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  • From: -tg <tcgibson AT mindspring.com>
  • To: RTP-area local music and culture <ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Fwd: [CHEF MENTEUR] Death of an American City?
  • Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 19:51:47 -0500

If someone you know needs a reminder of what
Katrina was/is and what "her" devastation continues
to look like, there's an impressive documentary
(The Storm) available via PBS's Frontline.
A lot of raw footage, a lot of information about FEMA
(most of which was new to me) ...

You can read about it and even watch it online here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/storm/view/

Or, you can buy it here:
http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=2139075&cp&keywords=storm&searchId=10476211695&parentPage=search




Chris Calloway wrote:
i don't do something like this often, but please
indulge me because this is from an official friend of
ours and it's something that bothers me every single
day like nothing's ever bothered me before.

3


Subject: [CHEF MENTEUR] Death of an American City?
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 12:17:41 -0500


[...apologies for the non-show related mass
emailing, but this story is far more important than
some band playing somewhere some night...]

The story has dropped off the radar for most people,
but New Orleans is not coming back (at least not
quickly enough, even if parts of the city now have
power and the streets have been cleared) and not
getting the vital aid and protection that was
promised. Many people who were supportive during the
immediate aftermath do not realize what dire shape
the city is still in, and that the city's cultural,
economic and physical survival depends on people
putting pressure on the government to rebuild the
levees and help fund an economic and residential
comeback.
We can bail out multibillion dollar corporations and
third world countries, why not one of our own
cities? It is sickening.

Meanwhile the uninformed and the right-wing continue
to spread lies about New Orleans: that we're
spending levee money on Mardi Gras, that the levees
failed through no fault of the Army Corps of
Engineers, that there is no connection between
global warming and hurricanes, that New Orleans is
so corrupt that it's impossible to get money
directed to effective projects, and the worst lie of
all, perhaps, that the city has already come back
and doesn't need help as desperately as before.

All you have to do is take a drive through the Lower
9th Ward (which is so destroyed, it looks with no
exaggeration, like an atomic bomb has dropped on it)
and many other devastated areas in New Orleans, and
see for yourself a city that continues to lie in
ruins, the majority of its population still in
exile, shops closing down weeks after trying to
revive themselves, the City completely bankrupted by
the disaster and able to only make slight gestures
at recovery.
Perhaps most disgustingly, New Orleans is being
asked to justify its existence by some of the right
wing talking heads. As if any city in Texas or
California or New York would ever be. Anyone with
even part of a heart that has ever spent any time in
New Orleans knows why it must be preserved. But
others argue to allow a city that is almost an
entire historic zone, without question the most
interesting and unique city in the country,
birthplace of Jazz and one of the most important
ports, to simply wither and die. What they resent, I
am guessing is not the flood dangers, but the
uniqueness and freedom that exists in New Orleans.
New Orleans does not conform to the ideological
blueprint that the current Administration and
Congress have and they see this as an opportunity.

Please if you have any civic influence at all--as
theoretically as a citizen in a democracy we all
do--let your government know that New Orleans needs
the help of the entire country before it's too late.

mercibeaucoupd'etat,
chef menteur


---------------------------

"DEATH OF AN AMERICAN CITY"
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: December 11, 2005


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/opinion/11sun1.html

We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a
conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is
willing to move back or honest paralysis over
difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a
major American city will die, leaving nothing but a
few shells for tourists to visit like a museum.

We said this wouldn't happen. President Bush said it
wouldn't happen. He stood in Jackson Square and
said, "There is no way to imagine America without
New Orleans." But it has been over three months
since Hurricane Katrina struck and the city is in
complete shambles.

There are many unanswered questions that will take
years to work out, but one is make-or-break and
needs to be dealt with immediately. It all boils
down to the levee system. People will clear garbage,
live in tents, work their fingers to the bone to
reclaim homes and lives, but not if they don't
believe they will be protected by more than patches
to the same old system that failed during the deadly
storm. Homeowners, businesses and insurance
companies all need a commitment before they will
stake their futures on the city.

At this moment the reconstruction is a rudderless
ship. There is no effective leadership that we can
identify. How many people could even name the
president's liaison for the reconstruction effort,
Donald Powell? Lawmakers need to understand that for
New Orleans the words "pending in Congress" are a
death warrant requiring no signature.

The rumbling from Washington that the proposed cost
of better levees is too much has grown louder.
Pretending we are going to do the necessary work
eventually, while stalling until the next hurricane
season is upon us, is dishonest and cowardly. Unless
some clear, quick commitments are made, the
displaced will have no choice but to sink roots in
the alien communities where they landed.

The price tag for protection against a Category 5
hurricane, which would involve not just stronger and
higher levees but also new drainage canals and
environmental restoration, would very likely run to
well over $32 billion. That is a lot of money. But
that starting point represents just 1.2 percent of
this year's estimated $2.6 trillion in federal
spending, which actually overstates the case, since
the cost would be spread over many years. And it is
barely one-third the cost of the $95 billion in tax
cuts passed just last week by the House of
Representatives.

Total allocations for the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan and the war on terror have topped $300
billion. All that money has been appropriated as the
cost of protecting the nation from terrorist
attacks. But what was the worst possible case we
fought to prevent?
Losing a major American city.

"We'll not just rebuild, we'll build higher and
better," President Bush said that night in
September. Our feeling, strongly, is that he was
right and should keep to his word. We in New York
remember well what it was like for the country to
rally around our city in a desperate hour. New York
survived and has flourished. New Orleans can too.

Of course, New Orleans's local and state officials
must do their part as well, and demonstrate the
political and practical will to rebuild the city
efficiently and responsibly. They must, as quickly
as possible, produce a comprehensive plan for
putting New Orleans back together. Which schools
will be rebuilt and which will be absorbed? Which
neighborhoods will be shored up? Where will the
roads go? What about electricity and water lines? So
far, local and state officials have been derelict at
producing anything that comes close to a coherent
plan. That is unacceptable.

The city must rise to the occasion. But it will not
have that opportunity without the levees, and only
the office of the president is strong enough to goad
Congress to take swift action. Only his voice is
loud enough to call people home and convince them
that commitments will be met.

Maybe America does not want to rebuild New Orleans.
Maybe we have decided that the deficits are too
large and the money too scarce, and that it is
better just to look the other way until the city
withers and disappears. If that is truly the case,
then it is incumbent on President Bush and Congress
to admit it, and organize a real plan to help the
dislocated residents resettle into new homes. The
communities that opened their hearts to the Katrina
refugees need to know that their short-term act of
charity has turned into a permanent commitment.

If the rest of the nation has decided it is too
expensive to give the people of New Orleans a chance
at renewal, we have to tell them so. We must tell
them we spent our rainy-day fund on a costly
stalemate in Iraq, that we gave it away in tax cuts
for wealthy families and shareholders. We must tell
them America is too broke and too weak to rebuild
one of its great cities.

Our nation would then look like a feeble giant
indeed. But whether we admit it or not, this is our
choice to make. We decide whether New Orleans lives
or dies.
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