WE'RE CLEVELAND AND WE'RE HERE TO HELP: Sorry about my absence for the last couple of days. I spent most of yesterday at the Convention Center working on creating a computer center for the 400 or so New Orleans folks who were supposed to arrive today from Texas. When someone first told me that they weren't coming, I was at Computers Assisting People headquarters, starting to load PCs and monitors into my pickup. After we got the request from the Mayor's office to go ahead with the plan because this might just be a delay, I spent last evening in the CC with Dan McMillan of CAP and a bunch of SBC guys, setting up the first of forty workstations for evacuees who may or may not arrive.

I'm not complaining; there are a lot of Clevelanders (including, I should say, Mayor Campbell) in the same position. We want to be ready to give real support to whoever comes. At the same time, I can easily understand why a NO resident sitting in the Astrodome, or some other shelter in Texas or Baton Rouge, would be reluctant to get on that plane... just as I understand why some people still in flooded NO neighborhoods are reluctant to get into the rescue boats.

Ronald Reagan famously said: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" At this point, the ten most terrifying words to a NO refugee must be "I'm from FEMA and I have a plan for you." Especially when that plan involves a one-way ticket to one of the few U.S. cities that's poorer than where I came from, a thousand miles from home, where I know nobody, have none of the "social equity" I've spent a lifetime building in my own community, have no better economic prospects, and can expect to be colder in just a few months than I've ever been in my life.

Especially when I'm poor and Black and have every reason to believe that some people are already thinking about how to rebuild a "great new New Orleans" that doesn't include me.

County Commissioner Lawson-Jones was quoted the other day saying that we hope the NO refugees who come here will stay. Good intentions, but a very bad message. Our message to the people in the Astrodome -- and I mean this literally, I think Mayor Campbell and other community leaders should find a way to say this and get it heard -- should be: "Come to Cleveland because we're not them. We're on your side. We don't have a lot to offer, but we'll share what we do have, and we'll do everything in our power to help you get back to your own home."