








The Times-Picayune, the New Orleans daily that is the mouthpiece of big business interests, ran a front page article in the September 5,2009 edition headlined,"Delgado is forced to reject students."The sub-headline was "Impasse with FEMA over repairs leaves campus short on space." Staff writer John Pope began, "For the first time in Delgado Community College's 88-year history, the area's most populous institution of higher education has turned away 1 ,500 applicants because it ran out of building space." Recent revelations by top U.S. military officers offer a damning indictment of state officials. "(T)hen-Gov. Kathleen Blanco] said the publicly run Charity Hospital would not reopen even though the military had scrubbed the building to medical-ready standards...," wrote Cain Burdeau in a July 14, 2009 Associated Press article. He continued, "...Lt. Gen. Rüssel Honore said Blanco told him in late September 2005 the 20-story building that served the region's poor residents would not reopen. 'Ma'am, we got the hospital clean, my people report... if you want to use it,' Honore recalled telling Blanco. 'Her reply to me: Well general, we're not going to open it, we're working on a different plan.'" The depth of this legacy explains why a March 2006 demonstration by a couple hundred people - led by the doctors and nurses of Charity who had helped clean the hospital - resulted in the New Orleans City Council unanimously passing a resolution the following month "...urging the state to... repair and reopen Charity Hospital," and why the following month in May, the Louisiana Senate and House also unanimously passed a resolution to "hereby urge and request the governor... to develop and implement a plan to use a portion of the Medical Center of New Orleans (Big Charity Hospital) to provide medical services to the New Orleans community and region on an interim basis..."
