Illinois senator blocks measure for states' high-risk health insurance bills

by Marc H. Morial

September 19, 2005



Before last week, few Americans could have imagined the disaster that has befallen the rural areas, the towns and villages and three of the major cities of the Gulf region.



And even fewer, I suspect, could have imagined the harrowing conditions that many endured in its aftermath throughout the area and especially in New Orleans.



But the news reports of the toll taken—and, it must be said, those that have shown Coast Guard officers and other military personnel, beleaguered police officers, and private citizens acting heroically in the face of great danger—have provoked multitudes in the U.S. and abroad to prove once again that a profound reservoir of human kindness binds human beings together far more tightly than we often otherwise acknowledge.



I saw that quality—an entire community expressing its solidarity with the victims of Hurricane Katrina—on wondrous display for myself while visiting Houston, Texas on Labor Day. I was there visiting the Astrodome and the Reliant Center, where thousands of evacuees are being housed, with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, Representatives Sheila Jackson- Lee and Al Green, Democrats, of Texas, Mrs. Barbara Bush, Governor Rick Perry, Texas’ Republican Governor, and Houston Mayor Bill White.



We were there to support former Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton who had been asked by President Bush to organize the Bush Clinton Katrina Fund to aid the evacuees.



Once the two former presidents had spoken, Wal-Mart President and Chief Executive Lee Scott announced that Wal-Mart and the Walton family foundation were contributing a total of $23 million to the fund. He also said that the company would hire any displaced Wal-Mart worker at its other stores across the country.



As impressive and inspiring was the evidence of Houstonians’ generosity and skill at helping people in need.



From the full-scale medical unit set up inside the facility, where pharmacists from the Walgreen’s drug store chain filled evacuees’ prescriptions at no charge; to the children’s library/play area/internet caf» the city’s park and library departments had built; to the rows upon rows of shoes and clothing neatly arranged in racks for evacuees; to the beauty salon and barbershop volunteer barbers and hair stylists had organized there, Houston welcomed the evacuees in the same way they’re being welcomed

everywhere: as neighbors.



Our Houston affiliate, the Houston Urban League, has also been in the forefront of the effort to find evacuees housing, jobs and other needed services. Indeed, like many community organizations, all of our 100-plus affiliates in 34 states and the District of Columbia, have mobilized to help direct resources to stricken Gulf communities and to aid evacuees coming their way.



The Urban League as a whole has also joined with Black Entertainment Television (BET), Essence Magazine, and top entertainers to stage a nationally televised telethon Friday, September 9 from 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. The monies raised will go to the Hurricane Katrina disaster fund of the American Red Cross.



Houstonians, and many thousands more elsewhere, have shown us that, appropriately in the wake of Labor Day, the rest of us must let the disaster of Hurricane Katrina lead us to do something more: to use our imaginations.



The public and private sectors of America must imagine a new Gulf region—a region with its city and towns and economy rebuilt, a region with its people whole again.



One of the means to accomplish that is through the establishment of a Victims Compensation Fund to aid those whose lives have been wrecked by the calamity and its aftermath.



A second is a Gulf-wide rebuilding effort that also has a built-in job-training component and a substantial commitment to a diverse workforce up and down the ladder in order to insure that all of the citizens of the Gulf benefit from the billions of dollars that will be needed for its reclamation.



The commitment to racial and economic diversity must be especially evident in the rebuilding of New Orleans, so that the city is rebuilt substantially by those who called it home and that the vibrant diversity that made it so attractive continues.



Thirdly, there must be a national commission to study what went wrong with the early-warning system and relief effort and identify how best to protect not just New Orleans but also other cities and regions from such natural catastrophes in the future.



These broad ideas are just the beginning of the discussion that must occur in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But they outline the shape of the only fitting memorial to its victims—to act in a way that improves the lives of all Americans in and far beyond the Gulf.



What’s now needed most of all is imagination.