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Welcome to the era of boosterism in New Orleans. We are being bombarded with endless references to the "Katrina recovery," the glorious civic self- congratulation festival that has officials pointing to all the great things that are happening in the New Reconstruction. And certainly there are some great things happening, particularly the medical corridor along Canal Street that may eventually displace the crippled oil industry as the key economic force that drives the city.
Katrina, the hurricane that was about to hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005, actually missed the city, miraculously taking a hard right turn in the last hours before landfall. If New Orleans had gotten the direct hit that was forecast, we might well be telling an entirely different story today. The storm was gone and the sun was shining when the city started filling with floodwaters following the massive levee failure in the wake of Katrina.
The Army Corps of Engineers had built substandard levees along Lake Pontchartrain and the Industrial Canal, and the Bush administration had slashed maintenance funds for the levees. The water came over and through those facades and destroyed 80 percent of the city's housing. This great federal flood was followed by an even greater federal inaction in which the remaining population of New Orleans was left to rot for the better part of a week without food or water. Then the city experienced the great federal depopulation and occupation of the city by 30,000 troops. "Katrina" has erroneously become the shorthand historical place marker for this disaster, but we now know this was a man-made disaster, not a natural one.
The original Reconstruction after the Civil War was a time when former slaves were granted citizenship and exercised their political power at the voting booth until Jim Crow policies negated those gains. The New Reconstruction is a time when the ruling powers in government systematically depopulated New Orleans, removing some 100,000 African Americans from the city in the process. As musician Davis Rogan put it, the flood "allowed them to spin the clock faster, accomplishing 30 years of gentrification in 10 years."
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SUSAN COWSILL
Where did you live before Katrina and the flood?
We lived in Mid-City on S. Olympia.
Where did you go?
We started in Nashville and traveled around in our Kia Sedona from August until the next January.
Where do you live now?
Algiers Point.
What was the moment you knew you would come back to New Orleans?
We never entertained NOT coming back home. Coming back to New Orleans was the only thing keeping us going!
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