Jesse Jackson Found…

Displaced Residents Still Missing

It turns out that I was delinquent in my earlier web search for news of the missing Jesse Jackson bus caravan.

I'm so relieved.

I was wondering about Jackson’s success, when and if the buses actually got to New Orleans, and why the media was not continuing to trumpet the story.

It turns out that the New Orleans Times Picayune had the details in their Wednesday edition:

It was supposed to be a bus caravan of about 200 New Orleanians coming back home in search of a new start, a new job and a better future.

But when the Rev. Jesse Jackson's five-bus caravan arrived at a Piccadilly Cafeteria parking lot in Kenner on Tuesday, many of the job seekers who got off the chartered buses had never set foot in Louisiana before.

It was unclear how many New Orleanians had opted to return to New Orleans in the caravan. Officials with Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition could not say how many arrived on the buses or how many were from New Orleans. Most of the job seekers said they hailed from Mobile and Memphis. Organizers, however, said that no matter what the hometowns of the riders were, the trip was a positive first step that would encourage Louisiana residents to return and look for jobs.

For weeks, Jackson has publicly spoken about the need to return New Orleans-area residents to their hometown so that they could help rebuild their communities. On Tuesday, he declined to explain why so many of those brought to Louisiana were not residents. Details such as where they would be working and living also had yet to be resolved. Everyone will have a place to stay and a job, Jackson said.

When they arrived in Kenner, Piccadilly welcomed them with a hot meal and job applications. Burger King, McDonald's, UPS and two firms looking for workers to remove debris and restore buildings in New Orleans also were present…

Travis Houston, an Uptown resident returning on a bus, didn't seem to mind that the majority of the 200 people with him weren't Louisiana residents.

As far as Houston was concerned, there were enough jobs for everyone.

"One person can change their community. One community can change a city. One city can change a nation, and one nation can change the world," Houston said. "You have got to start somewhere. Even if there are only 60 or 80 people from New Orleans, he (Jackson) got them back."

You better bet you last dollar that if Jackson had actually managed to find 200 displaced New Orleans residents (or the original 600 he started out looking for) that the media would have beat us to death with this story. FEMA would be forced to charter airlines and buses from points all over the US to return all of the pitiful displaced refugees to their beloved “Big Easy.”

I think that 99% of these people are glad to be the heck out of the city, and it’s going to take more than Jesse Jackson driving a bus to get them to return.