Reactions, Opposite and Unequal
A Message from the Editor, Victoria L. Valentine...

     As students head back to school, the nation is marking two tragic milestones: one year since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast region and five years since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

     At every level, the response to each of these events has been incredible. Individuals, businesses, organizations and the federal government opened their arms and wallets to the victims of Sept. 11 — the wounded and the surviving family members of those who died in the terrorist attacks.

     The Bush administration reacted to Sept. 11 by invading Iraq.

     In short order, government investigators concluded that Osama bin Laden had orchestrated the terror plot. President Bush initially dispatched the military to Afghanistan to topple the Taliban, which had provided a safe haven for bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network. He was hiding out in a cave there, we were told. But after a token, albeit ongoing, effort in Afghanistan, Bush ordered a full court press in Iraq, although no one, including the president, ever suspected bin Laden was hiding there.

     Today, bin Laden remains at large, the Taliban is regaining power in Afghanistan and a civil war has basically broken out in Iraq, where more than 2,600 American military personnel have lost their lives.

    As of June 2006, the United States has spent more than $318.5 billion dollars on the war in Iraq. According to the National Priorities Project, a Massachusetts-based nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, the amount of money we have allocated to Iraq could have provided more than 15 million students with four-year scholarships to public universities, covered the cost of hiring an additional 5.4 million public school teachers, provided nearly 186 million children with health insurance for one year or built nearly 2.8 million public housing units.

    When a domestic policy crisis is revealed — on-time high school graduation rates in big-city school districts that are less than 50 percent, the unemployment rate of Black men in New York at nearly 50 percent, a child poverty rate in New Orleans (38 percent before Katrina) more than twice that of the national average —Congress doesn’t schedule a special session. There doesn’t seem to be any real reaction at all.

    According to the state of Louisiana, 1,464 people lost their lives there in Hurricane Katrina. After the storm swept through New Orleans, the city’s levees were breeched, leaving the Big Easy underwater. Many evacuees were embraced and offered shelter by families in cities across the country. But the response at all levels of government was slow at best. The stranded, most of whom were Black, waited days without food and water for the federal government to show up in New Orleans.

    In the year since the storm, Congress has approved $110 billion in aid, but federal agencies have only spent $44 billion.

    In this issue, we highlight two people who have responded admirably to challenges.

   Spike Lee reacted to the Katrina tragedy by doing what he does best: making a daring film. His HBO documentary, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, is a moving portrait of one of the worst natural disasters in this nation’s history. In an interview on page 39, Lee talks about his two decades in film and what he took away from his latest project.

   Johnnetta Cole, who appears on this month’s cover, has reacted to challenges in a way that has had a profound impact on the education of Black women and, by extension, the strength of the Black community. After fortifying Spelman College in Atlanta, Cole has spent the last four years turning around Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, N.C. On page 16, we profile her remarkable efforts.

   You can tell a lot about a person and their priorities by how they respond under pressure; how they react in a crisis situation. The same could be said about a government agency or a country.

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