Katrina New Orleans Flood Index

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Katrina New Orleans Flood Index

Essays, Poems, Survivor Stories, Photos

Overview

4 November, Baltimore The next night I’m in Baltimore at the Enoch Pratt Free Library. The program kicks off with music by the Lionel Lyles Quartet, a young, swinging modern jazz group who played 70s classics like Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints,” Freddie Hubbard’s “Little Sunflower,” and a gorgeous “In A Sentimental Mood” a la Duke & Trane, the piano solo was really killing on that one. The band opened the program and played in between the poetry sets. Jerome Harris, one of the behind-the-scenes organizers, formally opened the program reading off a list of libraries wiped out by Katrina. He ended with the sobering note that all but 19 out of over 200 New Orleans public library employees were laid off. The purpose of this program is to raise funds to support public libraries affected by Katrina. Hurricane Library Relief

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I just clicked on to ChickenBones because you said you were posting various articles, and oh me, oh my, I saw my photo & words, in dialogue with you and Kalamu. I am honored to be in yall's company, two righteous brothers whose views I respect. There are many other voices there that I plan to listen to. I've been trying to get back to my work--the book that's been on the back burner for so long--but I can't focus; someone calls or I get a long e-mail that deserves response or something else comes up. How do you write in the midst of this madness? Conversations with Miriam

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I certainly have to ask what has love to do with it when I read about the white South African farmer who has been given a life sentence for killing a black South African and feeding his body to lions, and then hear a handful of black and white South African students insist that the crime was not necessarily racially motivated. Such postmodern deconstruction of death unsettles me, because such postmodern deconstructive attitudes are championed in various circles of American higher education.

How do such attitudes color love or its opposite? How powerfully active are such attitudes in the discussions and plans to reconstruct life in New Orleans and other sites devastated by our recent hurricanes; in the covert forums conducted by private conservative and liberal (or gliberal, to use Ishmael Reed's word from years past) foundations and semi-public agencies of government?

And what poison leaks into my ideal notions about love when I read that the United Nations has asked the government of Uganda to stamp out traditional practices of child sacrifice and female genital mutilation in the Mukono and Kayunga districts? My wonder about what drives traditional practices in Uganda cannot be segregated from my wonder about what drives traditional practices of response to devastated areas and displaced persons in the United States. Love Should Deflect Contentment

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Post-Katrina Redevelopment excludes 'poor and working-class black New Orleanians from returning home'—Katrina pummeled nearly 51,700 rentals in the area. More than 29,000 affordable-rent units vanished. The social-service coalition UNITY estimated last year that homelessness had roughly doubled to about 12,000 people across New Orleans and neighboring Jefferson Parish. Yet HUD has opposed a recent proposal in Congress to mandate that all demolished units are comparably replaced in the redevelopment process. Meanwhile, using HUD's data, advocates estimate that restoring the projects would cost less than demolition and redevelopment. . . . The Brookings Institute, a centrist think tank, reports that over two years since Katrina made landfall, the area still counts among the casualties about two fifths of its public schools and two fifths of its hospitals. Of over $2 billion in federal funds allocated for infrastructure restoration in Orleans Parish, only about 30 percent has actually been distributed to projects. 'It's a self-fulfilling prophecy on the government's part,' says Anita Sinha, an attorney with the Advancement Project, one of the groups litigating the class-action suit. 'They're making it such that people can't come home.' Women's International Perspective

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Table

Announcements

Hurricane Library Relief

featuring Kalamu ya Salaam

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Correspondence (E-Mail)

Call for Artists and Photographers (Chuck Siler)

Conversations with Miriam (Rudy, Miriam)

Defining Religion, Describing Religious Practice (19 October; Wilson, Rudy)

Do New Orleans Folk Have a Choice? (Kalamu, Rudy, Miriam)

Jerry Ward Reports on Dillard (Jerry Ward, Mona Lisa, Miriam)

Katrina & Kalamu (Rudy, Miriam, Clare, and others)

Magical Negro: The Root (Arthur Flowers)

Katrina New Orleans Flood Index Aug 31- Sept 1 Sept 2 Sept 3 Sept 4 Sept 5

HBCUs & Black Educators Governor says everyone must leave New Orleans Kalamu ya Salaam Needs Work

Responsibility of Blacks in Cyberspace (Rudy, Miriam, Joyce, Ethelbert)

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Discussions Regarding Revolutionary Suicide & Nathaniel Turner

The Acklyn Model Not Sufficient (6 October)

Conversations with Miriam and Wilson (1 October)

Corporate Colony, Civic Virtue (7 October)

Death of the Black Church (17 October; liberation of black female religious)

The Defection of Eldridge Cleaver & Reactionary Suicide (30 September; Huey)

Defining Religion, Describing Religious Practice (19 October)

Egalitarian Slaveowners (4 October)

Empowerment Temples & Ideological Orchestrators (29 September)

Feel-Good Giving & Capital

I Am We (28 September; Huey)

Love Should Deflect Contentment (2 October)

Manifesto Revolutionary Suicide: The Way of Liberation (6 October; Huey)

Political Movements, White Issues (5 October)

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Kalamu Correspondence

All Hands on Deck (Kalamu)

Hurricane Library Relief (Kalamu)

I WANT TO BUT I DON'T (Kalamu)

Kalamu Needs Work (Kalamu)

kalamu on the road 9 oct 2005

Kalamu Travel Update (Kalamu)

Kalamu Update ("I'm in Nashville")

Kalamu update 30 sept 2005 (in New York)

Listen To The People (Kalamu)

LISTEN TO THE PEOPLE: The Neo-Griot New Orleans Project

Neo-Griot Workshop (Kalamu)

quick notes from the field (Kalamu)

where in the world is kalamu

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Katrina Essays

Bush seen as doing too little, too late (Richard Luscombe)

Cataclysmic Katrina (M. Quinn)

Christmas in New Orleans

Civil Disobedience in Post Katrina New Orleans

The Conspiracy to Whiten New Orleans

The Cost of a Chocolate City Race and the Casualties of Hurricane Katrina

The Contradictions of Black Comprador Rule

Deliverance from Marksville

The Difference Between being Displaced and a Refugee (Tamara Nopper)

Dreamers Die Young

Eighteen Months After Katrina

FEMA Evicting 50,000 Families

Hold the United States Accountable

How the Free Market Killed New Orleans (Michael Parenti)

Hurricane Katrina: The People Did Not Have to Die (Carl Dix)

Hurricane Looting Not Over Yet (Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.)

The Impact of Katrina Race and Class

Katrina, Bush, and Capitalism Tea Party Anyone? (Mary Meekins)

Katrina killed those already dying

Katrina Made Me a Better Archaeologist

Katrina Refugee Housing (Charles Shea)

Leaving the Poor Behind Again! (Bill Quigley)

Letter from Michael Moore You hang in there, Mr. Bush

Losing New Orleans (Maxwell)

Millions More A Tale of Two Cities From DC to Toledo (Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor)

Nagin's Reelection as Mayor of New Orleans

New Orleans a Ghost Town? (Bill Quigley)

New Orleans is modern America

New Orleans Peoples Committee Organizing

New Orleans: The American Nightmare (Amin Sharif)

NOLA SPEAKS

Notes from Inside New Orleans (Jordan Flaherty)

People of Color Owning Cars

The People of the Dome

Plan Designed to Take Treme? (a report)

The People of the Dome (Mitchel Cohen)

The Plan for Public Housing in New Orleans (Carl Dix)

Portrait of a Suicide/Death in Yellow Flooding

Potential to Double Black Entrepreneurship

Press dismay at Katrina chaos ( BBC NEWS)

Protesters Pepper Sprayed, Tasered, Arrested (Carl Dix)

Race and the Casualties of Hurricane Katrina

The Real Looting (Robert D. Bullard and Beverly Wright)

Return to Pontchartrain Park

So Poor, So Black! (Maxwell)

Time Longer Than Rope (Maxwell)

Tom Watson Running for Mayor of New Orleans

Viewpoint: New Orleans crisis shames US (Matt Wells)

"What’s with Mayor Nagin?"

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Poems

Address on the Battle for New Orleans (Rudolph Lewis)

After Katrina . . . (Latorial Faison)

After the Hurricanes (Jerry Ward)

Big Easy Blues (Amin Sharif)

Can You Quilt a Life, Now Dead? (Rudolph Lewis)

George Bush Doesn't Care (Legendary KO lyrics)

George Bush Don't Like Black People (Audio)

I Gave My Heart to That Woman (Rudolph Lewis)

I'm in the Eye of Katrina (Joe Williams)

It Ain't About Race (Claire Carew)

Katrina (Caroline Maun)

Neighbors and Invaders (Mackie Blanton)

NOLA SPEAKS

No Woman to Be Rollin (Rudolph Lewis)

Portrait of a Suicide/Death in Yellow Flooding

A Prayer for Our Enemies

Sitting ducks at the superdome (Claire Carew)

A Survivor's Poem (Denay Fields)

There's No Way Out This Sadness? (Rudolph Lewis)

What Does It Mean to Survive N'awlins (Rudolph Lewis)

What Shall It Be, Stick or Broom? (Rudolph Lewis)

Where's Fats Domino? (Marvin X)

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Reviews

K-Ville Cop TV Show

Raymond Miles, “Heaven is the Place” (Gospel music)

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Reports

Christmas in New Orleans

Governor says everyone must leave New Orleans

HBCUs & Black Educators Organize Flood Relief for Refugees

Letter in Support of the Movement in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast:

Notes on Strategy & Tactics by Eric Mann

New Orleans Flood Relief Bulletin Board (8/ 31- 9/ 1) (9/ 2) 9/ 3 9/ 4 9/ 5/2005

New Orleans People's Committee (C. Muhammad)

Parts of New Orleans to open next week

Plan Designed to Take Treme for the Benefit of Rich People? (Jarvis Q. DeBerry )

Potential to Double Black Entrepreneurship (John William Templeton, Editor)

Saint Augustine Closed

The Storyteller of New Orleans by Elizabeth D

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Reviews

We Want Freedom: Life in the Black Party

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Scholarly Studies

http://www.brookings.edu/metro/pubs/200512_katrinaindex.htm

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Survivor Stories

Alive in Truth: We've recorded fifty full-length oral history interviews with New Orleans narrators. These explore the narrator's life before, during, and after the flooding of New Orleans. / Alive in Truth: The New Orleans Disaster Oral History and Memory Project / PMB 188 / 603 West 13th St. Suite 1A / Austin, TX 78701/ (512) 653-6539 / neworleanstestimony@yahoo.com

Denise Moore's Story

Eh, La Bas, Cherie! (Mackie Blanton)

God Bless Robert and Jason ( Karen Kossie-Chernyshev) (Life in evacuee shelter)

I am Alive (Niyi Osundare)

from New Orleans Shelters ( Bill Quigley and Debbie Dupre Quigley)

Katrina killed those already dying! ( Joe Williams III)

Larry Bradshaw & Lorrie Beth Slonsky Story

Return to Pontchartrain Park

Survivors Say, "It’s Not Working for Us" – A Slideshow

"They treated us like dogs . . . wristbands"

Transcript of Charmaine Neville's Story

Who's Helping the Helpers--Mass Victimology (Life in evacuee shelter)

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In the case of a mandatory evacuation order during a disaster, 33% of Latinos, 27% of African Americans, and 23% of whites say that lack of transportation would be an obstacle preventing them from evacuating, according to the National Center for Disaster Preparedness.

Evacuation planning tends to focus on traffic management for those with cars and on institutionalized people, not on non-institutionalized people without vehicles. New Orleans had only one-quarter the number of buses that would have been needed to evacuate all carless residents.

In the counties affected by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005, only 7% of white households have no car, compared with 24% of black, 12% of Native American and 14% of Latino households. People of Color Owning Cars

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Anyway, Al ain't leaving. Neither is his friend Jim "Lucky" Osborne or the other man who didn't say a word the whole time I stood there. When I asked about the Backstreet Cultural Museum, which houses some suits from big chiefs of the past, he said that he was keeping watch over it. "I'm the security for the Backstreet and 'OZ," he said. He was referring to WWOZ, the public radio station in adjacent Armstrong Park. There wasn't anybody in Treme I knew or had heard of that Al didn't.

Kalamu (who used to work out of there, both with NOMMO and 'OZ), both Lolis Elies (the civil rights attorney and the columnist for The Times-Picayune), Father Jerome Ledoux of St. Augustine Catholic Church and Jerome Smith of Tambourine and Fan. I knew the Elies were okay because I'd seen Lolis Eric, his mother and his sister. Chief Al told me that Jerome Smith was fine and that Father Ledoux was packing up because he'd been sufficiently frightened by the armed people saying that everybody had to clear out.

"This not communism," he told me. "I don't know where in the hell (Mayor) Nagin gets off thinking he can do that," i.e. make people leave. He believes the evacuation plan is designed to take Treme for the benefit of rich people. Plan Designed to Take Treme

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Specifically, I find that the actual number of white deaths in each of the three parishes is lower than would be expected based on the size and age of the white population in the affected areas; by contrast, the actual number of black deaths is larger than would be expected.

Thus, the impression that this storm took the largest toll on New Orleans’ black population appears to be validated empirically. And while race is clearly not the only story here, these findings confirm that it is deeply implicated in this and every aspect of the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. When Katrina swept through New Orleans, it exposed the hidden racial inequalities that characterize urban America. Americans saw with their own eyes what urban scholars have long known: relative to whites of similar socio-economic status, racial and ethnic minorities live in communities that are severely disadvantaged. These communities have fewer economic opportunities and less political influence, they are poorer and more violent, and they are more vulnerable to a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina.

By recognizing Katrina as both a social and a natural disaster, we reinforce the role that public policy can play before a disaster occurs. In particular, policies designed to de-concentrate poverty and create viable, safe communities have the potential to mitigate the vulnerability of any single population to the dangers of a tragedy such as Katrina. Race and the Casualties of Hurricane Katrina

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Just a Mardi Gras Charade

By Rudolph Lewis

The forest night is domed in dark purple

as stars twinkle crisp & clear. The moon rises

after midnight. My head refuses a pillow.

On a New Orleans internet radio

station old blues records keep on spinning.

The river & lake keep rising, bursting

through levees; our people are still screaming,

still wading, waving from roof tops, to be

rescued. Water, water everywhere, none

to quench the thirst; food, food is everywhere

but there is none for black stomachs, babies

cry, no ears can hear, some hearts get harder.

Here in this forest on dry land, it’s just

a dream. This can’t be in America.

18 August 2006

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created 16 September 2005

I want to go home / I don't won't to go nowhere else. -- N'awlins Survivor, Bronzeville, Texas

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development plans to tear down more than 4,600 public housing units in four complexes across the city -- while replacing them with private, mixed-income developments that will set aside only 744 apartments for low-income people. The decision to demolish these public complexes, which suffered only relatively minor damage during Hurricane Katrina, comes as rents across the city have doubled since the storm -- as has the homeless population. The activists are asking concerned citizens across the country to join the actions in New Orleans or to take action at home. According to a statement from Kali Akuno, director of the Stop the Demolition Coalition: What is at stake with the demolition of public housing in New Orleans is more than just the loss of housing units: it destroys any possibility for affordable housing in New Orleans for the foreseeable future. Without access to affordable housing, thousands of working class New Orleanians will be denied their human right to return.— Southern Studies

Rootsblog -- Katrina Commentary: The Players & Complexities of The Game

Call for Artists and Photographers

from New Orleans to Put Together a Show

By Chuck Siler

Museum Curator

Katrina New Orleans Flood Index Conversations with Kind Friends

A thousand voices / agonizing in deep / water with no / relief in sight -- "Exodus" Artwork by Charles Siler, N'awlins Survivor

Archdiocese Stuns Oldest African-American Parish with Closure

Archbishop Removes Beloved Black Priest Rev. Jerome LeDoux, DWM

from St. Augustine Parish, New Orleans Black Catholic Church

The Real Looting by Robert D. Bullard and Beverly Wright

Hurricane Looting Not Over Yet by Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

Deliverance from Marksville (Melinda Barton) New Orleans a Ghost Town? (Bill Quigley)

Return to Pontchartrain Park (Gwendolyn Thompkins)

Leaving the Poor Behind Again! ( Bill Quigley)

Hurricane Katrina: Did the Chinese Help

the Bush Administration Oppress African Americans?

By Kam Hei Tsuei

Chinatown Blues

Plan Designed to Take Treme for the Benefit of Rich People? Report on Holdouts by Jarvis Q. DeBerry

The Great New Orleans Land Grab: The 17th Street Canal levy was breeched on purpose?

The Difference Between being Displaced and a Refugee

as it Relates to 'African American Refugee': Debate after Katrina

By Tamara K. Nopper

On Rumors against Black Life & History — David Carr, "More Horrible Than Truth"

Responsibility of Blacks in Cyberspace An Open Letter to E. Ethelbert Miller By Rudolph Lewis

We were never absent / or invisible / we were always here In Shadows There Are Men

Rootsblog -- Katrina Commentary: The Players & Complexities of The Game

Magical Negro: The Root

Where’s the Afrospiritual Practitioners?

"effective instruments of empowerment"

Rootwork By Patricia R. Schroeder Rootwork and the Prophetic Impulse

Questioning the Bones (Rudy) Everybody's got to sew, sew, sew . . . -- Big Chief Monk Boudreaux

Was the flooding of New Orleans a terrorist attack on an American city, like 9/11?: New Orleans, LA -- Divers inspecting the ruptured levee walls surrounding New Orleans found something that piqued their interest: Burn marks on underwater debris chunks from the broken levee wall!

One diver, a member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, saw the burn marks and knew immediately what caused them. He secreted a small chunk of the cement inside his diving suit and later arranged for it to be sent to trusted military friends at a The U.S. Army Forensic Laboratory at Fort Gillem, Georgia for testing. . . . If these allegations prove true, the ruptured levee which flooded New Orleans was a deliberate act of mass destruction perpetrated by someone with access to military- grade UNDERWATER high explosives. More details as they become available . . . . . Michael Treis

Message to Black Leaders: "When you go down on the battlefield / You better not kneel, you better not run." (The Bones Have Spoken)

A thousand voices / agonizing in deep / water with no / relief in sight -- "Exodus" Artwork by Charles Siler, N'awlins Survivor

Lyrics to George Bush Doesn't Care About Black PeopleBy Legendary K.O.

Who Gains from our Loss: the heavily armed thugs of Wackenhut Security and Blackwater USA to the often well-meaning but ineffective bureaucrats of Red Cross and FEMA, to the Scientology missionaries crowding the shelters, to journalists and disaster-gazers taking up a chunk of available housing, to the major multinationals such as Halliburton, working in concert with rich elites from Uptown New Orleans seeking partners with which to exploit this tragedy. . . .

Rosa Clemente [from shelters in Baton Rouge to Houston] spoke of stores around the area of the shelters that have signs saying that shelter residents are not welcome, and she said that people in the shelters are completely cut off from news about the outside world. . . .

This militarization of New Orleans stands in stark contradiction to the people's efforts at reconstruction. The Common Ground Collective, in the Algiers area of New Orleans, has built a community health center and food distribution network serving, according to organizer Malik Rahim's estimate, about 16,000 people in New Orleans Parish and surrounding areas such as Plaquemines and Jefferson Parishes. "Have the police helped us?" asked one local organizer, "no, they've stood in our way at every turn." -- Jordan Flaherty, "Disasters" Black Leaders Also Failed New Orleans Poor -- Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Eh, La Bas, Cherie!

A Letter from Mackie Blanton

Katrina killed those already dying!

By Joe Williams III

Rudy's Amazing Facts -- Speculation on the future of New Orleans

The mostly African-American neighborhoods of New Orleans are largely underwater, and the people who lived there have scattered across the country. . . ."People can't survive a year temporarily— they'll go somewhere, get a job and never come back," said Calvin Fayard, a wealthy white plaintiffs' lawyer. . . .

Mr. Reiss [James Reiss, descendent of an old-line Uptown family] acknowledges that shrinking parts of the city occupied by hardscrabble neighborhoods would inevitably result in fewer poor and African-American residents.

Black politicians have controlled City Hall here since the late 1970s, but the wealthy white families of New Orleans have never been fully eclipsed. Stuffing campaign coffers with donations, these families dominate the city's professional and executive classes, including the white-shoe law firms, engineering offices, and local shipping companies. White voters often act as a swing bloc, propelling blacks or Creoles into the city's top political jobs. That was the case with Mr. Nagin, who defeated another African American to win the mayoral election in 2002.

Creoles, as many mixed-race residents of New Orleans call themselves, dominate the city's white-collar and government ranks and tend to ally themselves with white voters on issues such as crime and education, while sharing many of the same social concerns as African-American voters. Though the flooding took a toll on many Creole neighborhoods, it's likely that Creoles will return to the city in fairly large numbers, since many of them have the means to do so.

— Christopher Cooper, "Speculation on the future of New Orleans..."The Wall Street Journal (9/8/05)

"New Orleans: Second Line -- Walking in Water" Artwork by Charles Siler, N'awlins Survivor

We Are No Longer the Refugees & Immigrants Blacks in Need of Katrina Refugee Housing & Other People of Color (Charles Chea)

Read Newsweek's The Other America (9/28)

Problem with lack of information--While basic needs -- food, water, clothing, shelter -- have been met with remarkable hospitality, the survivors of the hurricane inside the Astrodome complex say they continue to suffer from a lack of information. -- Joel Johnson

Read Newsweek's The Other America (9/28)

Katrina, Bush, and Capitalism Tea Party Anyone? (Mary Meekins)

"This is the bottom of the slave ship we are looking at." -- Jesse Jackson in New Orleans

Seige of New Orleans: FEMA deliberately withheld water to the people at the convention center because (and I paraphrase the head of the Red Cross) "If we give them water they won't leave." . . . . The orders are clear: "Empty the city, Cut off communications between the citizenry, and Protect private property." The result is a massive ethnic cleansing operation that will displace tens of thousands of poor, black residents and pave the way for Halliburton and other major Bush contributors to rebuild the city at taxpayer expense. This is the clearest illustration of class-based warfare we have seen to date, but we expect more will follow. -- Mike Whitney


Over 150 dogs and other animals weJewelry & Watches re evacuated from an animal hospital after their owners had left town without them	A truckload of evacuees arrives at the Metairie evacuation center outside New Orleans

September 14, 2004: Whipping winds and walloping waves, strengthened to a Category 5 storm, lashed godless Cuba. It was Hurricane Ivan. It was the biggest storm in living memory. No casualties. Not one single causality.

August 29, 2005: A category 5 storm, assigned the name Hurricane Katrina, hits god-fearing USA and sinks a whole city. Why this discrepancy?

The reason is simple. With military logistics, Cuba evacuated 1.3 million people, 10 per cent of its population, in the tobacco-growing province of Pinar del Rio in western Cuba.
--Farooq Sulehria A tale of two hurricanes Katrina New Orleans Flood Index

Effective Strategy (9/8/05) Read Newsweek's The Other America (9/28), an appeal to MIDDLE-CLASS AMERICA (the neo-con base)

Dear Rudy

While I think it appropriate that we not close our eyes to the racial implications and class interpretations of the man-made, ecological disaster in New Orleans, at the same time we must remind the white middle class and the white working class that this is not simply a problem of inner-city blacks and poor rednecks. The cynical neo-conservative leaders would like to have the white middle class believe that only poor black folks and trailer park whites are affected by this disaster.

This will allow them to continue with their destructive governmental practices, which serve the short-term interests of big business. The only way to mitigate the viciousness of this system is to convince the white middle class that they too are getting screwed. This was the strategy effectively utilized by the smartest black leaders during the Vietnam War. Middle America will not resist the government until they realize that government policies are harmful to Middle America. As long as they believe that the only victims are poor blacks and trailer park whites, they will never resist the Neo-cons.

As ever,

Wilson

After Katrina . . . (Latorial Faison) Where's Fats Domino? (Marvin X)

Blackwater Mercenaries in New Orleans: Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, are openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans. Some of the mercenaries say they have been "deputized" by the Louisiana governor. -- Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo, TruthOut Report

I am Alive message from Niyi Osundare, Nigerian Poet & Katrina Survivor

60 business people and public officials from New Orleans gathered in Dallas with Mayor Ray Nagin to discuss the future of the city. . . . One of [the] organizers [Dallas Sept. 10 meeting] was Nagin's Regional Transportation Authority chief, Jimmy Reiss, a white businessman who was quoted that week in the Wall Street Journal saying that some people who want to rebuild the city foresee a town with a new demographic of fewer poor people. To some in the city, the story painted an impression of an elitist cadre of white New Orleans leaders callous to the plight of the city's poor.

"It was an extremely unfortunate article," said Bill Hines, a lawyer and leader of the economic development group Greater New Orleans Inc. who attended the Dallas meeting.

The story enraged a number of black state lawmakers and New Orleans City Council members, including Council President Oliver Thomas, state Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans, and Sen. Diana Bajoie, both D-New Orleans, who confronted Nagin in a public meeting Sept. 12 at the state Capitol. They expressed concern that Nagin and the Dallas group of mostly white businessmen were coordinating a recovery program assuming that a large portion of poor African-Americans would be discouraged from returning to the city. -- Racial tension mars initial discussions Times-Picayune 9/18/05

Message to Black Leaders: "When you go down on the battlefield / You better not kneel, you better not run." (The Bones Have Spoken)

Katrina & Kalamu Creating Community in Cyberspace

New Orleans: The American Nightmare (Amin Sharif )