Saturday in D.C.
The Friends of New Orleans had sponsored a 5k Road Race in Old Towne Alexandria. Is trying to encourage a Presidential debate here in New Orleans.
It was an incredibly beautiful day and there were over 1200 runners who were there in support of New Orleans.
Thanks to Vince for bringing the fans to remind people this was an engineering disaster, not a weather event.
After that we broke off into groups and made our way over to The National Mall I have not been to D.C. since I was a child. I had some level of concern for the Katrina Memorial fact that a company based in Pittsburg will be creating the Memorial is just another example of outsourcing. But I digress.
Later in the day we were all invited to the home of James Carville and Mary Matlin for a reception.
This trip was a powerful example of how prepared and knowledgable we all are about the Recovery of our City. It also made us realize that we need to lobby at the State level as well as the City level for more transparency. I think we have a lot of people here in the City watching every move, but we need to demand more attention from the State as we approach the Gubernatorial race. Where are we on Bobby Jindals radar? take a look at his blog, we are nowhere to be seen.
I spoke with Matt McBride about our trip and his suggestion was that we begin to contact each and every candidate for each and every office Local, State and Federal and begin to inform them about our needs. That we, the local advocates are the experts and we start to operate in that fashion.