Katrina's Children
Saturday, April 8, 2006

Still in the Storm

At a recent meeting in Houston with survivor children from New Orleans at New Orleans West, a school operated by the KIPP Academy, I asked the students, whose wounds, words and dreams are shared in a new Children’s Defense Fund report on Katrina’s children, what one or two things they wanted to tell America’s people and leaders about their needs. One young boy responded quickly: “Tell them we need hope.” Another child asked how I felt about our visit together. I told them honored and moved and motivated and determined to do whatever I can, in every way I can, for as long as necessary, to make sure our nation their nation does not forget them, ignore them, neglect them, and continue to leave them behind, invisible and uncared for, like the debris still littering New Orleans’ Ward 9 and other devastated Gulf Coast communities.

I promised to tell their stories over and over and over again until they are heard, and to bring others to hear and meet them and children like them through Katrina Child Watch™ visits and mobilizing and organizing until our nation meets their emergency mental health, health and education crises. It is long past time for our federal and state governments to construct strong health, mental health, early childhood development, education and economic security levees denied millions of children in the Gulf Coast, before and after Katrina, and all across our nation. Katrina simply ripped off the veil of America’s massive, legal child neglect and injustice which let over 13 million children live in poverty and 9 million go uninsured, a majority in working families. Katrina’s children of the storm are a cry to right these festering child wrongs.

Immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the world and nation rallied to assist those in need with emergency mental health teams and prompt governmental action within weeks cutting through senseless bureaucratic, categorical eligibility barriers in Medicaid. To ensure immediate health and mental health coverage, in the early months after the 9/11 tragedy, hundreds of thousands were presumed eligible and were helped. Yet over sevenmonths after Katrina, not only have our national leaders in the White House and Congress and state houses and legislatures not responded with urgency and compassion to meet the mental health and health crisis faced by tens of thousands of Katrina children and families, many threw up barrier after barrier and are still dragging their feet. It’s time to stand up and demand they treat Katrina’s children justly and compassionately. It is a moral scandal and practical disaster that over seven long months after children in our nation’s poorest states suffered horrifying flood devastation, tens of thousands of them have been left to wrestle with their horrifying losses without adequate mental health and health support.

Seven months is a lifetime for a child. Seven months is an unending nightmare for thousands of Katrina’s children denied the chance to share their bad memories and clear their psyches battered by loss of family members, friends, homes, schools, and neighborhoods. Imagine being shunted from pillar to post with stressed families struggling simply to survive. Imagine trying to process the witnessing of so much death and fear of your own death from swelling waters threatening to engulf you. Imagine walking and swimming through toxic, germ infested water and waiting to be rescued atop bridges in grueling sun without water and food. Imagine being on constant alert in the crowded, putrid Superdome from predatory adults trying to touch you. Imagine waiting, waiting, crowding onto buses going you knew not where. Imagine waiting, waiting, waiting in new places for shelter, for food, for clothing, for lost prescriptions, for a school to attend. Imagine wanting to go home but scared to, wanting to stay in new states and schools but sometimes feeling unwelcome or picked on. Imagine wanting to hope for and see a better future but finding it hard to trust that either is possible. One Katrina survivor child in the nation’s capital wrote, “I want to believe but I can’t.”

We need to help her and all Katrina and America’s poor children believe in a better future, in themselves, and in our country’s professed values and promises. Children need to believe that adults entrusted with their care will protect rather than neglect and mistreat them at home, in school, in our social services systems and in our public policy and budget choices. We adults need to conduct personal, collective, professional and national moral audits to see if we are part of the problem our children face or the solutions they need. And we need to use our vote this November to elect political leaders who will guarantee health and mental health coverage for every child.