He Forgot to Mention

President Bush failed to dedicate even one word of his underwhelming State of the Union address to the biggest domestic debacle on the docket: the process of rebuilding the U.S. Gulf Coast after hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Was I surprised? No . . . really, it no longer astonishes me that this is a non-issue for the President and his administration. The ingredients for a perfect disaster existed along the Gulf Coast well before the storm: institutionalized racism, concentrated poverty, and vanishing wetlands. And we and our government ignored it. It deeply saddens me that the rebuilding process failed to make the cut in the president's speech. But it was not a surprise.

But on the Gulf Coast, the president's "non-issue" is THE issue. Just one example: a full one and a half years after the storm, according to FEMA, there are 30,141 FEMA trailers that serve as tin-can homes for tens of thousands of families in Mississippi. In Louisiana, there are 62,521 FEMA trailers that hundreds of thousands of people call home.

Until just last week, families in Mississippi and Louisiana were going to have these 100,000 "homes" taken away from them at the end of February. And where would these families go? I guess that's what state and federal officials were asking themselves, too, and why FEMA finally announced the decision to extend the trailer evacuation deadline until the end of August.

Rest assured, in August, FEMA trailers will still be an issue. To date, despite the feeble and extremely bungled help from the government, just 20,000 families have found a way to move out of their trailers. The people of the Gulf Coast continue struggling to rebuild their lives, but racism, poverty, and injustice abound.

Shame. Shame on the President for ignoring the issue. We cannot let the biggest domestic debacle be omitted from the agenda. Help us as we continue to support the brave people on the Gulf Coast.