Katrina was, and is, a disaster. It is also a metaphor for urban America, for the malign neglect of our great cities. We need a Katrina Covenant from our new Congress, a policy agenda that greenlines the redlined zones in urban America, and helps bring all our cities to higher ground.

This week was historic in Washington. A new speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, the first woman in history -- that's good. The first African American to chair the Ways and Means Committee, Charlie Rangel, plus other new African-American and Latino chairs -- that's very good. The Democratic Congress made a "down payment" on a new direction, passing a long-overdue minimum wage bill and pushing its promised "6 for '06" policy program -- that's also good.

But it is not enough. Urban America needs more than a down payment. We have still not collected the "promissory note" of which Dr. King spoke more than four decades ago.

Seven of our newly empowered African-American Congress members, along with several leading mayors, joined us at the 10th anniversary meeting of the Rainbow/PUSH Wall Street Project, to discuss the need for an urban agenda, a Katrina Covenant for our cities. We met in Manhattan, not that many city blocks from Harlem. Two urban zones on one island: one blossoming with wealth and year-end bonuses, million-dollar homes and penthouses; the other still struggling to find the rent.

Harlem is a transplanted community. Its origins were on a Wall Street built on shipping and commodity exchange -- the slave trade. Our ancestors were sent north of the trees (Central Park), set aside by real estate brokers, the objects of predatory exploitation. Those south of the trees sell to us but seldom lend to us.

The mission of the Rainbow/PUSH Wall Street Project is to work with the new congressional leadership to create incentives to greenline, to let capital flow in the redlined zones. Our mission is a Katrina Covenant, a new policy agenda for urban America.

In the first 100 hours "down payment," the Democrats did not mention Hurricane Katrina. Katrina is not only a zone in New Orleans, it is the metaphor for abandoned urban America. There must be some plan to end the predatory exploitation, low employment, high jail rates and abounding poverty in the redlined zones, where taxes are high but services are low, where we work harder for less, pay more for less, live under stress and don't live as long.

Raising the minimum wage is a good move, and we campaigned for it -- but to the unemployed it means less. If we invest in infrastructure like roads, bridges, sewers, rails, schools, the Internet -- we'll create needed jobs, increase productivity, reduce dependency and break the cycle of pain.

The Democratic plan to lower interest for college tuition is a good thing, but for those who do not make it out of high school, for the millions trapped in schools with transparent funding disparities, we need a commitment to equal, high-quality public education for all children.

The jail-industrial complex is out of control, built off of the absurdities of unfair sentencing and a drug war that focuses heavily on redlined urban areas. We have unfair drug laws, and too little affordable housing, yet half of all public housing built in the last 10 years has been jail cells. We must address predatory credit and banking, and predatory vote count manipulation. Both are unfair and unjustifiable tactics aimed at the urban poor.

We must reform big media. Among many other steps, we must restore the tax certificates that helped African Americans break into ownership of the media, until it was killed off in 1995 by the incoming Republican leadership of Congress.

Finally, to fund a new Katrina Covenant with urban America, we have to end the Iraq war. Dr. King opposed the Vietnam war in part because he knew it would destroy the War on Poverty. It works the same today. We cannot greenline our cities, reconstruct infrastructure and rebuild schools while also wasting trillions in this war. Bush wants to escalate; instead, we should cut off the funds. We need our troops -- and our money -- here at home.

© Copyright 2007 Sun-Times News Group

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