New Orleans Is Us

[marmar]

from The Nation:


New Orleans Is Us
Billy Sothern


On the cover of the New Orleans Times-Picayune on a Tuesday not so very long ago, a headline announced a massive and visionary government plan to replace thousands of dilapidated housing units with newly constructed apartments boasting modern amenities and services such as childcare and community centers. Next to that story was a photograph of the public hospital for the city's poor and uninsured rising up against the skyline with the winding Mississippi behind it. The headlines announced, respectively, "City Takes Steps to Meet Federal Regulations for Slum Clearance: $8,000,000 to $9,000,000 Expected to Be Spent Here by Federal Agency on New Dwellings" and "Workmen Fashion Girders Into Framework for New Charity Hospital."

This edition of the paper arrived on doorsteps on Tuesday, February 15, 1938. These were heady days for New Orleans, when the federal and state governments were harnessing their full powers to serve the needs of the people. I am certain that the Times-Picayune readers, having suffered through years of turmoil and depression, were greatly relieved at the prospect of a helping hand.

I wasn't in New Orleans to read those long-ago stories and feel the glow of support and optimism that radiated from them. The people in charge--Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the White House and Senator Robert Wagner of New York leading the Senate to pass the Housing Act of 1937 (not to mention populist Governor Huey Long, whose spirit still loomed large in the state Capitol)--were men who believed in the power of the government to transform and better the lives of Americans. (Long also believed in the bullying power of government to pursue his own ends, but that's another story, equally relevant to Louisiana's current plight.)

Seventy years later, two years out from Hurricane Katrina, New Orleanians no longer bother looking for such headlines. Instead, we read "New Orleans Recovery Is Slowed by Closed Hospitals," "Sewerage and Water Board System Worse Than Ever, But No Money to Fix It" and "Largely Alone, Pioneers Reclaim New Orleans." .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070910/sothern

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1. Ich bin ein Cajun! nt

[Middle finga]

2. Ich auch