Sadly, I am

“Are you okay?” my friend at work asks me.

Sadly, I am.

Sadly, because I can recover, I can go home, I can go back to my job, my family, my pets, my stuff – I have a life.

But the people in New Orleans don’t have any of these, at least not the ones whose homes were destroyed, those displaced by the storms. And even those who have gone back to “life after Katrina” carry scars. The wounds may heal, but the scars never will.

There is something wrong here.

It is just wrong that we can forget so easily. I’m beginning to feel that people in New Orleans are right when they say they have been forgotten. After all, it’s been three years. Maybe nobody does care anymore.

It is just too easy for us to slip back into life, go on, decide that the problem is overwhelming, or someone else’s problem.

This is an entire city, and generations, forever damaged. And we just go on about our life doing nothing?

If enough of us scream loud enough and keep on screaming, will we be heard?

If the country can turn its back on New Orleans, it can also turn its back on you and me.

We are so lucky, so blessed, that we’ve become complacent.

Were they foolish for living where nature could reclaim its own? Of course, but… the people in the Midwest live behind river levees, and on the New Madrid fault. People in California live on the San Andreas fault and pray the “Big One” never comes. People in Florida defy hurricanes every year.

We all live with the illusion that it won’t happen to us.

But it can.

And in New Orleans it did – the worst natural disaster to ever occur in an urban area.

Then I found a Bill for Gulf Coast Recovery was passed by the House and went to the Senate where it has rotted in a committee for over a year.

This bill could provide for the most urgent need – affordable housing – at an estimated cost of $2 per person.

I just don’t get it. There must be something wrong with me.

Why can’t we as a country renew our efforts to help the Gulf Coast? Surely, it is our moral and human responsibility.

I was there – I saw the remaining destruction with my own two eyes, heard the stories first hand. They are people just like me – with one exception, one horrible exception.

If the government will not act sufficiently to help the Gulf Coast recover, we must somehow act in unison to demand that justice is done.

What is needed was put very simply a long time ago, and it has never been said better since.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”