http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-22/1183790532152840.xml&coll=1Sen. Clinton wows crowd at Essence symposiumShe bashes Bush over pace of recovery efforts in N.O.
Saturday July 07, 2007
By Michelle Krupa
The audience that gathered Friday at a downtown convention hall, drawn by the Democratic Party heavyweight headlining the day's agenda at the Essence Music Festival, burst into a standing ovation before U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton uttered a single word.
But more than her promises to restore the Gulf Coast and end the Iraq war if voters elect her to the White House in 2008, it was Clinton's references to the failures of the Bush administration to enact a swift and lasting response to Hurricane Katrina that raised the mostly African-American crowd to its feet again and again.
"Too many people have become invisible to the president of the United States," Clinton said during a half-hour appearance at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. "He doesn't even see them. Thousands of people still living in trailers here in New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast -- they're invisible."
Clinton, a New York Democrat, used her audience with several hundred black voters to reiterate criticisms of Bush that she voiced in New Orleans in May, when she toured ravaged neighborhoods and laid out an expansive agenda for rebuilding hurricane-ravaged states.
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I pledge to you that I will certainly do everything I can do to help New Orleans," Clinton said Friday. "I believe it is an American responsibility to rebuild New Orleans."