Betrayal of the Big Easy

Hurricane Katrina forced out New Orleans's poor residents, and developers don't want them back

Giles Fraser
Tuesday January 2, 2007
The Guardian

It's well over a year since the levees collapsed and billions of gallons of water flooded into New Orleans, trashing the city and displacing several thousand residents, most of them black and poor. Many may not return. For Hurricane Katrina produced acres of empty real estate that are being eyed up as a promising opportunity for corporate developers. Mayor Ray Nagin wants the new New Orleans to be "market driven". The Episcopalian Bishop of Louisiana thinks differently. Once a conservative, he was rebaptised with dirty water. He now speaks for many in condemning the mayor's words as "a blow against the poor and needy", and says developers threaten "the soul of the city".

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Last August two-thirds of New Orleans was under water. In low-lying areas - such as the lower ninth ward, where many of the city's musicians originate - almost no reconstruction work is being done. Insurance companies won't cover new buildings unless the levees are reinforced to withstand another big storm, and the government won't cough up the $30bn-plus the work is expected to cost. So the powers that be are effectively abandoning the lower-lying areas, offering precious little hope of return to the Katrina diaspora spread over the south. A city that had a population of nearly half a million has been reduced by 300,000. Some are whispering that this is a way of rebalancing the city's ethnic mix, which has been majority black for some time.

Dr Courtney Cowart, who runs the Diocese of Louisiana's disaster relief team, escaped from the shadow of the World Trade Centre on 9/11. She cannot help but compare the government's response to both tragedies, noting that nothing like the financial commitment made to New York is being offered to New Orleans. The Big Easy, disliked by conservatives because of its reputation for debauchery, is in danger of being ignored.

Debauched and religious. In this most Christian of cities, the churches are forming powerful alliances with local community groups to spearhead the fight against mammon. For this is a place where the language of the Bible seems to have daily application. Those who experienced the scale of this disaster wouldn't think the Bible's apocalyptic literature fanciful. They have lived it. Outside the shell of an old Baptist church in the lower ninth, a scruffy piece of board is scrawled with the prophecy from Ezekiel in which dead bones are reformed into living human form. "Can these dry bones live?" is the question.

In the increasingly lawless central district, the resurrection is given a hedonistic inflection through the tradition of the second line. The first line is the sombre procession to a funeral. The second line is the exuberant, jazzy, band-led, umbrella-popping return. Most Sunday afternoons, thousands gather to dance their way through the wreckage, reclaiming the streets for music and laughter.

Last month I watched as the second line jigged down Washington Street and came to rest outside one of the city's social housing projects, declared out of bounds by the civic authorities. The music intensified. A huge number of the projects are fenced off, even though many received only superficial damage. It's surely no coincidence that some are in areas of prime real estate. Residents were evicted at gunpoint during the storm and have not been allowed back.

Mark Twain said there were only three cities in the US with any real culture: Boston, San Francisco and New Orleans. What a tragedy if this once-great city is to be saved from the waters only to be destroyed by developers set to rebuild another generic US metropolis, designed for profit and not for people.

· Dr Giles Fraser is the vicar of Putney and a lecturer in philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford giles.fraser@btinternet.com