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Now Let's Rescue America: Nine Key Steps
By Van Jones, The Huffington Post
It wasn't just the Bush administration that botched the response to Hurricane Katrina. Progressives came up woefully short, too, veteran activist Van Jones writes. As the left languished amid a lack of organizational capacity, or 'guts,' thousands of black Americans went without food, clothes, medicine, and shelter. It's time to 'act quickly to recover our balance and seize the political initiative,' Jones writes. To this end, he lays out a nine-step plan for healing New Orleans and the country, beginning with rolling back the tax breaks and ending with a sustainable future for the Gulf Coast. -- Sarah Wash
http://tinyurl.com/bzlpr
http://www.colorofchange.org/

Meth Saves!
By Anna Weinberg, The Book Standard
After Ashley Smith talked Brian Nichols into turning himself in, she was embraced as a Christian hero. She had drawn on her faith and The Purpose-Driven Life to convince a man who had allegedly just shot three people in an Atlanta courthouse to let her go. But Smith had some other help, too. Namely, crystal methamphetamine. In an interview with The Book Standard, the former drug addict discusses why she gave Nichols meth -- a revelation just published in her book, Unlikely Angel. She also talks about how she read her captor only a paragraph from the Christian best seller, focusing instead on her own life story to persuade him to release her unharmed. -- Hannah Lobel
http://tinyurl.com/8zjzf

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