Have FEMA trailer, will travel

While other protesters carried signs demonstrating against U.S. involvement in Iraq or conditions at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, Derrick Evans arrived from Gulfport, Miss., hauling an old Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer bearing messages with a different sort of theme.

One, in blue tape on the side of the trailer, read: “Where did $129 billion for Gulf Coast hurricane recovery go?”

On the eve of the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Evans said that he brought his “KatrinaRitaville Express” to Denver -- and that he would go on to the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., next week -- because neither presidential candidate had paid any attention to the continued struggles of Gulf Coast communities.

Some areas, particularly New Orleans, have gotten most of the attention and funding for recovery, but communities like his, Evans said, “would have no recovery if not for volunteers.”

-- DeeDee Correll