[Cross-posted at Feingold for Illinois]
After announcing late last week that he will introduce a fiscally responsible housing bill to help low-income Katrina survivors, Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold posted a blog entry at Huffington Post, “Helping People Make it Home Again, a Year after Katrina.” There Feingold acknowledges the continued plight of the residents of New Orleans, where “in a lot of neighborhoods it looks like a hurricane hit a week ago, not a year ago.” He also points out that low-income renters in particular have found it hard to go back home. Feingold ends the piece writing,
“As we look at the images of the hurricanes a year later, and we remember what people went through, we also have to recognize how far we have to go, and rededicate ourselves to helping the people of the Gulf Coast make it home again.”
Rededicate ourselves to making it home again.
Katrina’s meaning is more immediate for those who experienced the hurricane winds, and the terrible rise of the waters, than for those Americans who watched from a distance. But the meaning of Katrina’s aftermath is not distant for Americans. I have never been to Louisiana. I was not there for the storm that changed New Orleans. But that storm changed America. I am an American living in Naperville, Illinois, and we lost something in those days and weeks, in this year following that storm. The storm tore at the Americans on the Gulf Coast. Its aftermath tore at the bonds between the American people and their government lasting centuries, ripping at them through the neglect of days and weeks, and now a year.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….”
The security of our life, liberty and our ability to pursue happiness - that is the nature of our home, the bargain and the bond between the American people and their government. We need to restore and strengthen it. Some survivors of Katrina want to make New Orleans home again - and the American government should help them. Russ Feingold wants to make the United States of America home again - and the American people should help him.
We must rededicate ourselves to making America home again. We must rededicate ourselves to securing American life, liberty and the conditions to pursue happiness. It is what America is about.
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