"From Margins of Society to Center of the Tragedy"

This was one of today's NY Times headlines and has been the "elephant in the room" (or the country for that matter).In the days since neighborhoods and towns along the Gulf Coast were wiped out by the winds and water, there has been a growing sense that race and class are the unspoken markers of who got out and who got stuck. Just as in developing countries where the failures of rural development policies become glaringly clear at times of natural disasters like floods or drought, many national leaders said, some of the United States' poorest cities have been left vulnerable by federal policies.

-NY Times