For most people, Hurricane Katrina ended when the winds died and the reporters left. For the people who once lived in the Ninth Ward district, and the other low-lying areas that were swamped by the floodwaters after the levees broke, the nightmare lives on. Predominantly African-American and all of them working poor or middle class with little or no safety net for disasters of this kind, they are scattered throughout the United States waiting for the word telling them they can return to their homes.
More and more it looks like it's a word that will never come. It turns out it's far cheaper to house people in temporary shelters and displaced person facilities (most countries use the term refugee camps – but you only have refugees in the Third World not in the United States of America) then to rebuild housing and infrastructure for folks who don't have money. In fact, now that the inhabitants of those areas have been forced to evacuate the governments at all levels are talking about the golden opportunity they have to revitalize the downtown core of New Orleans.
Instead of housing projects, neighbourhood bars, small businesses, and schools, they envision a Ninth Ward of convention centres, condominiums, resort style nightclubs, and fancy restaurants. It will all be lovingly restored for that authentic "New Orleans" feel, so the well heeled tourist will know what it "must have been really like". The only thing missing will be the people who gave New Orleans her heart and soul – her inhabitants.
With the mayor of New Orleans saying, why should we rebuild when no one is coming back to live here, and the former inhabitants saying, how can we live there when there is no place to live, the inevitable will happen. Temporary displacement will become permanent without anyone noticing and another piece of America's heart will be sold to the highest bidder. If you don't think that's possible, why has the Louisiana government already granted private charters to all but four of the schools that formally serviced the former Ninth Ward? They don't expect anybody to return.
.jpg?t=20120527181101)
Article comments
1 - Mark Saleski
For those who still think what groups like Hall & Oates play has anything to do with soul...
in fact, they do.