I want to hear your voice on the scandalous neglect of the people of New Orleans by our government. Aid extended to the victims of the asian tsunami has been distributed and monitored much more equitably throughout that region than aid for the feeble rebuilding effort helmed by the US government in La. The main difference that I see between the two rebuilding efforts is that NGOs have been more fair minded and less politisized in their coordination of funds donated for tsunami relief than FEMA, Congress and the Red Cross have.
People who appear to be perfectly rational question whether New Orleans should be rebuilt after the devestating failure of its infrastructure to stand up to two catastrophic storms in one month. That is not a rational response to the desperate plight of New Orleans residents.
Here in Oregon we sit astride the mother of all subduction zone faults. We're downstream from millions of gallons of radioactive material that's moving at groundwater speed into the Columbia river. Downhill from Mount St Helens, an errupting volcano, we mistakenly feel safe in our little bastion. If the mountain had been pointing our way when the big one blew in 1980 hundreds of thousands of Portland residents could have been in the same sorry shape as the hundreds of thousands of wandering New Orleanians: waiting in some god-awful motel in Fresno or Pocatello to hear if our fellow Americans would care enough about our corner of our nation to come dig us out. The essensce of our pact with our fellow Americans is this: "We'll dig you out".

Margaret Edgington
138 NE Jefferson
Hillsboro, OR 97124