It’s been a heartbreaking week here at Insurgent Headquarters.

     As you can see on the main page, we’ve devoted a lot of space this week to thoughts and commentary concerning the tragedy on the Gulf coast. Every single column, as a matter of fact, concerns Katrina and it’s terrible aftermath. We did a full three-hour ‘Insurgent Radio’ on it last Saturday, as well, and have been discussing it all week on the new KUDO show. Not since 9/11 has there been a human tragedy that demanded our collective attention quite like this.

     Insurgent Headquarters, like your living rooms and workplaces, has had the humor and brevity sucked out of it. After a week during which we celebrated the debut of our new newspaper, we found ourselves, like you, transfixed by a deluge of stories and images, each one more desperate and horrifying than the last. It is like we’ve lost a member of the family, and the stages of emotional turmoil have been similar.

     First, there was shock. Although the storm was as fierce as advertised, and the damage to the coast was awesome, it looked for a brief while as if the city of New Orleans had survived its worst nightmare.

     And then the levees broke.

     Why did it have to be New Orleans, one of America’s most historic and beautiful cities? Why did this have to happen to a city that was, at the same time, fun-loving and desperately poor?

     And then came anger.

     Why was there no effective plan? Why was there no backup to the backup to the plan? Where the fuck was FEMA, the National Guard and the President? The head of FEMA said he had no idea there were people stuck at the convention center. President Bush said that no one could have predicted that the levees would break. Those same levees, it turned out, had had their repair funding slashed by Washington for the last three years. It took six days for there to be any kind of adequate relief effort on the scene in New Orleans. Six days of squalor and death in the Superdome. Six days of bodies floating in the flooded streets. It became shockingly, painfully obvious to us that this had to do with class and race. New Orleans, after all, isn’t New York. There would be no bullhorn speech atop a pile of rubble this time.

     I’m still experiencing the anger. I’m fucking furious, actually, and want some answers from my government. Perhaps you do, too. If so, don’t let go of it just yet. Don’t let that indignation slip into the mind-numbed abyss where all of the casualties from Iraq go. Let us demand that those responsible for this man-made disaster pay for it. Let us, as outraged citizens who have lost so many of our brothers and sisters due to the criminal negligence of our leaders, stand up as one and demand the truth be told. Not some whitewashed and spun version. Not some smarmy photo op. The truth.

     It’s the only good that can come of this.