Since a major focus of the Teaching the Levees curriculum is the portrayal of Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans through media, I thought it might be useful to provide some alternative and interesting ways that journalists, artists and other individuals have chronicled the narrative of Katrina and subsequent recovery efforts.

The first resource is of course the many blogs and online magazines written by New Orleans natives, which attempt to report on life in post-Katrina N.O. from a personal perspective. Check out NOLAfugees.com for a collaborative effort, as well as personal blogs such as NOLA-dishu, Toulouse Street, and Moldy City, with many more listed on the blogrolls of each site. If you’re trying to find examples of interesting blogs and articles for classroom use, it might be helpful to search individual blog archives or examine their tags and categories.

In addition, I recently came across A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, a webcomic (and soon-to-be graphic novel) by Josh Neufeld which explores the post-Katrina narrative through “comics reportage.” Check out the original webcomic online or buy the book when it’s released in August. This could be a very engaging way to explore this topic for students.

Finally, another interesting example is Tempest in Crescent City, an online game created by Brooklyn high school students, aided by Global Kids and game developers Digital Creations. The game aims to educate students about Hurricane Katrina, celebrate New Orleans, and raise awareness about continuing struggles in the city. Their website includes lesson plans and resources for educators as well.

All of these alternatives could be great ways to encounter the story of Katrina or to spark a discussion about the different modes of portraying these issues. Let us know if find any other resources!

Yesterday, I read Dan Baum’s blog on the New York Times’ website and thought that the content (along with the ensuing comments) was a good illustration of an important culture clash that runs through the post-Katrina recovery effort. Now, Baum’s nothing if not experienced in New Orleans matters (read his excellent New Yorker series here) and if you read through the comments on his post, its easy to see how much many residents of the city value his contributions to the reporting effort following the disaster.

At the same time, there are aspects of this particular article that could be perceived as overly romanticized. While Baum’s writing clearly conveys his heartfelt love for the city (something that many praise in the comments) and he aptly recognizes that many New Orleanians are suspicious of outsiders’ efforts to rebuild their city “better.” However, many readers take issue with his conclusion that this suspicion stems from an easy-going mentality and a complete acceptance of the many problems that the city undoubtedly has faced in the past and continues to wrestle with today. Baum writes, “In their zeal to imagine a new city, the big-picture planners lost sight of how happy New Orleanians had been with the old one.” Much to many of his readers’ chagrin, he suggests that NOLA residents are uninterested in rebuilding a city devoid of poverty and crime.
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What’s the current situation in New Orleans? It seems the news media can’t agree. While the Chicago Sun-Times recently published a sunny article describing how recovery money has steeled New Orleans against the recession (leading young, laid-off workers to flock to the area) and the Times-Picayune suggested that the 2013 Superbowl (recently awarded to the city) would spark an “economic engine,” other reports were not quite so favorable. The Economist labeled New Orleans a City of Sickness, describing a persistent lack of medical services and a preponderance of vacant homes, while The Nation suggested that putting taxpayer dollars towards luxury Superbowl improvements was the wrong kind of spending for a city with little stable infrastructure and high poverty rates. Furthermore, Mayor Ray Nagin in his recent State of the City address discussed the continuing racial divide within New Orleans, and the Los Angeles Times published a story indicating the distress of the city’s black population over unfavorable housing regulations.

An op-ed on a local Louisiana news site goes so far as to describe the “two cities of Orleans,” echoing the perplexing divide in the media’s recent coverage of the recovery process. In truth, however, New Orleans has perhaps always been two cities, or more than two, depending on your perspective. Historically (and as noted in the Teaching the Levees curriculum), the Crescent City has possessed one of the nation’s highest rates of economic inequality, as well as complicated racial definitions stretching back to the 1700s.

In the face of past crises, New Orleans’ response has rarely been simple. After the schools crisis of 1960 (in which the first attempts at school integration were made in the city, causing a violent reaction on the part of white supremacists in the region), the city seemed to progress and decline simultaneously. While the crisis galvanized the black community, and eventually led to a more open political system (at least on the surface level), it also spurred the start of a long trend of white flight, leading to an increase in poverty and inequality and a decline in population.

As such, New Orleans in particular can be hard to peg down when it comes to the city’s progress. It is important to recognize these historical patterns as we explore the narrative of post-Katrina recovery and attempt to make sense of the variability in the stories available. It is also valuable to note that the challenge of rebuilding the city is not just one of resurrection, but also of unification in areas that have previously been dangerously disparate.

June 1st marked the beginning of the 2009 hurricane season, again prompting concern as to how the city of New Orleans will fare in the coming summer’s weather. In recognition of this fact, the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project (GCCWP) gathered volunteers from across the country in Washington, D.C. to lobby for the passage of H.R. 2269, also known as the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act. The bill, first brainstormed by students in San Jose and introduced into Congress in May, seeks the funding of 100,000 “green jobs” for displaced residents of the Gulf Coast to rebuild the infrastructure of their local communities.

The GCCWP and its bill, which are supported by groups ranging from Oxfam America to local Gulf Coast non-profits, are an excellent example of an initiative started by New Orleans outsiders (students over 2100 miles away from the city) that works not just to provide the city with services or make donations, but to empower New Orleans’ residents and allow them to regain ownership of their community. While the bill has yet to receive a Senate sponsor or support from the Obama administration (making its passage much less likely, especially in these financial times), the campaign has successfully sought out the support of dozens of Gulf Coast organizations, as well as the city councils of New Orleans and surrounding municipalities. In addition, it advocates for placing the opportunity and responsibility for revitalizing the city (via public works projects) directly into the hands of the city’s residents.

This question of ownership is relevant even within the classroom, as we struggle to make the story of New Orleans and the rebuilding process our own while still recognizing that the city ultimately belongs to its citizens. How do we teach the story of Katrina and call upon ourselves to address the essential questions laid out within the Teaching the Levees curriculum while still maintaining this balance?

This past semester, as part of a history class at Swarthmore College, I set out to write a history of New Orleans and its struggle for educational reform (both before and after Katrina). Throughout this project, I constantly had to remind myself that the issues that define the city are complex and nuanced. By regarding the city as “mine” and myself as an expert, I risked oversimplifying its central dilemmas and missing the inherent lessons that can be learned from its history. I hope that as we move into the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we can continue to grapple with the complexities of the city and applaud efforts to empower its citizens.

First of all, a quick introduction. I’m Rebekah Judson, an intern here at Teachers College, and a current student at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. For the summer, I’ll be guest blogging here on the Teaching The Levees site, hopefully sharing with you some interesting updates on the recovery effort in the Gulf Coast, as well as any connections I might find to the Levees curriculum’s larger themes and questions.

To begin with, I don’t claim to be any sort of expert on Hurricane Katrina. My upbringing and education have occurred exclusively in the Northeast, distant in both geography and mindset from the city of New Orleans, the Mississippi River, the surrounding bayous and swamps. Yet, over the past few years, I have found myself again and again returning to the essential questions that surround Katrina, those that trigger deep probing about the nature of our democracy and our future. In 2006, I spent a summer rebuilding houses in Abbeville, LA, a small town a few hours from both New Orleans and Baton Rouge. This past semester, I returned to the region in an academic sense, chronicling the history of New Orleans’ public schools.

Given my background as a student, I hope to be able to both share my own insights and learn from you as well. Please feel free to respond with comments and questions of your own, whether as educators or simply as interested readers. I will be making my first posts soon, and I look forward to hearing from you.

On May 4 a New York Times article reported that term limits will prevent New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin from seeking another term in office after his current term runs out on the last day of May next year. While a recent poll by the University of New Orleans showed that Mayor Nagin currently has the lowest approval rating of any New Orleans Mayor since 1986 (the first year the poll was ever conducted) and most local residents say they are ready for a change in leadership, the quickly approaching deadline for the removal of the last remaining FEMA trailers has likely been met with a much greater degree of anxiety.

On the last day of May of this year, the Federal Emergency Management Agency recently announced, the last of the thousands of temporary mobile homes for individuals whose houses were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina will be removed from New Orleans and either scrapped or sold “for a fraction” of their original price. In the New York Times article about the story, Shaila Dewan reported that there are still more than 3,000 people living in the FEMA trailers who are reliant on them and have nowhere else to go. 

In an ideal world, of course, the removal of the trailers would be grounds for celebration of the fact that permanent housing had been completed and locals who have been dependent upon the toxic trailers for three and a half years would finally be able to move into new, or at least newly repaired homes. This, however, is not the case. While FEMA officials have claimed that the residents can buy the trailers “for as little as $300, […] virtually all of the residents interviewed [by the New York Times] said they had offered to do so and been told they could not.”

As if the bureaucratic confusion has not been frustrating enough, what’s even worse is that the majority of people who are still living in the trailers “are elderly, disabled or both, including double amputees, diabetes patients, the mentally ill, people prone to seizures and others dependent on oxygen tanks.” While FEMA officials have made efforts to secure permanent housing options for the people who will lose their homes on May 31, organizations for the homeless such as the Capital Area Alliance for the Homeless and Unity of Greater New Orleans have also stepped in to provide assistance, thus giving legitimacy to the claim that people are truly in danger of being put out onto the streets.

The month of April has been a pivotally important one for anyone following the continuing developments concerning the ongoing aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. On the 17th, the New York Times reported on the story of Dr. Ivor van Heerden, a leading hurricane expert and deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center who has been an outspoken critic of the US Army Corps of Engineers levee system ever since the storm hit back in 2005. According to the Times, LSU officials met with Dr. van Heerden on April 9th to tell him “that his contract would not be renewed after 2010, and that he would lose his title as deputy director of the school’s hurricane center. The move, he was told, was not related to his performance or to budget issues, but no other reason for the firing would be provided.”

Needless to say, the decision made by LSU administrators not to renew van Heerden’s contract has been a controversial one. Not only have some groups, such as Levees.org protested the move as a potential threat to the free speech rights of Dr. van Heerden and other critics of the performance of the levees constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers, the decision has also been viewed as a thinly veiled yet damaging attempt to discredit Dr. van Heerden just days before a groundbreaking civil suit filed by homeowners against the Corps began in federal court in New Orleans.

Filed under the name Robinson v. US and the US Army Corps of Engineers, the suit alleges that the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a 76 mile long navigation canal built by the Corps in 1968 “was flawed in its design, construction and operation, and that those flaws intensified the flood damage to the eastern parts of New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish.” According to a New York Times article written by John Schwartz and published on April 20th, the trial is expected to last about a month. During this time, attorneys for the plaintiffs will attempt to prove that the MR-GO, locally referred to as Mister Go, has served as a “hurricane highway” and that “the channel killed the protective wetlands and cypress swamps to the east of the city by allowing the intrusion of salt water from the gulf” which in turn brought about an increased risk of flooding due to the destruction of these natural wetlands.

Despite LSU’s decision to discredit a prominent, not to mention valuable hurricane researcher such as Dr. van Heerden and a recent decision of the Corps of Engineers to close MR-GO by filling it with 434,000 tons of rock, the US Government has continually argued that the canal played an insignificant role in causing the devastation wrought by Katrina. If successful in this initial suit, however, the small handful of plaintiffs could pave the way for class action involving more than 400,000 claims that could potentially cost the Government an estimated 10 to 100 billion dollars in damages.

It’s February in the Big Easy and with it comes the time of year when New Orleans residents and visitors from near and far participate in one of the largest and most well known parties in the world. The party I’m talking about is technically called Carnival and is celebrated in various forms throughout Europe and the Americas. Most Americans, however, know it as Mardi Gras, French words for “Fat Tuesday” that actually represent a several week-long festival with Catholic and ancient pagan roots featuring parades, trinkets, music, costumes, the eating of King Cakes and almost every other kind of merriment imaginable.

Since the sixteenth century, Carnival festivity has begun on January sixth, the day when many Christian denominations commemorate the arrival of three kings to Bethlehem, and has ended on the Tuesday before the beginning of Lent, a forty day season of prayer and reflection observed by many Christians that ends on Easter. But while Mardi Gras has been a part of New Orleans for as long as New Orleans has been in existence, the future of this beloved tradition was called into question after Hurricane Katrina. Not only had Katrina decreased the population of the city and left the local government in shambles, it also damaged many of the traditional parade routes and devastated the local economy and tourist industry that historically produced the financial resources to make Mardi Gras happen.

It is true that the current financial crisis has not exactly helped Mardi Gras. In fact, several Carnival “krewes” have even had to cancel their parades due to the economic downturn. Recently though, the New Orleans Times Picayune reported that the sale of beads, medallions and other trinkets typically thrown from parade floats has not faltered. In another article, a staff writer for the Times Picayune focused on an uplifting story about the “Krewe of Rex,” one of the oldest and most famous Mardi Gras parade organizations. According to the article, members of Rex are currently donating a significant amount of time and money to a number of the new, up and coming charter schools that have filled the void left by some of the failing public schools that couldn’t make ends meet after Katrina. So far, Rex has given $274,000 to these schools. While estimates vary as to the number of members that have donated their time, Rex spokesperson Christy Brown estimates that the number is likely to be as large as several hundred.

In post-Katrina New Orleans the reasons to celebrate have at times been few. With Mardi Gras, however, we are reminded of the jubilance and resiliance that define the character of this city and we are provided, in the case of Rex at least, with a concrete example of the good things that can happen when citizens come together to improve their communities.

In a recent interview, outgoing President George W. Bush reflected upon some of the things that stand out in his mind as the successes as well as the mistakes and failures of his Presidency. Among the mistakes were things like declaring Iraq a “Mission Accomplished” back in the spring of 2005, failing to live up to the promise of finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and choosing not to focus on immigration reform during his second term. Surprisingly not on the list of failures was the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina.

When asked by a member of the White House press corps about Katrina, President Bush vehemently defended the federal government’s response,declaring to those listening that 30,000 Americans were rescued from roof tops within hours of the breaking of the levees and the flooding of the city. But even if this statistic is accurate, and I’m sure it could be, the rescuing of 30,000 people from their homes to places such as the Superdome or the New Orleans Convention Center is clearly only one tiny, tiny piece of the puzzle and an incomplete piece at that. After all, everyone knows what happened after those people were dropped off at locations like these two.

What does it mean that our outgoing President is willing to admit mistakes dealing with Iraq, the defining aspect of his Presidency on the foreign policy front, but he is completely unwavering when it comes to his confidence in the response of his administration to one of the biggest natural disasters since the Dust Bowl? Does it mean, like some have said, that he’s out of touch? Might his ability to loosen up a little these past two months and actually reflect upon some of the mistakes of his Presidency actually conclude that he really believes that the very real and continuing quagmire that is post-Katrina New Orleans might be a done deal? In watching Bush’s spirited defense of himself at that press conference and a similar performance during the delivery of his recent farewell address, I must say, he seemed to actually believe what he said.

Since August of 2005, most Americans have fittingly laid the blame for Katrina squarely at the feet of President Bush and people such as his former FEMA director Michael Brown. But the flood itself was just the beginning of the story. What about the ongoing problems in New Orleans? What about people such as former Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco? What about New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin? What about the generally high level of corruption and inefficiency that has plagued various levels of government in the City of New Orleans since long before Katrina? What is it about George Bush’s philosophy on governing that seems to convince him that the federal government fulfilled its obligation regarding Katrina? I won’t pretend to know the answers to these questions but they might be interesting to ponder as we prepare to welcome our next President into office.

While it is refreshing to see President Bush letting down his guard and making some attempts to face the legacies of his Presidency, it is troubling to see him deny responsibility for Katrina. Kurt Vonnegut once remarked that “History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.” For better or for worse, many Americans would probably agree that George W. Bush’s Presidency has been one fraught with surprises. But had it not been for those surprises, those mistakes, those failures in some cases, we might not have elected Barack Obama.

If you watched CNN this past weekend, you may have caught the presentation of a special “Behind the Scenes” documentary with Soledad O’Brien titled “One Crime at a Time” that dealt with crime in New Orleans. Broken up into two parts, the show aired on Saturday and Sunday at 8:00 PM eastern time. I wasn’t able to watch the first half of it but I did catch the half that aired on Sunday night.

CNN’s “One Crime at a Time” is indeed timely. The second and final segment of this documentary aired the day before CQ Press released the 2008 edition of “City Crime Rankings,” an annual report on crime statistics in America’s cities. While statistics listed on the website of the New Orleans Police Department show declines in some categories of violent crimes in 2008 compared to corresponding statistics from 2007 and “One Crime at a Time” reported that New Orleans has had 25 fewer murders this year than there were by late November last year, CQ Press still ranked the City of New Orleans as the most crime ridden city in the United States.

According to an article posted on CNN’s website about the rankings published by CQ Press, 209 murders occurred in New Orleans in 2007. Let’s put this disturbing statistic in perspective. According to www.icasualties.org, a politically independent website that keeps track of US and coalition casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, the number of people murdered in New Orleans in 2007 is only nine fewer than the number of American hostile military deaths in Iraq so far this year. It is significantly greater than the number of American deaths in Afghanistan in any single year since the beginning of America’s presence in that country.

The second segment of “One Crime at a Time” began with the following conversation between Soledad O’Brien and New Orleans Police Chief Warren Riley. O’Brien asked, “Can you arrest and prosecute your way out of this?” “Absolutely, positively not. No way. No way,” replied Chief Riley. After being asked by O’Brien what he proposed might be the solution for the debilitating crime problem in New Orleans, Riley replied that “the solution is to make a better, better educated, better employed, more wholesome, more vibrant community. You do it through education. You do it through economics. You do it through job opportunities. Knowledge is just power.”

In “One Crime at a Time,” CNN reported that in New Orleans “about 40 percent of homicide suspects arrested walk free without ever being charged.” In an online article written by Soledad O’Brien about the show, she reported that “after Katrina hit in August 2005, thousands of accused felons in New Orleans walked out of jail because the D.A.’s office failed to charge them before their legally mandated release dates.” We’d all like to believe that things are slowly but surely beginning to turn around in New Orleans. So far, most gains have been modest but if you didn’t see “One Crime at a Time” and you either read the transcript or you are lucky enough to catch an encore presentation, you will also find that “behind the scenes” there are small groups of dedicated, civic minded attorneys who have literally made it their mission in life to make New Orleans a safer city. In the meantime, we teachers might consider taking stock in the words of Police Chief Riley.

The ultimate goal of the Teaching the Levees curriculum and one of the underlying principles of the Social Studies program at Teachers College is to promote good citizenship and civic involvement through the teaching of events like Hurricane Katrina. Thus, Chief Riley has hit a bulls-eye in asserting that despite New Orleans’ very real problems, “the solution is to make a better, better educated, better employed, more wholesome, more vibrant community. You do it through education. You do it through economics. You do it through job opportunities. Knowledge is just power.”

The idea is that students who are trained to become good citizens are likely to be successful in promoting these things. Assuming Riley is correct then we’re at least on the right track. If saving New Orleans “one crime at a time” is unsuccessful then maybe saving New Orleans one classroom at a time might be a more viable option.