KATRINA THIRD ANNIVERSARY * GUSTAV EVACUATION * REPUBLICAN CONVENTION

As New Orleans approached the Third Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we held our breath, boarded our houses, loaded our cars, called 311 for state and city evacuation assistance and prayed and hoped big time. The week before we watched as the Wild Tchoupitoulas, the Meters, Tab Benoit, Walter "Wolfman" Washington and other south Louisiana artists performed for the Democrats in Denver in hopes that the "Change We can Believe In" was in fact change we can believe in... that maybe after 3 years the workingclass, low-income and renters in New Orleans will have their needs acknowledged, addressed and met, rather than see their ranks continue to swell as a result of the failed Katrina response, the failed Road Home program and failed economic policies of Democrats and Republicans alike. It's been a road home filled with potholes and ditches for most. It's also been a Republican privatization program of unprecedented proportions - the first ever domestic structural adjustment program - and one that has seen affordable housing demolished and rents rising more than 46%. It's become harder and harder to live here - and for more and more people. Young urban professionals from elsewhere are flocking here for the 'opportunity' our still devastated city provides as they build their resumes and careers. The good paying jobs are going to these young people, while the rest, folks that have lived here for generations and built and rebuilt this city over and over again, and have paid their dues, are left to flounder, castigated for being poor, had their contributions and opportunity denied...
As the Democratic Convention ended, Gustav began his track through the Gulf. I left on Saturday, August 30th with my son. It was his 30th birthday. We drove up the old Blues Highway 61 towards Memphis. We drove through the night and arrived in Memphis just before dawn on Sunday morning and watched during the next couple of days as Republicans packed bags with toothbrushes and toothpaste for folks on the Gulf Coast, watched as Sarah Palin asserted her hockey pitbull lipstick politics while many folks from New Orleans were shuttled and herded to shelters in northern LA, TN and elsewhere ~ to shelters loaded with cots, cockroaches, bathrooms not working and no air conditioning. Some folks that came to TN on the trains said there were armed guards on the trains not allowing people out of their seats, sometimes not even to go to the bathroom. People were not allowed out of their seats to talk to their friends and neighbors evacuating with them. Their luggage had to go through security never seen at train stations - their belongings checked - because they were poor and had to rely upon the state for their safety they deserved nothing better than to be treated as less than American - at least that is the hidden Republican agenda, to relegate the poor to such status. It will only happen time and again and will grow in arrogance and aggressiveness unless we stand as a people and demand better.
There were a lot of young mothers on those trains.
Palin's daughter's pregnancy shouldn't be political everyone was saying, yet when a poor teenage girl in New Orleans becomes pregnant it becomes very, very political and her life chances and those of her baby become severely diminished by virtue of their address, class, income, skin color and a host of other societal predeterminates that are very political, yet are assigned to the individual.

I think we're all tired of suburban princesses and their overarching sense of entitlement. I know I am and find all this rather disturbing after decades of the superficial Republican family values routine, that is only about their families and screw other families and their greedy consolidation of capital that leaves nothing for most other families, most other young mothers and children, a sense of privilege and entitlement that has contributed to rising poverty, joblessness and inequality in America. Some greedy shit. Just what we need - an 80's beauty queen in the White House - this is the chic that made all our lives miserable in high school and now we're going to have one as Commander in Chief! Oh Lord Help Us! McCain sure seems smitten with her though, as most jocks are with beauty queens. The football star and the beauty queen, except this is a presidential election - The War Hero and the Beauty Queen.
Bristol Palin is one lucky unskilled unwed teenage soon-to-be-mom. She, like so many other pregnant high schoolers, has made an impulsive and ill-thought out life changing decision for which, were she not the Republican VP nominee's daughter would be up shit's creek, unable to take responsibility for such a decision at all. If she were a New Orleans teenager she'd be in big trouble and looking at a life of great difficulty. Let's hope she can be a better parent than her own mother has been. Bristol Palin's mom should have provided the guidance necessary to prevent such impulsive acts. It's well-known that many young teenage girls become pregnant because they are not getting the love and attention at home that they need. It is impulsive and unconsciously manipulative. That's not Bristol's fault, but it is her mother's and her father's too. Neither appears to be a very effective parent - two really ineffective parents, despite having all the available resources to be such.
If you can't parent a teenager effectively and provide such necessary guidance to your child, especially when you have the money and other resources to parent effectively - if you still can't - then you have no right assuming you can run a country - Sarah Palin strikes me as way too impulsive and manipulative herself and I suspect her daughter's sense of privilege and entitlement comes from mommy dearest as well. We do not need these attitudes in the White House. We need change, effective change that is not exclusive and crony driven, such as we have for the last 8 years. Palin is hyper greedy and crony driven it appears, as well as impulsive, shrill, predatory, narrow and small minded and clearly suffering from narcissistic personality disorder, which her nomination as VP will likely only aggravate.
What a nightmare it would be for America were Palin and McCain to win in November - what a nightmare it would be for New Orleans and struggling young single moms here and everywhere. Bristol Palin can sit on her ass and be a bon bon eating stay-at-home teenage mom, but almost all other young moms must work full-time and parent full-time, struggling to make ends meet, become educated, deal constantly with inadequate career prospects and income, inadequate child care services, suffering almost constant housing and job insecurity and a host of other problems that Palin and gang will only make worse.
Even those of us with stellar resumes are unable to find work here in New Orleans.