our government has failed thousands of people. Americans are being treated like they don’t matter, that their lives and routines and culture and neighborhood don’t matter.Yesterday I had an interesting talk with Dr. Ron Peters, professor of Urban Ministry at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and he compared the barely half-hearted attempts to help the victims of Katrina to 9/11.
“Remember how careful they were to exhume the remains of the victims of 9/11? I hear in the news they are still finding bodies in New Orleans. It is not right. It is beyond disrespectful. Why has the concern we as a nation had for the victims of 9/11 turned to such callousness? The people in the Gulf Coast are no more or no less deserving,” Dr. Peters said.What can we do? Well, Reverend Yarbrough has an answer, and all of you do too. The only real progress we can make is by helping the victims of Katrina and Rita ourselves, working one to one, person to person. Just like what is happening here at the Clearinghouse. Reverend Yarbrough is working to revitalize small businesses, obtaining in-kind donations and seed money to get the businesses off their feet. I have a story about his endeavor running in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Sunday. Please visit the new section of our site, ”Small Businesses,” to see the list of in-kind donations needed by the small businesses the Rev. has identified. Click here or the tab above.
We can help pull lives back together again; it just will have to be one person at a time. Given the government’s inability and disregard of this horrible catastrophe, person to person is the best we can do.