Well, its been two years since Katrina put the City of New Orleans down for the count, with a lot of help from clueless local and state officials like Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco. The American people, as is their custom, opened up their hearts and wallets to the City to help it rebuild. Private citizens donated millions of dollars as well as weeks of labor and even more millions of dollars worth of materials. The federal government has set aside 114 Billion dollars for use in rebuilding New Orleans.

So, what kind of progress has New Orleans made? Apparently, the people of New Orleans don’t think much has been made.

While some residents have rebuilt neighborhoods, long-term infrastructure projects have been slower to materialize. New Orleans’ population has returned to 67% of its pre-Katrina level of 300,000, but thousands remain scattered throughout the region.

As Bush read his statement, an estimated 1,000 people marched in protest from the Lower 9th Ward to Congo Square on the outskirts of the French Quarter. Marchers, some carrying signs denouncing Bush’s policies, were led by dancers and two brass bands.

Another rally, held in front of the convention center, mixed political speeches with gospel singers.

“This day is part celebration, part memorial, part indictment,” said Ernest Stephens, 62, attending the convention center rally with his wife, Jacqueline, 65. “With all the resources, all the brainpower in this country, we’re still not back in our homes. It’s crushing.”

It appears that two years after Katrina, the people in New Orleans are still busy blaming the federal government for all of their problems, both real and imagined, rather than taking the billions in resources and putting it into the rebuilding effort.

“We’re on the front pages today, maybe tomorrow,” said [Joe] Givens, a civic activist who works with clergy in the city’s poor neighborhoods to resurrect communities. “But then people will move on to something else.”

What do these people expect, eternal attention from the entire nation and its government? Yes, what happened was a tragedy. Yes, we want to help you. Yes, we care. However, we’ve given you the resources to rebuild, we’ve taken care of your refugees, and we’ve assisted you with stabilizing the City. Now, its your turn to step up to the plate and get busy helping yourselves. Instead, New Orleans is whining about what they think others should be doing for them:

“A feel-good visit is great,” New Orleans Councilwoman Shelley Midura said. “But he should be here a lot more than what he is. And not just a meeting at a restaurant or a photo opportunity at a school, but doing the hard work with people on the front lines.”

Excuse me, Councilwoman, but if your people had been doing the hard work on the front lines, you’d be a lot further along than you are. The problem is, because of all the whining emanating from New Orleans, much of the good will which was bestowed upon it after Katrina has been squandered. Immediately after Katrina struck, I was more than happy to donate money and materials to the relief effort. Then the residents of New Orleans re-elected Ray “School Bus” Nagin, who had promised that New Orleans was going to be a”Chocolate City” and I no longer felt New Orleans deserved my help.

In the aftermath of the disaster, it became obvious that Nagin had done little to prepare his city for a disaster that they knew was coming for over a week. On Thursday before Katrina struck, he refused to issue a mandatory evacuation order for residents of the city.

On August 27, Katrina was upgraded to a Category 3 Hurricane and Nagin issued a voluntary evacuation request. Nagin was hesitant to make the order mandatory because of the city’s liability in closing hotels and other businesses. On August 28, Katrina was classified as a Category 4 Hurricane and Nagin made the evacuation mandatory.

Instead of being concerned with the residents’ well-being, Nagin was concerned about the city’s liability from closing businesses. This caused him to delay making the evacuation order mandatory until the day before Katrina struck. By then, it was way too late for most of the stranded residents to leave. Remember this picture?

These school buses sat unused in a parking lot, and eventually were flooded, because Nagin wanted other states to send Greyhound buses because he didn’t feel school buses were good enough. Meanwhile, residents of New Orleans were killed by the flood because noone came to evacuate them.

So, with Nagin’s incompetence as mayor all but confirmed, it seemed to me that at their first chance the people of New Orleans would install new leadership in the Mayor’s office. Instead, after a campaign where Nagin was literally busing in people to vote for him, the people of New Orleans re-elected Nagin. This action convinced me that the people of New Orleans were not deserving of either my monetary help or support. In fact, I’ve come to realize that rebuilding a city whose future destruction is all but guaranteed by its location is a bad idea and a waste of taxpayer money.

As far as I’m concerned, the Nation has done all it should do for the City of New Orleans. Until such time as the people of New Orleans can show that they are serious about returning competent leadership to the city government, they should be left on their own. Sending resources to a city government who is more concerned about having a black city rather than rebuilding the city itself is a waste money.

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 2:21 pm by Nick, and is filed under Natural Disasters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.