John Lewis Proposes a New Marshall Plan to Rebuild New Orleans

'This Is a National Disgrace'
Opinion: A civil-rights leader mourns an African-American population left behind.

It's so strange that when we have something like this happening, the president gets two ex-presidents—his father and Bill Clinton—to raise money. What they propose to do is good, and I appreciate all the work the private sector and the faith-based community are doing. But when we get ready to go to war, we don't go around soliciting resources with a bucket or an offering plate. We have the courage to come before Congress and debate the issue, authorize money. That's what we need to do here. By next year we'll have spent $400 billion to $500 billion in Afghanistan and Iraq. That money could be used to help rebuild the lives of people. If we fail to act as a nation, I don't think history will be kind to us.

We've got to do more than the $10 billion that Congress appropriated. We need a massive Marshall-type plan to rebuild New Orleans. But in rebuilding we should see this as an opportunity to rebuild urban America. New Orleans could be a model. There must be a commitment of billions and billions of dollars—maybe $50 billion to $100 billion. I think even in other urban centers, there are people who are just barely existing. We sing the song "Hope is on the way," but it's taking a long time before hope arrives. It becomes very discouraging where you see people dying—children, the elderly, the sick—the lack of food and water. I've cried a lot of tears the past few days as I watched television—to see somebody lying dead outside the convention center. I went to Somalia in 1992 and I saw little babies dying before my eyes. This reminded me of Somalia. But this is America. We're not a Third World country. This is an embarrassment. It's a shame. It's a national disgrace.

Lewis is the U.S. congressman from the Fifth District of Georgia.

© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

Note from truth: Hope this post comes out. Blogger is hopping all over the place. I've gotten 3 different templates in the past 10 minutes while trying to create a new post. None of them allow me to use the toolbar, that's why the excerpted text is not indented.

Gotta learn HTML.