Al Sharpton Quotes
How can you have a partnership when one of the partners doesn’t show up for 5 days…. The President said nothing while Americans watched people drown in New Orleans.
Al Sharpton, Protestant Minister & Candidate for the Democratic Nomination for President, Criticism of the claim of President George W. Bush that there was a Federal, State & Local Partnership in responding to Hurricane Katrina., Quoted on CNN Hardball, August 29, 2006
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
New Orleans suffered Hurricane Katrina, and tens of thousands of citizens were endangered from first the floods and then starvation and dehydration. With the exception of the Coast Guard, the Federal response was meager and inadequate. FEMA and the National Guard took days to get deployed. Meanwhile, journalists in boats and vehicles actually rescued some of the people.
Unlike terrorism and natural disasters like earthquakes, a hurricane is known about a week in advance and can be tracked as it makes landfall. So his view was that the prime failure of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security occurred the week earlier. In addition a few weeks before Katrina, Leibersbach lead a delegation of State Homeland Security Directors to meet with Secretary Chertoff of Homeland Security. Their message was that the reorganization of DHS has so downgraded FEMA that the nation’s capacity to deal with national disaster had been diminished as a result of the reorganizations.
Referring to President William Clinton and his first 100 days:
FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Agency. President Bush appointed Mike Brown as the agency director, and after the agency debacle of New Orleans, he had to resign. Bush was not the only President who appointed people to federal jobs with little or no qualifications, however usually those are not the critical, front line jobs. However, the Senate confirmed Brown overwhelmingly, even with his lack of qualifications.
Thousands of people were trapped in the New Orleans convention center without food, water, sanitary or medical facilities. A number died. While the head of FEMA claimed Federal ignorance, the plight of the people at the Superdome and the Convention Center was constantly being broadcast on the radio and television, including on location video and pleas for help. Mr. Brown’s qualifications for emergency management before he was appointed to head FEMA was to head up an organization for Arabian Horses.
Alfred Charles Sharpton is an American civil rights activist, Baptist minister, talk show host and politician. Sharpton is the founder of the National Action Network. In 2004, he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidential election. He hosts his own radio talk show, Keepin' It Real, and he makes regular guest appearances on cable news television. In 2011, he was named the host of MSNBC's PoliticsNation, a nightly talk show. In 2015, the program was shifted to Sunday mornings.
