News Roundup

New Orleans Must Be On Candidates’ Agendas

The Capital Times (Madison, WI)
October 4, 2007
Jeanne Carpenter, guest columnist

More than two years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans continues to struggle with rebuilding homes, hospitals and businesses and at the same time is undergoing a colossal shift in the cultural makeup of the city.

As a member of the Wisconsin Rural Leadership Program, I joined 34 other leaders-in-training and spent seven days recently in New Orleans, meeting with state and community leaders to discuss the aftereffects of the hurricane. We also spent a day at a work site, helping to remove mold-covered walls and interiors from a home in the 6th Ward and helping paint another home.

One of the most important things we learned was that the majority of those affected by the aftereffects of Hurricane Katrina were middle-class homeowners and taxpayers. Whether you lived in the Lower 9th Ward, which was predominantly African-American, or uptown, which was a mixture of whites, Creoles and African-Americans, Katrina knew no color boundaries. Thousands of families lost their homes to floodwaters.

Today, the majority of those homeowners are still struggling to navigate the federal bureaucracy and rebuild their lives.

One of the most disturbing things we learned was that the Red Cross was not allowed to enter the city during the five days after the levees broke. They stood at the city limits, wanting to give people water, food and medical service. Who did their orders come from? The federal government.

The feds were working on their own evacuation plan, which was to wait until they had enough buses to evacuate all 20,000 people from the Superdome and Convention Center at the same time. It took five days for that to happen. In the meantime, you know what happened. Those who had no way to leave the city sat in the baking sun and suffered. Several died of dehydration and lack of medical care.

We met with a number of elected officials, including Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, a New Orleans City Council member. Her district, which includes the Upper 9th Ward and Gentilly neighborhood, transformed into some of the city’s most devastated neighborhoods after more than 12 feet of water poured into parts of it.

Today, with the city dotted with FEMA trailers and hundreds of front doors still marked with a spray-painted “X” that includes the number of bodies found inside, Hedge-Morrell continues to work with her constituents and help them move home. Her district lost the majority of its taxpayers and homeowners. In an emotional speech, she told us she felt she had even lost her city.

We met with Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, who is pushing for Congress to appoint an “8/29 Commission” to investigate what went wrong before and after the levees broke. There were as many as 28 breaches in the levees around the city in the hours after Hurricane Katrina hit. Weeks later, more than 1,800 were dead, hundreds of homes were simply washed away, and thousands more were uninhabitable.

We heard from Lance Hill, executive director of the Southern Institute for Education and Research at Tulane University. He remained in the city during the hurricane, and afterward made four trips to the Superdome to deliver water, baby formula and other items to those waiting to be evacuated. He went back a fifth time only to be ordered to retreat at gunpoint by National Guard members who were “protecting” those stranded at the Superdome.

It is still remarkably easy to witness the physical destruction the breaking of the levees caused. Homes are abandoned, businesses shuttered, hospitals torn down. Less noticeable, however, is the effect the disaster has had on the cultural makeup of the city.

New Orleans is emerging with a white political majority, where African-Americans once comprised 70 percent of the population. In addition, we witnessed firsthand that the trust among the city’s ethnic groups is gone. Crime is skyrocketing. City services are still limited. I talked with an elderly lady whose house burned down last month because when firefighters arrived, they could not find a working fire hydrant to which they could hook their hoses.

We need to have higher expectations for the leaders we elect and hold them to those standards. We need to work with our national and local leaders to make sure America does not forget the city of New Orleans. This should be on the platform of every presidential candidate. Please join me in ensuring the people of New Orleans are not forgotten.

Jeanne Carpenter lives in Oregon and is a member of the Wisconsin Rural Leadership Program.