A good two years after Hurricane Katrina I remember feeling so devastated and so ignorant that there was so much damage still left. I felt like here I was an American and this is an American city and the government hasn't done enough and people haven't given back enough. Everyone forgot and the city was lying in waste.
Barack Obama was first elected after a period of profound failure by elite and government institutions, from finance to foreign policy to Hurricane Katrina, and his first term immediately and unapologetically enacted a flurry of government solutions.
Along with you, I have witnessed the unfortunate rise in gasoline prices that has accompanied the summer driving season and the more recent spike in prices due to Hurricane Katrina.
I'll never forget Hurricane Katrina - the mix of a natural and a man-made catastrophe that resulted in the death of over 1,500 of our neighbors. Millions of folks were marked by the tragedy.
Imagine if, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Gulf Coast residents had to wait on Democrats and Republicans to agree on cuts before receiving clean water or loans to rebuild. Congress' negotiations often come slow or not at all.
As a survivor of Hurricane Katrina, I understood all too well the despair my colleagues - Republican and Democrat alike - were feeling as Hurricane Sandy ravaged their communities.
Thousands of people may have been killed by hurricane Katrina and many more could die in its aftermath because of the President's refusal to heed the calls of governors for help in repairing the infrastructure in their states.
I was caught on the freeway for hours when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. The entire city had to be evacuated. I observed lives threatened by catastrophes and a whole range of behaviour. What could people do during a crisis?
When I was volunteering with Hurricane Katrina refugees in Houston in 2005, I first started thinking about the whole phenomenon of grace under pressure.
For me, the watershed was Hurricane Katrina. If that didn't get people out on the streets, then what will?
