Katrina: Obama's Unfulfilled Promise

The clamor for President Obama to mark the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is falling on deaf ears at the White House.  Obama, who used New Orleans and the Gulf Coast as a campaign backdrop with the same aplomb as that rascal John Edwards, has declined to respond to calls for him to fulfill his campaign promise to make the equitable recovery of the Gulf Coast a priority.

In the meantime, activists and advocates are preparing commemorations, reports and report cards to mark the destruction of a region the size of Britain - a man-made disaster that has displaced tens of thousands of residents to this day.  Recently, economic human rights advocates wrapped up an investigation for UN Habitat on the government's forced evictions in New Orleans.  Read more after the jump and sign our pledge to support economic human rights!

The video above is an interview at FDL's GritTV with economic human rights activists Tiffany Gardner, Sam Jackson of New Orleans, and UN investigator Leilani Farha about their recent visit to New Orleans.  They estimate that the demolition of public housing has permanently displaced about 20,000 poor New Orleanians, and that the privatization of housing, healthcare and education in NOLA is a symbolic of national trends.  Worst is the lack of inclusion of or accountability to the "people whose rights are really at stake" in these schemes; says Farha, they "are really not part of this broader privatization agenda," which includes HOPE VI in her estimation.

I encourage you to check out HR attorney Eric Tars's vlogging and tracking of the UN trip.  There's also a round-up of press coverage here (that includes Poverty in America - nice!) and photos here.

The past weeks at Poverty in America have really focused on economic human rights - including our Administration's endorsement of them and how they can be realized in concrete policy concerns.  As the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina rolls in, take a moment to join us at Poverty in America and pledge your support for economic human rights.  If we learned anything from Katrina, it's that we need an inclusive framework for fighting poverty and inequality.