From: HQ

Date: Aug 2, 2007 4:27 PM Subject: [hq2600] International Tribunal for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

To: updates@lists.allthingscynthiamckinney.com

Hello all! Today I participated in a press conference in New Orleans launching the International Tribunal for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I am proud to join activists and the best and most committed legal minds in an effort to find justice for people so abused by our own system of protection. I was given a tour today that put in stark relief the situation faced by survivors who want to come home and that faced by those who have already returned. House after house, street after street, neighborhood after neighborhood, showed the very same thing: abandoned houses, rubbish heaps, formaldehyde trailers, lots with no houses. Mold, receded toxic flood waters, Blackwater mercenary troops, abandonment, hope. They tell me that to really see the effects of cumulated government inaction, I have to have a night tour--eerie, because there are no lights at night, no electricity. Where is this? The United States, you say? The world's great superpower? Not in New Orleans, that's for sure. I look forward to the work of the Tribunal because what is happening here is a travesty.

Please visit the website at www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com for pictures of my New Orleans visit and regular updates on my travels. Thanks for your support!

Here's what I had to say in New Orleans:

Cynthia McKinney Hurricane Katrina International Tribunal Press Conference, New Orleans August 2, 2007

I am pleased to be among this tested and true group of activists who are committed to Katrina Justice.

We come together to do what is right for our country and this community.

We are told that the failures of the government to protect its citizens on September 11th was a "failure of imagination." In the case of Katrina survivors they tell us that it was a "failure of initiative." The operative word in both tragedies, however, is failure. And the families of the victims have been left, in the words of Fred Hampton, with "answers that don't answer, explanations that don't explain, and conclusions that don't conclude." Katrina survivors looking for a road home have found that road pockmarked by the potholes of racism, discrimination, and ineffective elected leadership. While President Bush failed to even mention Katrina in his 2007 State of the Union address, the Democratic majority in Congress failed to include Katrina survivors among their priorities for the first 100 days of Congressional action. The United States Government, including both political parties, has thus far been unwilling to accord both the dignity and justice that is deserved by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita survivors. This action is initiated by them and the people who care deeply about them as they struggle to secure their rights.

The Hurricanes Katrina and Rita International Tribunal seeks nothing more than the justice these survivors deserve.

Thank you.

-- "Reasonable men adjust themselves to their environment. Unreasonable men attempt to change their environment to suit themselves. Therefore all progress is the work of unreasonable men." George Bernard Shaw

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways , but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness. . . . George Carlin _______________________________________________

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