Al Sharpton is pissed. Or at least making noise as he prepares to be pissed. Why, oh, why is Reverend Al agitated this time? Because a local hotel is messing with Katrina victims. That's why.
It seems that many of the hotels around the country that are housing Katrina evacuees are starting to bristle at the number of long-term guests they are now housing courtesy of FEMA's checkbook. And some are going so far as to try to push their Katrina-related residents out.
The specific case of this that's gotten Sharpton so miffed is that of a Radisson Hotel in Queens which has a planned $7 million renovation set to begin next month. As it could be tricky to renovate and house evacuees and guests at the same time (the 12-story hotel is to be renovated two floors at a time), the Radisson is trying to evict the 50 Katrina victims it currently houses. As we said, Al is having none of it: "They are here because of government neglect," he said. "And they will not be evicted due to corporate insensitivity."
Uhm, we agree completely. We also suspect that just the threat of the bad press Sharpton can (and has already started to) provide will be enough to keep the evacuees where they are for now.
