New Orleans Affirmative- 7ws strategy Page



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Disads are non-unique – several evacuation programs have been started but they do not help the transportation-disadvantaged.

GAO 06 United States Government Accountability Office GAO Report to Congressional Committees TRANSPORTATIONDISADVANTAGED POPULATIONS Actions Needed to Clarify Responsibilities and Increase Preparedness for Evacuations
While DHS and DOT have taken several actions in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to improve the federal government’s ability to provide evacuation assistance when state and local governments are overwhelmed by a catastrophic disaster, gaps remain. Although the Stafford Act gives the federal government the authority to assist state and local governments with evacuations and to respond in a catastrophic disaster, the National Response Plan does not clarify the lead, coordinating, and supporting agencies to provide evacuation assistance for transportation-disadvantaged and other populations when state and local governments are overwhelmed. The absence of lead, coordinating, and supporting agencies for providing evacuation assistance was evident in the federal response for New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. As both the White House Homeland Security Council report and the Senate Government Affairs and Homeland Security Committee report noted, the federal government was not prepared to evacuate transportation-disadvantaged populations, and this severely complicated and hampered the federal response. 18 Both reports recommended that DOT develop plans to assist states and local governments overwhelmed by catastrophic disasters, and that DHS and DOT work with other agencies to develop the federal government’s capability to conduct mass evacuations. To remedy this, the White House report also recommended that DOT be designated as the federal agency responsible for leading and coordinating evacuations when state and local governments are overwhelmed. Amendments to the Stafford Act from October 2006 clarified the responsibility of FEMA (an agency within DHS) in leading and coordinating evacuation assistance when state and local governments are overwhelmed by a catastrophic disaster. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the federal government has taken several steps to improve its ability to respond to a catastrophic disaster. For instance, during the 2006 hurricane season, the government provided additional evacuation assistance to state and local governments. However, despite these improvements, DHS has not yet clarified in the National Response Plan which federal agencies are responsible for leading, coordinating, and supporting evacuation assistance.

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The aff addresses those material deprivations.

Jenkins 07 [executive director of The Opportunity Agenda, a communications, research, and advocacy organization with the mission of building the national will to expand opportunity in America.] Inequality, Race, and Remedy ALAN JENKINS APRIL 22, 2007 http://prospect.org/article/inequality-race-and-remedy
Many Americans of goodwill who want to reduce poverty believe that race is no longer relevant to understanding the problem, or to fashioning solutions for it. This view often reflects compassion as well as pragmatism. But we cannot solve the problem of poverty -- or, indeed, be the country that we aspire to be -- unless we honestly unravel the complex and continuing connection between poverty and race. Since our country's inception, race-based barriers have hindered the fulfillment of our shared values and many of these barriers persist today. Experience shows, moreover, that reductions in poverty do not reliably reduce racial inequality, nor do they inevitably reach low-income people of color. Rising economic tides do not reliably lift all boats. In 2000, after a decade of remarkable economic prosperity, the poverty rate among African Americans and Latinos taken together was still 2.6 times greater than that for white Americans. This disparity was stunning, yet it was the smallest difference in poverty rates between whites and others in more than three decades. And from 2001 to 2003, as the economy slowed, poverty rates for most communities of color increased more dramatically than they did for whites, widening the racial poverty gap. From 2004 to 2005, while the overall number of poor Americans declined by almost 1 million, to 37 million, poverty rates for most communities of color actually increased. Reductions in poverty do not inevitably close racial poverty gaps, nor do they reach all ethnic communities equally. Poor people of color are also increasingly more likely than whites to find themselves living in high-poverty neighborhoods with limited resources and limited options. An analysis by The Opportunity Agenda and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council found that while the percentage of Americans of all races living in high-poverty neighborhoods (those with 30 percent or more residents living in poverty) declined between 1960 and 2000, the racial gap grew considerably. Low-income Latino families were three times as likely as low-income white families to live in these neighborhoods in 1960, but 5.7 times as likely in 2000. Low-income blacks were 3.8 times more likely than poor whites to live in high-poverty neighborhoods in 1960, but 7.3 times more likely in 2000. These numbers are troubling not because living among poor people is somehow harmful in itself, but because concentrated high-poverty communities are far more likely to be cut off from quality schools, housing, health care, affordable consumer credit, and other pathways out of poverty. And African Americans and Latinos are increasingly more likely than whites to live in those communities. Today, low-income blacks are more than three times as likely as poor whites to be in "deep poverty" -- meaning below half the poverty line -- while poor Latinos are more than twice as likely.



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