2 Years Post Hurricanes Katrina/Rita: Call to Action

[TonyB06]

Originally posted by Steeltrap
Exactly. Because HRC can be HRC, but Sen. Obama will have to do a delicate balancing act re: civil rights if he does want to be a VP or (dare I think it?) a presidential candidate. As I've said for many years, compassion fatigue has become a permanent part of the wider national society, which (IMO) believes that the rise of feel-good, crossover folks like Michael Jordan, Shaq , Gen. Powell, Oprah and Eldrick Woods has blunted the need for civil rights activism.

Steeltrap, you need to be up in front of somebody political science class section

Perception right or wrong, HRC is still perceived as too liberal in a lot of places, and the U.S. is still in a center-right mode, politically. What demographic/s would he bring to HRC's 08 ticket that she won't already put in play? Right now, Obama would be better served to sit out Hillary's 08 Roadshow and prepare himself for '12 or '16.

I buy your "compassion fatigue" theory, but chuckle when people suggest Jordan/Tiger as crossover, moderating forces. I really question how much societal/cultural impact they have beyond the end of their 30-second TV spots.

[Steeltrap]

Originally posted by TonyB06
Steeltrap, you need to be up in front of somebody political science class section

Perception right or wrong, HRC is still perceived as too liberal in a lot of places, and the U.S. is still in a center-right mode, politically. What demographic/s would he bring to HRC's 08 ticket that she won't already put in play? Right now, Obama would be better served to sit out Hillary's 08 Roadshow and prepare himself for '12 or '16.

I buy your "compassion fatigue" theory, but chuckle when people suggest Jordan/Tiger as crossover, moderating forces. I really question how much societal/cultural impact they have beyond the end of their 30-second TV spots.

Exactly. Sen. Obama is still only in his early 40s, and by 2012 or 2016, maybe he could be a viable figure. I completely agree that HRC is perceived as being too liberal, and even though I am a non-partisan, I think there are too many Clinton-haters still around and will come out of the woodwork.

And you make a good point with Jordan/Tiger. They deliberately stay away from political stances because I think it could affect their money-making potential. Remember that MJ wouldn't touch the Harvey Gantt-Jesse Helms Senate race.

[Honeykiss1974]

Originally posted by TonyB06
Steeltrap, you need to be up in front of somebody political science class section

Perception right or wrong, HRC is still perceived as too liberal in a lot of places, and the U.S. is still in a center-right mode, politically. What demographic/s would he bring to HRC's 08 ticket that she won't already put in play? Right now, Obama would be better served to sit out Hillary's 08 Roadshow and prepare himself for '12 or '16.

I would agree with you. If Obama does have any aspirations of sitting in the WH (either as VP or Pr) , even with his current mooderate cross over stance, he would be wise to disassociate himself with Hillary (meaning don't run in '08) as he builds his appeal up more (like he's doing now) or maybe even run with another liberal candidate in '12 or '16. He would lose A LOT of non-liberal support (and I'm not even talking about hardcore ring-wingers or anything of that nature) if he ran with Hillary in 2 years. Plus the fact that I believe his "voice" (shall we say) would be overshadowed from the attention (especially the negative attention) that she would receive.

But this is all my opinion.......

[mulattogyrl]

Brown relieved of hurricane responsibilities
Coast Guard admiral will direct efforts in the area

Friday, September 9, 2005; Posted: 2:58 p.m. EDT (18:58 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown is being relieved of his command of the Bush administration's Hurricane Katrina onsite relief efforts, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced Friday.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/....ap/index.html

[kiml122]

ST, TonyB and HK...OMG....you all are right on all points...very good issues brought up in the HRC and Barack Obama cases!!!

[Honeykiss1974]

Originally posted by mulattogyrl
Brown relieved of hurricane responsibilities
Coast Guard admiral will direct efforts in the area

Friday, September 9, 2005; Posted: 2:58 p.m. EDT (18:58 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown is being relieved of his command of the Bush administration's Hurricane Katrina onsite relief efforts, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced Friday.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/....ap/index.html

Good. Because for real, I think my 5 year old nephew could have done a better job - or at least sounded more intelligent in interviews than he did (when explaining FEMA's delay).

[TonyB06]

Originally posted by kiml122
ST, TonyB and HK...OMG....you all are right on all points...very good issues brought up in the HRC and Barack Obama cases!!!

...I just cheated off their papers.

[AKA2D '91]

Someone at the gas station told me the name Katrina means "purify". Here is an article (it's rather lengthy) that probably predicts the "new" New Orleans:

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

September 8, 2005

Old-Line Families
Escape Worst of Flood
And Plot the Future

Mr. O'Dwyer, at His Mansion,
Enjoys Highball With Ice;
Meeting With the Mayor

By CHRISTOPHER COOPER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Page A1

NEW ORLEANS -- On a sultry morning earlier this week, Ashton O'Dwyer stepped out of his home on this city's grandest street and made a beeline for his neighbor's pool. Wearing nothing but a pair of blue swim trunks and carrying two milk jugs, he drew enough pool water to flush the toilet in his home.

The mostly African-American neighborhoods of New Orleans are largely underwater, and the people who lived there have scattered across the country. But in many of the predominantly white and more affluent areas, streets are dry and passable. Gracious homes are mostly intact and powered by generators. Yesterday, officials reiterated that all residents must leave New Orleans, but it's still unclear how far they will go to enforce the order.

The green expanse of Audubon Park, in the city's Uptown area, has doubled in recent days as a heliport for the city's rich -- and a terminus for the small armies of private security guards who have been dispatched to keep the homes there safe and habitable. Mr. O'Dwyer has cellphone service and ice cubes to cool off his highballs in the evening. By yesterday, the city water service even sprang to life, making the daily trips to his neighbor's pool unnecessary. A pair of oil-company engineers, dispatched by his son-in-law, delivered four cases of water, a box of delicacies including herring with mustard sauce and 15 gallons of generator gasoline.

Despite the disaster that has overwhelmed New Orleans, the city's monied, mostly white elite is hanging on and maneuvering to play a role in the recovery when the floodwaters of Katrina are gone. "New Orleans is ready to be rebuilt. Let's start right here," says Mr. O'Dwyer, standing in his expansive kitchen, next to a counter covered with a jumble of weaponry and electric wires.

More than a few people in Uptown, the fashionable district surrounding St. Charles Ave., have ancestors who arrived here in the 1700s. High society is still dominated by these old-line families, represented today by prominent figures such as former New Orleans Board of Trade President Thomas Westfeldt; Richard Freeman, scion of the family that long owned the city's Coca-Cola bottling plant; and William Boatner Reily, owner of a Louisiana coffee company. Their social pecking order is dictated by the mysterious hierarchy of "krewes," groups with hereditary membership that participate in the annual carnival leading up to Mardi Gras. In recent years, the city's most powerful business circles have expanded to include some newcomers and non-whites, such as Mayor Ray Nagin, the former Cox Communications executive elected in 2002.






A few blocks from Mr. O'Dwyer, in an exclusive gated community known as Audubon Place, is the home of James Reiss, descendent of an old-line Uptown family. He fled Hurricane Katrina just before the storm and returned soon afterward by private helicopter. Mr. Reiss became wealthy as a supplier of electronic systems to shipbuilders, and he serves in Mayor Nagin's administration as chairman of the city's Regional Transit Authority. When New Orleans descended into a spiral of looting and anarchy, Mr. Reiss helicoptered in an Israeli security company to guard his Audubon Place house and those of his neighbors.

He says he has been in contact with about 40 other New Orleans business leaders since the storm. Tomorrow, he says, he and some of those leaders plan to be in Dallas, meeting with Mr. Nagin to begin mapping out a future for the city.

The power elite of New Orleans -- whether they are still in the city or have moved temporarily to enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo. -- insist the remade city won't simply restore the old order. New Orleans before the flood was burdened by a teeming underclass, substandard schools and a high crime rate. The city has few corporate headquarters.

The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."

Not every white business leader or prominent family supports that view. Some black leaders and their allies in New Orleans fear that it boils down to preventing large numbers of blacks from returning to the city and eliminating the African-American voting majority. Rep. William Jefferson, a sharecropper's son who was educated at Harvard and is currently serving his eighth term in Congress, points out that the evacuees from New Orleans already have been spread out across many states far from their old home and won't be able to afford to return. "This is an example of poor people forced to make choices because they don't have the money to do otherwise," Mr. Jefferson says.

Calvin Fayard, a wealthy white plaintiffs' lawyer who lives near Mr. O'Dwyer, says the mass evacuation could turn a Democratic stronghold into a Republican one. Mr. Fayard, a prominent Democratic fund-raiser, says tampering with the city's demographics means tampering with its unique culture and shouldn't be done. "People can't survive a year temporarily -- they'll go somewhere, get a job and never come back," he says.

Mr. Reiss acknowledges that shrinking parts of the city occupied by hardscrabble neighborhoods would inevitably result in fewer poor and African-American residents. But he says the electoral balance of the city wouldn't change significantly and that the business elite isn't trying to reverse the last 30 years of black political control. "We understand that African Americans have had a great deal of influence on the history of New Orleans," he says.

A key question will be the position of Mr. Nagin, who was elected with the support of the city's business leadership. He couldn't be reached yesterday. Mr. Reiss says the mayor suggested the Dallas meeting and will likely attend when he goes there to visit his evacuated family

Black politicians have controlled City Hall here since the late 1970s, but the wealthy white families of New Orleans have never been fully eclipsed. Stuffing campaign coffers with donations, these families dominate the city's professional and executive classes, including the white-shoe law firms, engineering offices, and local shipping companies. White voters often act as a swing bloc, propelling blacks or Creoles into the city's top political jobs. That was the case with Mr. Nagin, who defeated another African American to win the mayoral election in 2002.

Creoles, as many mixed-race residents of New Orleans call themselves, dominate the city's white-collar and government ranks and tend to ally themselves with white voters on issues such as crime and education, while sharing many of the same social concerns as African-American voters. Though the flooding took a toll on many Creole neighborhoods, it's likely that Creoles will return to the city in fairly large numbers, since many of them have the means to do so.

--Gary Fields and Ann Carrns contributed to this article

[TonyB06]

Originally posted by AKA2D '91
Someone at the gas station told me the name Katrina means "purify". Here is an article (it's rather lengthy) that probably predicts the "new" New Orleans:

...good to see you posting. when you get a moment, holla.

[AKA_Monet]

Soror AKA2D91'

It's good to see you hanging out. Same to yah, holla!


Anyhow, interesting article from the WSJ...

It does seem that NO will not be as "coloured" as it once was in the past 30 years... But what will happen with its rich legacy of jazz and the fun it use to be? I guess that all will be filtered over time.

Also, what I found interesting about this article is that the folks there will rebuild it. It will become like a "Disney-fied fortified capitalism at its best" NO, but the flavor will be blanded--no sense of real spice... Like they'd make red beans and rice and forget the okra or something... Like no filé in the gumbo... It will be mudbug éttouffe, but the rice is too sticky... Like something out of the Zatarain's box... Something will really be wrong with spice there when they rebuild it...

And the jazz will sound filtered. Not the real downhome jazz with a lil' blues mixed in it...

That will be the saddest thing about a rebuilt NOLA... It would be soooo gentrified that once "they" build the Park Place Hotels on them to withstand a category 10 hurricane with tsunami warnings , then no one can work or live there... And forget the cake walk from NOLA...

Same with Mississippi near the gulf...

The relationships have already changed a long time ago. I do think folks of African descent will lose there footing in most of the south and probably most of the country being cast aside like this...

Amazing that the folks refuse to leave even in the worst of conditions. I pretty much do not blame them. However, it might be better elsewhere... But is it worth it?

[Tickled Pink 2]

^^^^^^^
Sad, sad, sad. America is going to hell in a handbasket.

In some language Katrina might mean that. Here's the greek origin: a 3-syllable girl's name of Greek/Norse origin, means: One of purity; beloved.

[Tickled Pink 2]

Originally posted by mulattogyrl
Brown relieved of hurricane responsibilities
Coast Guard admiral will direct efforts in the area

Friday, September 9, 2005; Posted: 2:58 p.m. EDT (18:58 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown is being relieved of his command of the Bush administration's Hurricane Katrina onsite relief efforts, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced Friday.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/....ap/index.html

Scapegoat. And they should've checked his resume for "padding" beforehand. This is the federal govt - not Kiddie Care.

[jitterbug13]

Reading that story reminded me of what Charleston went through after Hugo and now. Before Hugo came, the tourist area of Downtown was looking rough, especially the Battery. After $$$ came in from the damage, Downtown started to look a whole lot better and more rich *cough y--t* people started to come in.

Downtown has always had a big African-American population but it may be shrinking very soon. Some people can't afford to live downtown anymore and investors are buying up their houses. Also, a person would buy a house for about $100,000, fix it up and sell it for $300,000. Not many African Americans in Charleston can afford that.

After the dust has settled, NO is going to be the same way because they have displaced the people who have made NO what it is today.

[CrimsonTide4]

In regards to the rebuilding of NO, I kind of figured that would happen now that they have been able to "get rid of" the undesirable element -- the poor. It's sad but it is the state of our world.

However I just read this article about Shaq and my hat is off to him: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050910/..._shaq_s_assist

I know LeBron James did similar to Shaq -- loading trucks with items to help the victims. LeBron article: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...katrina_rdp_11

[Tickled Pink 2]

Originally posted by jitterbug13
Reading that story reminded me of what Charleston went through after Hugo and now. Before Hugo came, the tourist area of Downtown was looking rough, especially the Battery. After $$$ came in from the damage, Downtown started to look a whole lot better and more rich *cough y--t* people started to come in.

Downtown has always had a big African-American population but it may be shrinking very soon. Some people can't afford to live downtown anymore and investors are buying up their houses. Also, a person would buy a house for about $100,000, fix it up and sell it for $300,000. Not many African Americans in Charleston can afford that.

After the dust has settled, NO is going to be the same way because they have displaced the people who have made NO what it is today.

They did this in Charlotte w/o a natural disaster. Downtown Charlotte used to look verrrry different than it does today. It started years ago with plans of building a new Coliseum. First, they started to semi clean up the Biddleville area (near JCSU), then they built a new transportation center so that there would be one main place dwntwn to catch & xfer buses (stopping a certain "element" from being strewn all over the city), then they systematically started closing some of the surrounding projects and forced them to move elsewhere. Then up came a new parking deck, condominiums, a Johnson & Wales University, a YMCA, a Harris Teeter, etc. Instead of the "element" you see a different element jogging, walking dogs, walking to restaurants... Now I cannot lie and say that it definately doesn't look better downtown and there used to be alot of crime there, but at what cost? The poor was forced out of their homes, they certainly couldn't afford the condos, and those committing crimes were just forced into different areas - like East Charlotte, which was actually nice when I first moved here, but is now crime infested.

ET correct: there to their