We just wanted to get involved. A couple of us here at the station have put forth the effort and the time to do this.
This has made clear in a particularly vivid way that your life chances, not only in ordinary times but in times of disaster, vary a lot with the kind of resources your community has.
Bush, Congress, the mayor ? each of them are symptoms of a bigger problem, that we don't have accountability for disasters or challenges of this scale, ... That's all the public wants in trying times ? accountability.
There is an informal network of people helping each out in poor communities. They have great survival skills. The difference is that, in a poor community, that disaster wipes out that informal safety net.
A lot of Republicans use this group of people in a kind of euphoria that they've found this untapped political base. But the lesson is that this is a group of people who are, by tradition, more skeptical, less likely to participate and hard to hold together for the long run.
