A year ago, in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, NEWSWEEK published a cover story called "Poverty, Race and Katrina: Lessons of a National Shame." The article suggested that the disaster was prompting a fresh look at "The Other America"—the 37 million Americans living below the poverty line. "It takes a hurricane," I wrote. "It takes the sight of the United States with a big black eye—visible around the world—to help the rest of us begin to see again." I ended on a hopeful note: "What kind of president does George W. Bush want to be? ... If he seizes the moment, he could undertake a midcourse correction that might materially change the lives of millions. Katrina gives Bush an only-Nixon-could-go-to-China opportunity, if he wants it."

Some readers told me at the time that this was naive—that the president, if not indifferent to the problems of black people, as the singer Kanye West charged, was not going to do anything significant to help them. At first this seemed too cynical. The week after the article appeared, Bush went to Jackson Square in New Orleans and made televised promises not only for Katrina relief but to address some of the underlying struggles of the poor. He proposed "worker recovery accounts" to help evacuees find work by paying for job training, school and child care; an Urban Homesteading Act that would make empty lots and loans available to the poor to start over, and a Gulf Enterprise Zone to spur business investment in poor areas. Small ideas, perhaps, but good ones.

Well, it turned out that the critics were largely right. Not only has the president done much less than he promised on the financing and logistics of Gulf Coast recovery, he has dropped the ball entirely on using the storm and its aftermath as an opportunity to fight poverty. Worker recovery accounts and urban homesteading never got off the ground, and the new enterprise zone is mostly an opportunity for Southern companies owned by GOP campaign contributors to make some money in New Orleans. The mood in Washington continues to be one of not-so-benign neglect of the problems of the poor.

Hurricane Katrina had an enormous impact on Gulf Coast communities from Alabama to Louisiana, with about 1.2 million people under evacuation orders before the storm made landfall. More than 1,500 people died as a result of the hurricane, and at least 135 are still missing. Besides killing hundreds of people, Katrina displaced thousands. According to estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau in June, southern Louisiana today is home to 344,781 fewer people today than before the hurricane. Evacuees were scattered to more than 700 communities throughout the United States, with some landing more than 4,000 miles from home. Life in the diaspora has been difficult for many, with survivors facing problems finding steady jobs and secure housing. Many survivors—both those who left their homes and those who remained behind—are also struggling with serious mental health problems such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

A disproportionate number of those whose lives were devastated by Katrina were poor and African-American people, many of whom faced intensified discrimination in the chaos that followed Katrina. Perhaps nowhere was that more apparent than in what happened on the Mississippi River bridge from New Orleans to Gretna, La. Soon after the storm, largely African-American crowds began to cross the bridge after New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin promised that buses were waiting on the other side. But police from Gretna, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s office and the Crescent City Connection (a division of the state Department of Transportation and Development), blocked their way, even firing shots over the heads of desperate storm victims. That tragic incident sparked one of the first civil rights protests following the storm, when on Nov. 8 activists from New Orleans and other U.S. communities marched across the bridge following a rally at the Convention Center, where thousands of residents had suffered through inhuman conditions in the days after the storm.

The race and class divides exposed by last year’s hurricanes continue to manifest in the recovery. While many middle-class people and whites were able to summon the resources to return and rebuild, that task has been more difficult for poor people and people of color. That unfortunate reality is illustrated in statistics that have been released since Katrina showing a decline in the percentage of New Orleans’ African-American population as well as an increase in income among those who have returned.

For historically disadvantaged communities throughout the Gulf, Katrina continues to rage a year later.