I’ve mentioned the program used by HouseRaising to help manage building or rebuiilding of homes. The entire concept seems good to me.
At 6 P.M. on the 21st, HouseRaising has put together an event for folks to meet, talk, and learn a little something about what they can do to help New Orleanians. Place: The Royal Senestra, 300 Bourbon St. parking is available for those coming to the event.
Fortune Magazine had a piece today concerning the rebuilding of the city. Most of these details we know, and maybe there’s some eye openers for us. The time that struck me was that the author lays almost all of the blame on the various levels of Guv’mit and not on the people of the affected area.
Excerpt-
Yet it was here, late last year, that Frierson and several women of her acquaintance first planned to attack the powers that be. In this case the powers were the political establishments in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Washington, D.C. – establishments the women believed bore much of the responsibility both for the city’s collapse before Katrina last August 29 and for the paralytic pace of rebuilding.
Thin, blond, and blue-eyed, Frierson bears some resemblance, in her blazer and scarf, to a younger Nancy Reagan. For people who don’t live in New Orleans, her place in society might be summed up by her reputation as the city’s most successful residential real estate broker – the person to see about buying and selling its finest homes. Or one might note that at its annual Mint Julep Party the Junior League anointed Frierson the 2006 “Sustainer of the Year.”
In New Orleans terms, though, her elevated social status is best indicated by a single fact: Louis L. Frierson, her husband of 42 years, is a former Rex, the King of Carnival, the Monarch of Merriment, who headlines the grandiose private ball that officially closes Mardi Gras.
For years the city’s debs-and-dinner-parties set was proudly insular, its attention focused on its own affairs even as the city decayed. Corruption, inefficiency, and crime were the subject of ironic jokes over cocktails, not protests; the city’s disamenities were treated, all too often, as part of its storied charm. When New Orleans almost entirely missed the ’90s boom, it elicited little public dismay.
“We make a joke that’s not a joke,” says Elliott Stonecipher, a well-known political analyst in Shreveport. “Nobody in Louisiana knows what noblesse oblige is. New Orleans is a hotbed of civic apathy – the only city in the country where rich, powerful people don’t have their fingers in everything.”
And another-
It is wholly fitting that safeguarding New Orleans has fallen to its indigenous business class. But the lack of effective response by the political elite – and the lack of public concern about its inanition – is amazing.
Failing to rebuild a viable city would have consequences far beyond Louisiana. New Orleans’ two ports are, by tonnage, the nation’s biggest. They need to be – the region handles a third of the nation’s seafood and more than a quarter of its oil and natural gas. Some 4,000 oil and natural-gas platforms, linked by 33,000 miles of pipeline, spread out along the Louisiana coast. Among the facilities are the four largest refineries in the Western Hemisphere. Southern Louisiana is easily as important to the nation’s energy supply as the Persian Gulf.
And another-
Even as Louisiana politicians fulminated, LRA board member Sean Reilly met with Powell in January at his base in Amarillo. “We went to a luncheon place with a paper tablecloth,” says Reilly, a Baton Rouge executive who with his brother runs Lamar Advertising, the nation’s third-largest billboard firm.
Reilly was a former state legislator who had given up politics to concentrate on his business and his family. When Katrina hit, he jumped back in the fray. Reilly and Powell “pulled out pens and started drawing all over the table in terms of the numbers and categories of homeowners that needed to be covered and the philosophical choices that needed to be made.”
A central disagreement was the scope of federal responsibility. After providing aid for emergency services, the administration wanted to focus on the levee system, which Washington had long ago accepted as its purview, and on homeowners lacking flood insurance outside the officially designated floodplain – who had, at least in part, based their decision not to buy flood insurance on the grounds that the feds had stated their area was not at risk.
Most New Orleanians had a different view of Uncle Sam’s role. In a phrase heard again and again in the city, Katrina was a disaster made in Washington, not New Orleans. In most places water did not “overtop” the levees – the levees were broken by a storm surge they were supposed to withstand. In May a research team sponsored by the National Science Foundation and co-led by Robert Bea, a University of California at Berkeley engineering professor, concluded that these breaches, where the levees failed to meet design specifications, were responsible for four-fifths of the water that inundated greater New Orleans.
“The levees were designed incorrectly and built incorrectly,” Bea says. A former chief engineer for Shell, Bea designed scores of offshore oil platforms – “I’ve spent my whole professional life with hurricanes, so I’m kind of blunt about them.” Absent design and construction failures, he says, Katrina would have caused nothing more than “a few wet carpets and missing shingles.” (A forthcoming report by Louisiana State reaches a similar verdict.)
At the lunch with Powell, the LRA’s Reilly argued that “if you live behind a federally warranted levee and that levee fails, you shouldn’t be penalized if you don’t have flood insurance,” because the government has effectively promised householders that they won’t need insurance for those circumstances. Therefore, Washington had a moral obligation to all New Orleanians damaged by the flood, even the un- or underinsured.
We little folks here in New Orleans have some tough choices coming in the near future. This article lays it out pretty straight. The thing is: do we, the New Orleanians have it in us to fight back against those of our leaders that are in many ways ignoring our needs? I think we do.
Oh my yes! The so very “democratic” UNOP Plan… freakin’ B/S!!! I can fuck their voting system 10,000 ways from Sunday.
This is another facet of the screw-job that the people of New Orleans are getting from the State and our local morons in our city guv’mit. These monies were given to the people as part of the Reparations due to the failure of the Feds’ botched levee job, and they are skewing the system for those whom Congress DID NOT INTEND THESE FUNDS FOR.
Alan at Think New Orleans has the story straight on the latest round in the battle:
The citizens of New Orleans have been asked to choose the planners that will guide them through the process of developing a city wide plan for rebuilding. The method to record the response of the neighborhoods is an online poll. The online poll is open to fraud.
It is a childish implementation of a poll, easily gamed, impossible to verify.
This voting is being conducted under the contract of an architectural firm, Concordia, LLC. It presents and obvious conflict of interest.
Any neighborhood, dissatisfied with the results of a process that hinges upon this poll, can reasonably insist that the results of this poll be discarded.
I’m in a mood today. Our boy cat had an orchy, and Button dropped her litter. The house is a mess, and I have two containers of food salvaged from the flooded house to put on the shelves. (I’m also running low on alcohol.)
I woke up to a message asking for info about our Mayor’s new pronouncement: over 2,000 “blighted” properties have been offered to developers. The damn city site no longer functions when it comes to the listings. (I’ve used it before when trying to create a Trans-friendly shelter.) I can’t pull anything up.
Later in the day I tried to access the city’s portal for details of their “Katrina celebration”. Same shit… cannot open the page.
Our local gov’mit has to go away. I tried for two years to create a shelter from the blighted housing list, and the ass holes just gave away over 2,000 of the properties? Fuck them. Where is the freakin’ Humanity in that jesture? People in the Lower Ninth might have wanted those places, but they were given to developers? This cannot stand.
Damn it… there are many good deserving people out there. There’s a need for shelters, safe places, and these properties were given to fucking developers? Jerks who make tons of money for a tiny bit of work? Sweet zombie Jezus, I’ve worked my ass off for years, gave time in service to my country, helped folks that the “normal” people wouldn’t get near. All I wanted to do was create a shelter for Trans folks, saving them the indignity of being housed in shelters without consideration of how they Identify themselves, and these freakin’ properties are given over to developers?
The same thing goes for battered women’s shelters. Youth houses, sanctuaries, and the places are just handed over to money pigs. I’m losing my mind over this.
This is the difference between my being a Progressive and those stupid fucks that call themselves Conservatives. I look for ways to make life better, they just want to return to the B&W Eisenhower Era. I know that I’m expendable, they think the world will stop spinning the second they die. I know that I’m not important…. I’m just a player for a time. They think they rule. I live life, and they just exist to pile up the money which they cannot take with them when they are taken to Hell.
Mister Nagin, rescend the sale of these blighted houses, offer them to those who need them. Stop screwing us.
Sinn Fein!
UNOP can kiss my panty-clad ass. I will not deal with money pigs and carpet baggers.
Fuck these ass-holes… they are trying to suck the Federal teat whilst we locals do what must be done. We know what must be done. It’s in our blood.
WE ARE NEW ORLEANS!
Screw these damn think tanks. We have been here for almost 300 years. (Don’t ya’s think we learned a few things?) We know what we have to do.
The way to rebuild New Orleans? Ask the folks who live here. Don’t give us your planning shit: this is our home. Fuck you corporate shits for trying to apply D.C. Beltway sensibilities to our realities, you can’t do it, and most of America cannot stomach it.
Okay, I’m a grassroots gal, but I’ve pegged the shits. Trust me, I don’t fuck around.
I AM one of the ones one that NW Carrolloton need.
Morwen
This message is relayed in support of the NW Carrollton Association:
This song has been driving me crazy all night… won’t go away:
LAND OF CONFUSION- Genesis 1977
Â
I must’ve dreamed a thousand dreams
Been haunted by a million screams
But I can hear the marching feet
They’re moving into the street.
Now did you read the news today
They say the danger’s gone away
But I can see the fire’s still alight
There burning into the night.
There’s too many men
Too many people
Making too many problems
And not much love to go round
Can’t you see
This is a land of confusion.
This is the world we live in
And these are the hands we’re given
Use them and let’s start trying
To make it a place worth living in.
Ooh Superman where are you now
When everything’s gone wrong somehow
The men of steel, the men of power
Are losing control by the hour.
This is the time
This is the place
When we look for the future
But there’s not much love to go round
Tell me why, this is a land of confusion.
This is the world we live in
And these are the hands we’re given
Use them and let’s start trying
To make it a place worth living in.
I remember long ago -
Ooh when the sun was shining
Yes and the stars were bright
We walked through the night
And the sound of your laughter
As I held you tight
So long ago –
I won’t be coming home tonight
My generation will put it right
We’re not just making promises
That we know, we’ll never keep.
Too many men
There’s too many people
Making too many problems
And not much love to go round
Just tell my why
This is a land of confusion.
Now this is the world we live in
And these are the hands we’re given
Use them and let’s start trying
To make it a place worth living in.
This is the world we live in
And these are the names we’re given
Stand up and let’s start showing
Just where our lives are going to.
Phil Collins wrote this during the last days of Detante to reflect his dissatisfaction with the rulers of both sides of the Cold War. I see this as a perfect illustration of what we all here on the Gulf, and New Orleans in particular, face every day. We are in a war, a cultural war, a war of values.
We live in a little part of the world that is very different from the rest of Amerika. Our slice of Life is not exactly like that of the outsiders. It’s not Civic pride (Heaven forbid!), but a sense of what we are a part of: that which is as if the Spanish moss grows upon our limbs, the Delta mud cakes on our feet, breathing the heavy air and stirring a bubbling cauldron of gumbo. The folks in our lives gather around… the buzz of voices is unstoppable. People dance in enticing ways… children run around in circles away from the adults. The smoke from the cook fires drift lazily to heaven.
Is our culture an anachronism? I don’t think so. It’s like so many cultures I’ve witnessed whilst travelling the world. Here in New Orleans, all of us are Creole, a living culture. The world can go to shit and we will still be here.
The oil flow stops and there goes the great cities. The highway system will become unused, people will not be able to reconnect with roots, can’t escape the living hell around them. They will be confronted with having to make real connections with the folks around them. Re-invent the social wheel, so to speak.
That will never happen here. I’ve only been home for four years, no family in the area, and there is so much Spanish moss growing on me… blows my mind. Like most others, I’m stuck in the hot Delta mud. We all are. New Orleans grows on you. It fills you, and then you cannot stop living here. Yes, we are fairly poor, have crooked politicians, but we have each other.
Walk down the streets in most of our towns and watch the little kindnesses, the recognitions that we are a part of our whole: New Orleans or the Gulf. Imagine walking into a bar and seeing a Creole shrimper, a gator-trapping Cajun, a Mexican worker, a Drag Queen, two lesbians, a professor and a transsexual having an indepth conversation about the various forms of Jambalaya or the Blues. Where your bartender answers to Miss Love. And then you can get on a bicycle and speed through the Quarter and the Marigny saying hi to folks you know even at 4 A.M.
Stroll down any street in the city, and you will see a Granny sitting on her porch: “How are you today Ma’am?”, “I’m fine honey-child. How about you?”, “I’m doing good Ma’am… take care.” She may invite you to her porch for some ice tea or lemonade, pretty much no matter who you are. I know this to be fact here.
Now this is why this is the Summer of Our Discontent. We are in very grave danger of of being destroyed by benign neglect. We are 35 days from the anniversary of the levees breaking. Our streets are a mess, two thirds of us are still in other parts of the country… many of us cannot start working on our homes yet, and the few others here need reparations for their losses. Most of our Medical/Psych facilities are gone. Same goes for our retailers.
Streets are littered with garbage and construction waste. Little white trailers abound, sans power. Broken trees and street lamps are everywhere. It rains and streets flood. If something catches fire, it takes airdrops of water to fight the conflagration. Schools are fenced off, broken windows and all.
The projects are slated to be torn down, even when the displaced are willing to live there because it means being HOME.
Our levees are still not up to par, and the Corps is falling behind their protection timetable every day. The Administration guts the Corps’ report on the failure of the levees in order to continue their funding of an unjust war. FEMA keeps scaring folks with announcements of ending rental aid in foreign cities. Many of us are going broke trying to restore our lives and homes as the State drags it’s feet. Our local guv’mit plans a freakin’ glittery Gala celebration for the anniversary of the storm and flood while people are in gutted, un-powered homes, in the heat and swarms of mosquitos, hoping to be able to finish the repairs.
All the while, we are entering the danger time for this hurricane season.
This didn’t happen in NYC after 9/11. Same goes for San Francisco post Loma Prieta. (Iknow, I was there.) Why is this?
We are an island of sanity in a B/S sea of Southern conservatism. This is Bush’s back-handed way of fucking us for not supporting him. (The Bay Area suffered a similar fate under Raygun and Daddy Bush for their voting habits.) The PTB want goose-steppers in this town. They can come and “sin” all they want, but we will vote for reprobates and criminals of the GOP persuasion.
My thought on this? ” FUCK YOU!, TWICE!”Â
We ARE New Orleans, and this is the Summer of Our Discontent. You have been warned Fuckmooks.
I picked this up from TruthOut. Nice little film concerning the bad dealings of HANO over the fate of the St. Bernard projects.
Also, it shows the tenacity of the tenents in getting back their homes in a New Orleans’ style.
This could be something that we NOLA Bloggers could help support via our work during the Rising Tide Convention:
“Survivors of Hurricane Katrina and the People’s Organizing Committee are organizing a Come Back Home Campaign for the week of the one-year anniversary of the devastating hurricane. Displaced survivors who are living all over the country will gather in Washington, DC from August 24th through 26th. They will pitch tents and camp out on the federal government to demand their right to return home. On August 27th and 28th, these survivors will be pitch their tents in Baton Rouge, LA, in front of the state capitol to put pressure on the state government of Louisiana for their right to return home. On August 29th, 2006, the anniversary of the Katrina Disaster, survivors will make their demands to return home heard by the city council of New Orleans, and they will camp out on city hall.”
Other Links-
This is certainly good for the rebuilding of the city. I’m glad the the LRA is not holding up the distribution of the Block Grants to homeowners pending a citywide Master Plan.
The first excerpt explains the LRA’s part, and the second concerns some of the Neighborhood Planning Associations.
“Work on a combined recovery plan for New Orleans neighborhoods should be complete by December and could later gain the force of law if it prompts major changes to the city’s zoning ordinance or master land-use plan, officials said.
The project’s completion is scheduled for December, months after the Louisiana Recovery Authority is expected to begin doling out billions of dollars in rehabilitation grants and buyouts to individual homeowners, but that should not be cause for concern in New Orleans, said David Voelker, an LRA board member heavily involved in negotiations with city officials.
“They’re able to get them (grants) on the same timetable as before,” he said. “Most of those (homeowners) by now have a pretty good idea of what they want to do, so there’s not reason to hold them up.”
He added, however, that as the neighborhood-specific planning effort plays out through the fall, it may help homeowners still struggling with rebuilding choices.
‘Pivotal step’
Louisiana Recovery Authority officials have fretted that slow neighborhood planning in New Orleans left a gaping hole in their work on a regional blueprint for recovery. But Andy Kopplin, the agency’s executive director, on Wednesday praised negotiations for the so-called Unified New Orleans Neighborhood Plan.
“Our job at the LRA is not to plan for the vision of New Orleans,” Kopplin said.”
and
“The planning program will take into account independent planning efforts launched early in some neighborhoods, including Broadmoor, Gentilly and Lakeview. A flurry of planning initiatives launched in Gentilly through the Gentilly Civic Improvement Association, and affecting nearly two dozen neighborhoods, make that part of town a model for the citywide effort, officials said.
Decisions that neighborhood residents are now making on rebuilding their homes will influence planning for infrastructure improvements, whether they involve water lines or transit service, Bingler said.”
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