Ken Sain has posted a call for help from Romi Elnagar, the acting secretary of the Louisiana Greens. The party had just last week presented the papers to become recognized as a major party. About half of the newly registered Greens were in New Orleans, some in the poorer neighborhoods. Whether they all got out is unkonwn.

Along with her request for help, Romi has asked that the party publicize the cuts to the emergency preparedness budget for New Orleans that the Bush administration has made.

The second task I am asking the national Party to help us with is to publicize the actions of President Bush regarding hurricane preparedness, actions taken prior to Hurricane Katrina. According to Citizens for Legitimate Government, Bush recently REDUCED federal funding for hurricane preparedness by more than $70 Million dollars. People need to be made aware of this fact, especially as I am sure that he will try to “make political hay” out of our catastrophe. I hope that the national Green Party will consider make a press release concerning this fact and publicizing it as much as possible, even though attention of many Greens may be focused–and rightly so–on Iraq.

In fact, for the last two years, efforts to shore up the levees and pumps in order to prepare for an event like Katrina have been gutted due to the every growing demands of the Iraq war. This disaster might not have been so bad had plans been allowed to continue to prepare for the storm everyone knew was comng sooner or later.