The New Orleans Metaphor

I have been cautious about keeping my writing as Blogmaster for Mayor John DeStefano's Gubernatorial campaign seperate from my more ponderous posts here. However, when I wrote my post this morning, I became excessively ponderous and felt that it should be posted here as well because of the larger message. To those offended by a paid political advertisement, I apologize. However, I hope it stimulates a lot of thinking about what New Orleans really means.

“New Orleans is a metaphor for the difference between Democrats and Republicans.” This is what Mayor DeStefano said as he launched into his talk with the Democracy for America group in Fairfield County last night. I don’t like the politicizing of Hurricane Katrina, but I think Mayor DeStefano was hitting an extremely important point.

Mayor DeStefano spoke about his efforts to bring 100 families to New Haven. The issues are much greater than simply finding people a place to stay. He spoke of the logistical problems of getting the families clothing and bedding, of getting the kids into schools and helping people set up bank accounts.

These are people that have lost everything. Many are likely to arrive without the documentation needed these days to set up bank accounts. Their birth certificates are in the rubble of their destroyed homes and the town halls where they would normally get new birth certificates are also destroyed.

When we take this beyond the hurricane victims, we see that there are common issues, economic issues, health issues that address many people. Despite the goals of people like Grover Norquist to cut government to “the size where we can drown it in the bathtub”, there remains an important role for government. Government doesn’t have to be ‘big’. It shouldn’t be ineffective, but we need leaders that will invite all of us to make a difference. We need leaders that will help build and in some cases rebuild strong families and not just walk away. We need an active Government that creates possibilities, not takes them away.

As Mayor DeStefano has brought people together to aid the victims of Hurricane Katrina, he found that people do understand their connectedness to one another, that they are willing to get involved is leaders give them a chance, and that they are willing to make sacrifices to build something greater, the way so many of our ancestors did.

While New Orleans was flooding, the Census Department released its annual report on poverty. As states go, Connecticut is in pretty good shape. Yes, the poverty rate is up considerably from a year ago, but it is still nowhere near the poverty rate in Mississippi, Alabama or Louisiana, which are first, third and fourth in poverty in America, respectively.

Besides the damage that Hurricane Katrina did to those states, it also blew away the façade that there isn’t a poverty problem in America.

Yesterday afternoon, I received an email from an old friend I had met through Democracy for America. It included a link to an article in Washington Monthly entitled, “The Ghost of Tom Joad: What happens when an entire generation forgets what it means to be poor?” I hope many of you take the time to go out and read the article. Let me highlight a few sections:

“I thought of my friend's complaint while watching the Democrats in Los Angeles this summer. Challenging George W. Bush's vague but ardent claim of conservative compassion, President Clinton traced his party's legacy of compassion from FDR to LBJ to Jimmy Carter, who's still pounding nails into Habitat for Humanity homes.”

I’ve written before about how important it is to help groups like Habitat for Humanity as they rebuild homes and families on the Gulf Coast. When I read the article, I was thinking it was a recent article talking about Hurricane Katrina. Yet looking more closely, this article is from 2000.

It goes on to say, “Nearly half the country is younger than 35, and the percentage of Americans who can remember Black Friday or the War on Poverty is on the decline.” Go out and do a search on Black Friday on Google. What is their first hit? An article in Wikipedia which states, “Black Friday (also called Blitz Day), the day after Thanksgiving in the United States, is historically one of the busiest retail shopping days of the year.” A much different day than the Black Friday that the stock market crashed in 1929 and is typically heralded as the beginning of the great depression.

The article bleakly comments “You could say that the disappearance of poverty from national politics is merely the product of a prosperity-induced callousness or the stupor of affluence, but I suspect the reason is more complicated than that. Call it national amnesia.”

Yes, we have forgotten who we are, where we have come from and that we are all in this together. September 11th was a wake up call to all of us, not to some jingoistic militaristic nationalism, but to compassionate caring for one another. Hurricane Katrina is a second such call. I sure hope we wake up before we receive a third call.

What will rouse us from our amnesia and stupor? Who will lead us? It is my prayer for this country that we will see more leaders like Mayor DeStefano step up to the plate and inspire the good in all of us to care those around us. It is my dream that just as Freedom Riders hopped on buses over forty years ago to help bring equality to blacks in the south we will see a new generation of people head to the Gulf Coast to help rebuild and help fight poverty.

Yes, Mayor DeStefano was saying something very important when he commented that “New Orleans is a metaphor for the difference between Democrats and Republicans.” At times, I have called myself a Dean Democrat or a Jeffersonian Democrat. Last night, I was very proud to call myself a DeStefano Democrat. I hope you will be to.

Posted by Aldon Hynes at September 8, 2005 9:38 AM | TrackBack