Yet Another Voice About Katrina – The Blame Game

This has to be a quick entry because I need to get back to not understanding Aristotle for my graduate school homework. By the way, I am now into my third week and it is very challenging, exciting and definitely will transform my life. More later, or contact me for the exciting but exhausting details.

Yet Another Voice About Katrina – The Blame Game
It goes without saying that I am shocked by the events following Hurricane Katrina. I need not cover ground that has been talked about so much. The devastation of culture, property and most importantly lives is almost impossible to watch every night on the evening news. I thought about this a great deal this week after attending worship services that also comemerated the 4th anniversary of 9/11. I was deeply moved by the sermon delivered by our minister. One of the many wonderful points he made that stuck in my brain was how easy it is to go to blame from disbelief and anger.

I too had that same reaction, but I must admit it was about something a little different. My blame went to our society, the participants and leaders who have allowed people in the richest nation on earth to live in poverty, racism and lack of hope for so many years.

What is it that makes this natural disaster be the horrible opportunity to view the inequities and lack of kindness and compassion that has become the invisible reality of everyday life in America?

I was deeply saddened by this and moved to tears more than once but not just by the horror of the unfolding scene along the Gulf Coast, but the horror of the excuses we fool ourselves with everyday. My minister went on to say that instead of blame, are we not better off if we can go to compassion and kindness? By the look of the emails in my in box, I noticed that moveon.org and Democracy for America have already started the blaming for the Left, but as we have seen from the Rove machine, the Right as usual is worse. This time however, it is going to be really hard for them to make their case that the victims, the mayor and governor were somehow more responsible.

Here’s the thing; this also could be an opportunity beyond compare. We are going to spend billions of dollars rebuilding the affected area. How often in modern American life has that ever happened. An example I can think of is the recent closing and rebuilding of the military bases after the end of the cold war. There are a couple of examples that I am aware of where marvelous coalitions have been built to plan a multitude of cross-community-building actions. Ideas like creating affordable housing, new and more modern schools, environmentally friendly buildings, open spaces, consideration for cultural enrichment and the establishment of neighborhood and community-centric groups that cross traditional cultural/political boundaries to work for the good of the community.

One of those examples is the former Lowry Air Force Base in Colorado. Here is a quote from their website, “Once a working Air Force base in Denver, Colorado, Lowry transformed into a forward-thinking, mixed-use community. The idea behind Lowry was to take an existing urban area, give it new life and avoid adding to the problem of urban sprawl. That dream is now a reality. In fact, Lowry has been so successful that it received the Governor's Award for Smart Growth and has become a model community for urban-infill projects across the country.”

As a part of the new Network of Spiritual Progressives, I have already made my list of community-building criteria that I will propose we follow and my hope is that somehow others in the gulf will too. As Michael Lerner and Jim Wallis say, it is time to create a “new bottom line."

My suggestions are:

• To work to create interfaith and interracial connections in activities and actions;
• To endeavor to facilitate new communities, crossing social and political boundaries to form new relationships;
• To offer viable alternatives as a vital step in any suggested actions;
• To undertake this effort based on the values of love, civility, compassion, justice and the realistic understanding that this will happen over time.

We have an extraordinary opportunity gleaned from this great tragedy, but the real tragedy will be if based on politics and “traditional values”, things end up staying much the same.