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[bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

Cathy, I thought you might enjoy this article in today's WaPo

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Excerpt:

" In Ailing Delta, High Hopes Add to Burden For Obama

By Michael Leahy

Washington Post Staff Writer 

Monday, January 19, 2009; Page A01 

     
In Hollandale, Miss., a food-distribution center for the poor occupies one of 
the few active storefronts downtown. The promise of jobs even 200 miles away 
was enough to raise hopes -- before dashing them. (Photos By Michael 
Williamson -- The Washington Post) 
 
Helen Perkins, who works at an Early Head Start facility, holds participant 
Jevaria Johnson, 11 months. Perkins worries of expectations for Barack Obama: 
"He's not God; he's a politician. Some people get the two confused 
sometimes." 
 
"People are very excited," said Howard Boutté Jr., who runs an activist 
group. "But now that the campaign is over, people will be waiting to see 
results." 
 


HOLLANDALE, Miss. -- Helen Perkins can feel the worries of her neighbors -- 
and their expectations. "The things that some of our people hope from Obama 
-- more help, better homes in a hurry -- sound like they're hoping for a 
miracle from God," she says. 


At 63, Perkins lives in Hollandale, a town of about 2,900 in the Mississippi 
Delta, historically a fertile territory for big agriculture and bigger 
misery. Chronically poor, largely African American, loyally Democratic in an 
otherwise very red state, the Delta is a land where deprivation and 
diminished dreams are as indigenous as cotton. Poverty levels, obesity and 
diabetes rates, teenage pregnancy statistics, failing businesses: All the bad 
indices are woefully high in the Delta. 

Not far from the site of the first of Hollandale's many collapsed houses is a 
sign at the town border: "Welcome to Hollandale: A town preparing for the 
future today." For many expectant people here, that future will turn on 
Barack Obama. 

On Election Day, Hollandale went for Obama in a landslide, ................"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/18/AR2009011802326.html?hpid=topnews