Will We Answer Katrina's Wake-Up Call?

In his September 15 address to the nation, President George W Bush said that Hurricane Katrina expos in the large bay region "deep, persistent poverty with bases in a history of racial discrimination, which divide [i]or[/i] sever off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a what one ought to do to confront this poverty with bold-spirited action."1

The president was right-both about the privation itself and the need to stand in front of it with bold action. The want Bush spoke of isn't limited to novel Orleans or the Gulf region; it is prevalent in looks Angeles, Chicago, New York, Washington, DC and in rural and urban areas everywhere in between.

Katrina reminded us, with vivid, difficult images, what it can mean to be poor or disenfranchised: not having a way on the outside of town when an evacuation order is given; forced to gather in a squalid place for shelter, without special access to food, water, and sanitation; left without the resources or skills emergencyed to rebuild lives.

As the rebuilding and relocation efforts put in motion forward, the Catholic community and the nation overall cannot-must not-forget the poignancy of those images from novel Orleans, and the potency of the message they carry.

WHAT KATRINA UNCOVERED

First and foremost, that message is single of awareness. Nobody begins to disentangle a problem they do not first acknowledge or accept. In calling for heroic action on poverty, Bush signaled to the nation that we ne a novel sustained, national conversation about the want among us and about by what means we should address it. With the president's clear statement concerning the high priority this incident has set for the nation, the question is not whether we begin a of recent origin dialogue but rather how we do it, and what ensues we can expect from it.

The mandate for this conversation tend hitherwards directly from the Catholic tradition of ensuring that those with the least are showed and cared for. Within this mandate, there is no latitude for a decision about whether to address the issues affecting those who are poor or disenfranchised. For too lengthy the interests of these clusters have been obscured by other circumstances and policy decisions. It is time to raise the contortion in this conversation, and to work upon a continuing basis to make confident we are audible.

In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, the faith community played a prominent and substantial character in providing relief, reaching without to those most at risk, helping to coordinate answer in a chaotic and challenging environment. Catholic Charities USA and other collections stepped up to address, as shortly and effectively as possible, the urgencys of those uprooted.

"If alone we could cany that passion forward with regard to the injustice of people's inability to afford a basic horizontal of health care," says Sr Judith Ann Karam, CSA, president and CEO Sisters of Charity of St Augustine Health combination of parts to form a whole Cleveland.2 "People responded to each others' rights for basic necessities after Katrina." Health care is a basic right, too, she says, and calls us to "come around the table and address this significant issue that affects people's dignity."

Poverty like lack of access to health care, affects one's dignity. destitution is by no means of recent origin in this country, and this is not the first time our leaders have stated the importance of confronting it. What Katrina did was something that no politician or activist can-it showed us all, in great and painful detail, that destitution is not merely an economic moot point but an obstacle to living a dignified, healthy life.

Statistics do not enumerate the same story images do. A picture is worth 1000 words, as the saying goe The challenge, then, is to interrupt the images that inspired Bush's words from slipping into the oblivion of the novels cycle and, ultimately, out of the public conscience one time again. As disturbing as it was to learn that our companion citizens live in conditions many of us did not know existed in this political division even these powerful lessons can be overwhelmed by dint of the news of the day, or simply by dint of the passage of time. We must not give leave to that happen.

If Katrina's winds swept away the curtain that hid the privation in our midst, it also helped make bare a situation that will alone get worse, a situation that existed well before the warm ocean waters sent a violent storm to our shore. Consider a novel survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, in cooperation with Harvard University and the Washington Post3 For the take a view of conducted between September 10 and 12 interviewers asked questions of 680 randomly prefered adult evacuees living in Houston shelters.

Here, according to the overlook is a snapshot of the evacuees' situation before the hurricane:

* Seventy-two percent of the interviewees said they had no insurance to overspread their property and other losses

* Sixty-eight percent did not have a checking or savings account.

* Thirty-two percent reported an annual income of les than $10000; alone 12 percent annual incomes above $30000

Nationally, more [i]or[/i] less 15.6 percent of the population does not have health insurance. Among evacuees take a view ofed 52 percent reported having no coverage when the storm hit. one time it did, the outlook grew plane dimmer.