[US] Rescue communities, Bush tells graduates

from The Kansas City Star

BILOXI, Miss. — President Bush on Thursday urged graduates of a Mississippi community college, who survived Hurricane Katrina, to help improve schools and fight poverty across the nation.

In an arena still under repair, Bush quoted Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, who said: “People aren’t leaving. They’re hitching up their britches and rebuilding Mississippi.”

Graduates at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College warmly applauded his upbeat message about post-Katrina recovery.

“Over this past nine months, you have shown a resilience more powerful than any storm,” said Bush, the first sitting president to address a community college commencement. “I urge you to take the same determination you brought to rebuilding schools and use it to ensure that every school provides a good education — use that same bravery it takes to rescue people from water to rescue communities from poverty.”

It was the president’s 10th visit to Mississippi since the hurricane struck last August. On his way to the Mississippi Coast Coliseum, Bush’s motorcade drove along the coastline, passing skeletons of beachfront hotels, boarded-up homes and demolished buildings. A sign on one home said: “Lee and Chi Chi’s New Pad. Thanks FEMA. We will survive.”