Northern Valley Beacon

Katrina rubbed the face of the United States in the motives that drive our current administration. Not since Vietnam have we been presented with photo-evidence on television and photo-journalism in newspapers with the effects that our policies are having on real people. These are OUR people, although the rightwing America would prefer to deny them, as it has for the first five years of this century.

For now we will endorse Bill Clinton's comments on CNN in an interview. He was asked if the U.S. government was performing competently. He said that this is not the time to get into finding who and what is at fault. This is the time to mount a massive effort to help the people trapped in New Orleans and people left stranded in the Gulf area by one of the biggest fuck-ups in American history. The objective is to get relief, help, and hope to those people even if we have to work through George W. Bush. He is not the issue. Those Americans who feel abandoned and ignored are the issue. Can you grasp that, stupid?

When we have done right by those people, we can focus on the values at play, in addition to Katrina, that created this catastrophe and this denial of freedom, equality, and justice that it revealed.

As it did in Vietnam, the news media has captured the real essence of what 21st century America is all about. The question is whether revolution or reformation will get the country back on track. But let's help the people left devastated by Katrina and her accomplices before we tackle that question.