I got the following e-mail this afternoon, since I signed up for e-mails from Oliver’s campaign.
Dear [my name],
With just over 60 days until the General Election on November 4th, 2008, the Oliver for US Congress Campaign is at full speed. We have been talking to people throughout Congressional District 1 and learning about their lives, their struggles, and where they want and need to see improvements in this great state.
As I am sure many of you know, Hurricane Gustav made landfall yesterday in the Gulf Coast. Gustav hit just after the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans three (3) years ago. After Hurricane Katrina hit, I traveled south with one of my employees, Ashley Theil, and one of my sisters, Julie Luna. For several days, we assisted displaced victims at the FEMA site near the Houston Astrodome. We were able to connect the victims with housing providers and placed over 400 families in less than 10 days. We did this by:
* Assessing the needs of each resident based upon their prior housing situation. For example: if an elderly person had been living in an elderly facility, we worked to house that person in a similar elderly facility.
* Using our national housing connections to open doors.
* Providing maps. The FEMA site did not have maps available for the displaced families. These maps helped displaced families know where they were going to live, and what schools, stores, and churches were in the area.
* Connecting church buses with elderly citizens and families who arrived at the FEMA site with nothing – some in wheelchairs and night clothes. We worked overtime to get the displaced families to the places where people were waiting to help them.There were a few families I cannot forget, like the teacher and entrepreneur husband with 2 children, and their teenage son who worked at McDonald’s in New Orleans. They lost everything they had — this proud father was holding back tears when he was trying to figure out what to do for his family. It was my honor to do my part and connect them with a temporary home until they got a place to start over, but there was no way we could do enough.
There was another woman who had 9 children. We lost track of this woman on the first day and found out that she and her children slept on the street that night because the shelter was full. We were finally able to get her housed, but the children will always have those memories of sleeping on the street, among other horrible memories from that disaster.
I felt the obligation to offer my expertise during one of our nation’s greatest human crises and I was honored to be able to do so. This need and desire to help is an absolute product of my upbringing as a proud Oklahoman. I was raised to believe that you always help others, no exceptions. Many of my fellow Oklahomans were deeply affected by Katrina. Many went above and beyond to help, but unfortunately, we were all sad to see that our elected officials let us down.
Rest assured that as a product of the Great State of Oklahoma, I will always make sure that we take the lead and offer charity when it is needed, but do so in a responsible and accountable manner.
Warm Regards,
Georgianna W. Oliver
To contribute to the Oliver for US Congress campaign, please click here. Any amount is appreciated.
So yeah. Just in case anyone was interested in this race.
Maybe I should sign up for race updates from a bunch of other under-the-radar races. Suggestions, anyone? (Or are people just going to point me back to my gigantic list of races…heh…)
But has she come through on that self-funding yet?