Tuesday Morning Roundup

Playing a little bit of catch-up here...Tara Liloia posted Blog for America's Monday News Roundup at 9:15 p.m. and the headlines were: Chief Justice Hearings Begin, Hope in New Orleans, and Bush Approval at New Low of 39%. Regarding the Judge Roberts hearings, I didn't watch those at all yesterday, but imagined I would get the highlights by watching The Daily Show. But as it turns out, yesterday's program was a special episode called (if I recall correctly) "Evolution-Schmevolution". You can see recent Daily Show video headlines here.

Last night at My Vote is My Voice, Quintus Jett hosted a discussion about next steps for the Katrina evacuees...

There are three steps, in order of priority and complexity:

1. Putting a more personal face on the evacuees (online posts, audio, video)
2. Helping the evacuees develop local "meetups" where they are now displaced
3. Reconnecting the evacuees with the local elected officials who represented them in New Orleans

At the end of last night's discussion, Quintus added in the comments "if you have any comments or suggestions later, please post them here - or email me." (That comment includes his email address.)

At 11:03 p.m. on Blog for America, Tara posted DFA Welcomes Monisha

A dear friend to the DFA community, Monisha Sujan, was one of the tens of thousands of students left without a school:

"People are still trying to figure it out," Sujan said.

But Sujan cashed in on a job offer promised her this summer. Now Sujan will work for Democracy for America, a Democratic group led by former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean's brother in Vermont, to help coordinate hurricane relief efforts until she and her parents—both faculty members at Tulane—are allowed to return to their home in the New Orleans neighborhood of Uptown.

Thanks to Kimmy Cash for pointing me to this article in Truthout:
Exiles from a City and from a Nation By Cornel West

It takes something as big as Hurricane Katrina and the misery we saw among the poor black people of New Orleans to get America to focus on race and poverty. It happens about once every 30 or 40 years.

What we saw unfold in the days after the hurricane was the most naked manifestation of conservative social policy towards the poor, where the message for decades has been: 'You are on your own'. Well, they really were on their own for five days in that Superdome, and it was Darwinism in action - the survival of the fittest. People said: 'It looks like something out of the Third World.' Well, New Orleans was Third World long before the hurricane.

It's not just Katrina, it's povertina. People were quick to call them refugees because they looked as if they were from another country. They are. Exiles in America. Their humanity had been rendered invisible so they were never given high priority when the well-to-do got out and the helicopters came for the few. Almost everyone stuck on rooftops, in the shelters, and dying by the side of the road was poor black.

In the end George Bush has to take responsibility. When [the rapper] Kanye West said the President does not care about black people, he was right, although the effects of his policies are different from what goes on in his soul. You have to distinguish between a racist intent and the racist consequences of his policies. Bush is still a 'frat boy', making jokes and trying to please everyone while the Neanderthals behind him push him more to the right.

Read the article in its entirety here.

In the comments last night, Catreona shared this link: http://theprogressiveblog.blogspot.com/

Here is The Progressive Blog's self description:

The Progressive Blog is an outlet for Progressive Students and Thinkers residing in and around Lynn / Boston, Massachusetts. The Progressive Bloggers concentrate their intellectual energy on: Politics, Current Events, Philosophy, Cultural Critiques, and Social Commentaries. Please view the “Blogger Bios” post from 1 January 2005 and feel free to comment, contribute writings, and request to be added to the Progressive Blog e-mail update. Send correspondence to: CharlieNGallo@aol.com