Have you forgotten?

Dear Friend, this is a letter from my heart.
You’re driving through abandoned streets and for miles and miles you see nothing but complete and total devastation. Homes that once gave warmth and protection to families and laughter now lay strewn in pieces. Huge, old trees lay on their sides, uprooted. There are mounds of debris with flies, mice, and rats taking refuge within it. The few humans you see live in badly damaged buildings where no human should be living. These buildings have massive holes in their roofs, no running water, no electricity, and no heat. There isn’t an open food market or gas station for miles and miles. You and your team stop at a warehouse that is housing pallet after pallet of relief supplies, but there’s no one available to hand it out. You pull up the doors and suddenly the needy come from everywhere, weeping, saying “I thought you forgot about us!” And the line doesn’t stop in the cold, in the pouring rain, for over six hours! So, where are you? Are you in some war-torn third-world country or in a scene from a Hollywood movie stage about the day after the big bomb hit? No. Sadly, you’re in Louisiana or Mississippi in 2006. What I just described to you happened in February 2006 to a team of Prayer Warriors and Relief Workers sent from my church Hope Chapel West in Santa Rosa, California.
Are you tired of the finger pointing by the bureaucrats trying to lay the blame for who didn’t react quick enough? Well, I am. It’s been six months since Katrina hit and our poorest of our poorest citizens are still suffering. Can you just accept that? I can’t.
Get involved. Unclog the artery of relief. Tell our elected officials that enough is enough! Our United States citizens are in need now, and they deserve far better than they have been given to date. Below are the names and email or addresses for the representatives who can do something in government to loosen up the relief efforts. Take a few moments and write them, tell them how wrong this is and ask them what can be done to change it.
I give you my thanks, but I also thank you for the poor, forgotten people of Louisiana and Mississippi. PLEASE SEND THIS ON TO YOUR OWN LIST OF FRIENDS. MAYBE, TOGETHER, WE CAN MAKE A REAL DIFFERENCE!
Rose Kempton
George W. Bush, U.S. PRESIDENT, comments@whitehouse.gov.
Kathleen Blanco, Governor Louisiana http://www.gov.state.la.us/ OR
http://www.gov.state.la.us/index.cfm?md=pagebuilder&tmp=home&cpid=8 OR Office of the Governor, P.O.Box 94004, Baton Rouge, LA 70804-9004, 1-866-366-1121
Haley Barbour, Governor Mississipp http://www.governorbarbour.com/Data/Services/Services.asp is NOT up and Running. Write to: P.O. Box, 139, Jackson, MS 39205 1-601-359-3150
Email for All State Governors: http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/govemail.html
Michael Chertoff, US Homeland Security Secretary, http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/contactus
House of Representative issued report called “A Failure of Initiative”. Contact for Representative http://www.house.gov/writerep/
R. David Paulison, FEMA director FEMAOPA@dhs.gov
Diane Fienstein, Senator CA http://www.senate.gov/~feinstein/email.html
Barbara Boxer, Senator CA http://boxer.senate.gov/contact/webform.cfm
Senators from other states: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm\
Senator from Louisiana: Mary L Landrieu landrieu.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm
Senator from Louisiana: David Vitter vitter.senate.gov/?module=webformIQV1
Ray Nagin, New Orleans Mayor: http://www.urbanconservancy.info/how-to/send-an-email-to-new-orleans-city-government/ (all other New Orleans City Government sites are not up)
New Orleans City Hall 1300 Perdido Street New Orleans, LA 70112