Hurricane Katrina brought out the best and worst

Thank God we the people of the United States are better symbols of America than George W. Bush, who lounged around on his Texas ranch while fellow Americans, mothers, veterans, babies drowned in flood waters teeming with dead bodies and cried out for food, water and mercy.
Across America, the media, college students, churches, mayors, neighbors have come together to assist the victims of one of the worst disasters of our age. Celebrities like Celine Dion, Larry King, Magic Johnson, the Williams tennis stars, Oprah and radio mogul Kathy Hughes are all pledging big bucks.
They saw the photographs and videotape of the exhausted old, the pregnant mothers, the crying fathers, the lost, the weary and the abandoned and did what George Bush and his conservative friends, including the Christian Right, had so long refused to do. And that is to recognize that the people dying before our eyes were not just looters, or refugees, but Americans-- the poorest, the weakest and the most vulnerable.
Somehow George Bush was not moved to immediate action as when he rushed to the New York Twin Towers where stockbrokers and millionaires were among those killed by terrorists.
Despite the do-nothing composure of George Bush, most of the media and elected officials refrained from stating the obvious but rapper Kanye West and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin did not bite their tongues. They said what many of us were thinking.
Does anyone really believe that George Bush would have allowed affluent Whites to suffer and go to their death pleading for help from their government? Would White Americans have been labeled refugees as if because of their helplessness, they no were no longer worthy of American citizenship?
Nagin, who is Black, also showed courage. At a time when Bush was congratulating his utterly dysfunctional FEMA Director Mike Brown and his other Republican buddies for their "great" work, Nagin broke loose and told the officials to stop holding press conference and get off their [butts] and stand with the people and bring them real help and not just empty promises. It was Brown who admitted that he had not known that there were thousands of people housed in the New Orleans Convention Center.
Even after Bush finally arrived on the Gulf Coast, he continued the hands-off approach of the rest of his government. He did not go to the suffering people in the New Orleans Super Dome. He made a photo-op at an airport hangar, far from those in the midst of hunger and squalor, who had been promised help but the billions of taxpayer money going to FEMA, the military and the Homeland Security.
Students at Xavier, however, credited the Rev. Jesse Jackson with sending a bus to help them get out of New Orleans after frantic calls from parents, who said that Xavier University officials saw to it that the athletes were rescued but left about 100 students unattended.
Do we actually believe that the United States the world's greatest superpower that provides relief and maintains troops all over the world could not aid those trapped in New Orleans? Of particular concern is how ministers, volunteer groups and even law enforcement officers with food, clothing and water have been turned away from helping the Hurricane victims. For example, Twenty-two Loudon County Virginia sheriff's deputies and six medical personnel left Thursday for the New Orleans area, but they returned home without being allowed to assist the flood victims because of bureaucratic wrangling.
"My husband and I are retired military personnel and we offered help in the form of supplies in a military truck. The military turned down our offer of help, " said Jeanette Brown, whose daughter, Latoya, had been trapped in Xavier University.
Now that the public here and around the world has become so frustrated and enraged by the appalling abandonment of the Black and poor hurricane victims, the wheels of George Bush's government are finally turning.
Yet there is a difference when people are forced to do something because of political expediency versus a heart-felt response to do what is right. For example Johnny Dupree, the mayor of Hattiesburg Ms., was trying to aid his hard-hit town while also helping 2,000 more homeless neighbors. Virtually a week after the hurricane hit, the mayor said he has not received any federal aid, but he will still do the best he can. There are millions of Americans who will do the best they can to aid the Hurricane victims, not because of a photo-op or the results of a poll, but because it is right. Those people are not the Bush government. We the people are better than that. Rev. Barbara Reynolds, the religion columnist for NNPA, is the author of four books, including "Out Of Hell & Living Well: Healing from the Inside Out." She is a graduate of the Howard University School of Divinity and the United Theological Seminary.