On September 19, we posted a blog (“Voices of Volunteers”) offering insights into the current situation in New Orleans from three student volunteers from the Kingswood-Oxford School in West Hartford, Connecticut.  Under the direction of Teacher Yom Odamtten — one of the curriculum writers for the Teaching The Levees project — and other teachers, the students worked with Habitat for Humanity to help rebuild one of the many homes destroyed by the floods that came in the aftermath of Katrina.  Odamtten, pictured second from left during the trip, has now filed her own thoughts on the trip, which offer an important reflection from a professional educator who was given the opportunity to witness the post-Katrina reconstruction firsthand: 

It has been almost two months since I visited New Orleans with my students. Two months to try and make sense of what I saw, two months to try and understand how after two years New Orleaneans, school children, church groups, and other individuals have done so much to help rebuild…yet it appears that the government has forgotten to keep its promises. To provide citizens the means and support to rebuild, to grant citizens of this country their right to a home, security and a sense that they are not second class citizens, that they are not forgotten.

Often as a teacher of history, I am told to keep my political opinions to myself; in this instance, however, I cannot. The state of disrepair in New Orleans is the fault of the government, Republicans and Democrats alike, while the state of repair is largely due to the work of private individuals. When I planned the trip to New Orleans with my students it was because I wanted them to be good citizens—not to watch from the sidelines while their fellow citizens needed help. What lesson then do I teach my students about government organizations that after two years have left the “blue roofs” on so many houses? How do I explain to teenagers why the government waited so long to call for an evacuation? What do I tell my students when they ask about markings on houses that say “NE”- No Entry, but list the body count as zero? How do I explain to my students that officials knew the levees were flawed and did nothing?

I keep going back to the fact that as a whole the local, state and federal governments could have prevented this–that they could be doing more now. There are more questions to my students’ questions than answers. They must ask these questions of our government and to some extent of themselves. At a very basic level it boils down to “we treat others as we want to be treated.”

In the midst of their questions and the aftermath of the trip, I am not entirely pessimistic. In fact, I am to some extent left feeling hopeful. That it will be citizens—whether in high school, college, part of a church group, native to New Orleans or from another country—that provide the justice, the security and the support to rebuild. That it will be the actions of those who believe in democracy, who believe that we are responsible for creating the type of society, nation, world that we can be proud to be a part of.

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Perhaps the most heartbreaking scene in When the Levees Broke is the funeral of five-year-old Serena Polk. In her tiny pink coffin, Serena is laid to rest under the tearful eyes of her mother Kimberly, many months after the levees broke. Serena, who had been living with her father on Tennessee Street in the Lower Ninth Ward, was missing for eight months, before authorities discovered the body of a young girl with a backpack. Her mother knew it was Serena. Serena always wore a backpack. (If you have not yet seen this segment of the film, it appears at the end of Act III, Chapter 6, “Despair, Depression, Anxiety.”)

In reality, there were hundreds of Serena Polks, innocent children lost to the floodwaters of Katrina. In what surely must have been one of the most moving commemorative events scheduled for the second anniversary of the storm, several religious and social justice organizations teamed up to organize a series of “Lost Children of Katrina” ceremonies in late August in New Orleans.

Events included the reading of the names of the children who died during and after Katrina and a tribute by surviving children to their lost classmates. The children marched behind a single horse-drawn carriage bearing a child’s casket. Events also included severall ecumenical worship services, addresses by such dignitaries as civil rights activist Andrew Young and New Orleans Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis and a memorial concert by Gospel singer Dorinda Clark Cole of the Clark Sisters.

“The Lost Children of Katrina” was organized by the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, a coalition of progressive African-American religious leaders, and the Greater New Orleans Clergy for Restorative Justice. (The Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference is the same group that issued a lengthy report on Katrina in September, 2006, entitled, “The Breach: Bearing Witness — Report of the Katrina National Justice Commission, which you can access by clicking here.)

Organizers said the August event was not only about the children, like Serena, who perished at the hands of Katrina, but those who survived and are still struggling.

“We must send out a clarion call to the nation and to the world to let them know that some families have not been able to bury their children,” Dr. Susan Smith, a trustee of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, said in a press release. “And some children who have survived do not have houses to live in and schools to attend.”

“We have not finished burying our children,” Councilwoman Willard-Lewis said in another announcement. “The nation needs to know that misery, despair and dysfunction are still alive in NOLA. We are not yet healed or whole and our children still suffer.”

Can the government be put on trial for the deaths that resulted from the failure of the New Orleans levees?

In reality, the only people to face a criminal trial (so far) for Katrina-related deaths are Sal and Mabel Mangano, owners of St. Rita’s Nursing Home in St. Bernard Parish, where 35 elderly residents drowned in the floodwaters. But the Manganos’ lawyers did a skillful job of turning the tables on prosecutors and arguing that ultimate responsibility for the 35 deaths lay not with the Manganos, but with the government agencies that designed the woefully inadequate levees and officials who failed to order a mandatory evacuation (at least in St. Bernard) and provide a coordinated relief effort in the storm’s aftermath. In the end, it took a jury only four hours to acquit the Manganos of all 35 counts of criminally-negligent homicide.

This may be the closest we will ever come to a jury placing guilt for Katrina deaths in the lap of government officials — or at least having to answer directly to a jury. Gov. Kathleen Blanco herself was forced to testify in the St. Rita’s trial, despite trying every legal maneuver she could to avoid appearing. Blanco had her chance to explain her actions (for accounts of her testimony, click here and here), but the jury clearly did not buy her insistence that she had done everything possible under extraordinary circumstances to effect an orderly evacuation before Katrina hit.

No, the jurors were far more swayed by the testimony of three expert defense witnesses who suggested that inadequate emergency planning, and not the decision of the Manganos to ride out the storm, was ultimately responsible for the deaths at St. Rita’s.

According to accounts of the trial in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, sociologist Dennis Mileti testified “that the federal, state, and local governmental responses to Katrina were the worst for any disaster in the country’s history.” When defense attorney Jim Cobb asked Mileti whether anyone should have died in Katrina, Mileti responded that “every death was avoidable. If adequate emergency plans had been in place and implemented during Katrina, people would have perceived the risk and taken appropriate actions to avoid it.”

Ivor Van Heerden, deputy director of the LSU Hurricane Center, who was featured in When the Levees Broke, testified that the Army Corps of Engineers design and maintenance of the levees amounted to “gross negligence.”

“Some of the errors were mistakes that a first-year engineering student wouldn’t make,” he said.

“The state was responsible for the safety of nursing home residents,” Michael Cavalier, a juror in the St. Rita’s trial, told reporters after the verdict. “They didn’t do what they should have. They didn’t make the decisions they should have. So when the Manganos made their decision, why should they try to crucify them for it? That isn’t right.”

Echoed another juror, Kim Maxwell: “There were a lot of mistakes made, and it should have been a lot of people answering for it. So why just these two people?”

In When the Levees Broke, Terence Blanchard sighs that “someone” should go to jail for what happened after Katrina. At least one jury clearly believes that “someone” should not be the Manganos (although there are still numerous civil lawsuits against the couples filed by families of those who lost their lives at St. Rita’s). And at least one grand jury believes it should not be Dr. Anna Pou and two nurses at Memorial Medical Center, where 34 people died after Katrina. They will not stand trial because a grand jury has refused to indict them for any crimes. That gives Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti, who was behind both prosecutions, an unimpressive 0-2 record on Katrina. Maybe he is prosecuting the wrong people.

Blanco is unlikely to be the “someone” to go to jail or be found guilty of a crime, but she has paid the ultimate political price for Katrina. By March 2006 her approval rating had fallen to the 34%, third lowest in the nation and the lowest of any Democratic governor. A year later, she announced she would not seek re-election. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin won’t be appearing before a jury any time soon: he was re-elected after Katrina. Ditto for Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who still holds the same job he did the day Katrina hit.

So the question is: did the St. Rita’s jury get it right? Does government responsibility trump individual responsibility when it comes to disasters such as Katrina? Or is it too easy to blame “the government” and let individuals off the hook for decisions that may have led to the deaths of others? (Local discussion boards in New Orleans were rife with comments of the “let the Manganos rot in hell” variety on the eve of the jury verdict, so clearly, there is a wide variety of opinion out there.) And if you believe the jury made the right decision, are you satisfied with only this symbolic censure of the government?

Because one way or another, the St. Rita’s trial may just be as close as we ever come to hearing a jury pronounce the government — or, for that matter, anyone else — guilty in the deaths that resulted when the levees broke.

Emmy Awards

No one who has seen When the Levees Broke needs to be told how effective and important a film it is. Still, it’s nice to get official confirmation every once in a while. That’s what happened last week when the four-part series earned three Emmy Awards, including a nod for Spike Lee as best director for non-fiction programming. When the Levees Broke also picked up Emmys for exceptional merit in non-fiction filmmaking and picture editing. Of course, the film has already won a slew of awards, including a 2007 Image Award for Outstanding Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special, a Peabody Award, and two awards at the 2006 Venice Film Festival. For a complete list, click here.

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Levees Launch

Those who were unable to attend the official launch of the Teaching the Levees Curriculum Sept. 6 in New York at Teachers College, Columbia University, missed an engrossing and provocative discussion about New Orleans, race, poverty, politics, and a whole lot more. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert moderated a panel of four outspoken guests — New Orleans City Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell (who is featured in the film), University of Wisconsin education professor Gloria Ladson-Billings, Princeton professor Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., and Columbia University President Lee Bollinger. Other speakers included Levees co-producer Sam Pollard, representatives from HBO and the Rockefeller Foundation, New York City schools deputy chancellor Marcia Lyles, Teachers College President Susan Fuhrman, and Professor Margaret Smith-Crocco, who spearheaded the Teaching the Levees project.

“We must leave here today heeding [the Rev. Martin Luther] King’s call, keeping alive honest conversations about race and class in this country,” Crocco told the several hundred viewers in attendance. For a complete account of the proceedings, click here.

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K-Ville Premieres

Every once in a while, commercial television will surprise you. That’s what happened last night when Fox aired the pilot episode of K-Ville (see post from Sept. 7). Yes, the show has its fair share of the predictable chase scenes and requisite cop-buddy cliches, but it also exhibits a surprising sensitivity to many of the important social issues raised by Katrina (and addressed in the Teaching the Levees curriculum).

The central plot of the pilot involves the attempts of Christina DuBois, a wealthy white businesswoman, to sabotage redevelopment in the Ninth Ward; when confronted with the truth, she lashes out that Katrina was not “a tragedy” but “a cleansing” that finally ridded New Orleans of its most undesirable population. And make no mistake: the writers don’t see this as an open question. Ms. DuBois is clearly the villain here; she is led off in handcuffs, hearing her Miranda rights. The episode ends with Ninth Ward residents holding a block party to burn their “for sale signs.”

The particulars of the episode may have been completely over-the-top and unrealistic (we see two successive redevelopment fund-raisers go down in a hail of machine-gun fire), but one can hardly fault prime-time commercial television for looking and sounding like prime-time commercial television. But the bottom line is that the writers and producers of K-Ville get it. They get that there have been efforts to thwart redevelopment in the Ninth Ward and that many people are quite contented with the exodus of the city’s poorest citizens in the aftermath of Katrina. They get that Christina DuBois is saying out loud what many people say in private.

These are the same important issues raised in Teaching the Levees, and there are many real possibilities for using K-Ville as a starting point to lure students in to the discussion. If you believe in meeting students where they are, a show like K-Ville can become a powerful teaching tool. Once student interested has been aroused, the basic issues raised in this first episode can be further explored with the lessons in Teaching the Levees and viewings of When the Levees Broke. For example, the pilot could easily be used as an introduction to Lesson 3 of the college curriculum, “Should New Orleans Be Rebuilt as a ‘Chocolate City?’, pp. 61- 63. You may also want to use Lesson 3 of the Economics section, “Were the Citizens of the Ninth Ward Trapped Long Before theLEvees Broke?” (pp. 80-82), or Lesson 1 of the Geography unit, “Land Use Patterns and the Future: To Rebuild or Not to Rebuild?” pp. 85-88.)

K-Ville has plenty more to offer in conjunction with Teaching the Levees. Filmed entirely on location in New Orleans, it offers powerful images of the dilapidated landscape of some neighborhoods two years after the fact. It reminds viewers of the psychic toll of Katrina: the main character’s young daughter, who has relocated to Atlanta with her mother, still cries every time it rains. Jazz and its centrality to New Orleans are not forgotten.

This might just be the best weekly reminder the American public will get on where New Orleans stands right now and why it is worth rebuilding. It’s up to us as educators to use that reminder to keep the discussion moving forward.

One of the most encouraging things to happen in the aftermath of Katrina is the continuing flow of volunteers from all over the world to assist with the rebuilding. Two years later, that urge to lend a hand does not seem to have abated, as groups from churches, schools, and other organizations continue to make the journey to contribute what they can.

One of those groups came from the Kingswood-Oxford School in West Hartford, Connecticut, which sent 21 students, four teachers and one graduate under the heading Team Up New Orleans in early August to work with Habitat for Humanity rebuilding homes. The group planned the trip after hearing an address from Douglas Brinkley, author of The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, featured prominently in When the Levees Broke.

One of the teachers, Yom Odamtten, helped write the curriculum for Teaching the Levees. She will be posting her own commentary on the experience on this blog soon, along with pictures of the trip. In the meantime, she has sent along journal entries by three of her students. You can also read more about the group’s trip to New Orleans in an article from the Hartford Courant and on the Kingswood-Oxford website.

And if you have been involved with any of the volunteer efforts in New Orleans, we would love to hear from you.  Please share your experiences and photos with us.

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In the beginning of this trip, I was wary and unsure about New Orleans. I didn’t know if building houses would be worth it due to future hurricanes and the damage they can obviously cause. But as soon as I arrived at the Habitat site I knew this was the right thing to do. The morale of the city is so high that it makes me proud to be helping these people. When Sam and other kids came to the Habitat house, all they wanted to do was help, even in the hundred-degree heat. In Connecticut, I would never pass by a construction site and help. The fact that these kids are volunteering with no benefit for themselves shows the real New Orleans character and makes me want to help bring the city back to life.

–Kristen Champagne

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Today was our first real day in New Orleans. The Katrina tour was completely different than I expected. I thought the levees would be fixed and the rubble would still be there. The levees were nothing like I expected. I saw two types of levees: one was a hill, literally 3 feet of grass and soil, and the other was a wall at what looked like six feet. I thought the levee would be a twelve-foot pile of concrete or stone at least, not a hill.

At the beginning of the tour we saw the Convention Center, and all I could think about were the scenes from Spike Lee’s documentary, When the Levees Broke, of the tons of people standing outside asking for basic help. Then as we headed to the houses with the water lines all I thought about were the boats that [Douglas] Brinkley talked about which were run by volunteers to save people. I thought about that story because the lines were almost nine feet at some point and I could not believe how high up the boats must have been and the height of the water. We also saw a house that had been picked up by the flood and then stopped by a big tree. That stuck with me because those people were considered lucky that there was a tree to stop their house.

However, the end of the tour was happier when we ended in the French Quarter with all the restaurants and gift shops. I had no idea how much New Orleans depended on tourism. The Mardi Gras Museum was fun with all the intricate details and shiny, colorful sequins of the costumes and floats. Then the Presbytere was very historical and I learned a lot how Louisiana started and the crops. The Katrina exhibit was the best, though. The pictures were heart-wrenching, but even more so the quotes said by the teenagers. It helped Katrina become closer to me seeing as I could relate or try to relate better through the eyes of a teenager. Then, right before dinner there was a fight. It was scary because the “n word” was just thrown around and there is so much hatred involved with that, that it just makes me cringe.

After that, we left to go to dinner and then walked down Bourbon Street. When we walked down Bourbon sipping our milkshakes and listening to jazz it really made you appreciate the liveliness of New Orleans.

–Emma Levin

*     *     *

Today was good. Mr. Baldwin and I went run/walking to begin the day. We went to the Mississippi and back. The river is beautiful. I was surprised by how dramatically the ground sloped up to the river. It really made the statement “New Orleans is in a bowl” clear. On the way back, we passed the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., as in the movie Forrest Gump. I didn’t even know it was real! I wonder which came first?

After running, we went to the Habitat site. Once again I spent the morning on the roof. Now the roof vents are up, and Megan and I just need to cover the vents with ridge caps in order to finish the roof. This afternoon I painted window trim and siding. It was hot outside, but better than yesterday and I had fun. The people who were painting inside however were suffering form the paint fumes.

This evening we went to Zea’s restaurant. Joining us was Edna Novak, who was a teacher in New Orleans pre-Katrina and is still involved in the school system. She told us about pre- and post- Katrina public schools. I was amazed by how bad pre-Katrina schools were. Many students were unable to pass basic tests to move onto the next grade; kids my age were in 6th grade! I can’t even imagine something like that. It really made me appreciate something that oftentimes I take for granted, almost at times as a burden: school. However, when Katrina came through most of the schools were wiped out, leaving a blank slate to start anew. Now there are lots of independent charter schools with strict requirements. Parents can choose the best school for their kids. Amid all the damage of post-Katrina New Orleans, this seems like a step in the right direction.

–Michelle Lessard

Anyone who has ever taught high school students knows that most teenagers get the vast majority of their information from television and the movies (“Buddhism? Oh, I already know all about that. It was on The Simpsons. Lisa becomes a Buddhist. She finds out about it from Richard Gere.”).

So, for better or for worse, the TV-watching population of the U.S. will learn a whole lot about post-Katrina New Orleans when the much-anticipated Fox drama K-Ville premieres on Monday, Sept. 17, at 9 p.m. Eastern. K-Ville (the hyphen is actually a fleur-de-lis) is an on-location crime drama portraying the efforts of two New Orleans cops trying to put their city back together in the aftermath of Katrina. Anthony Anderson stars as Marlin Boulet (note the Creolesque surname) as a longtime New Orleans officer in the Felony Action Squad and Cole Hauser as Trevor Cobb, an out-of-town cop who, fresh from a stint fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, comes to New Orleans, you guessed it, to help its good citizens rebuild.

Only TV critics and the few astute web-watchers who caught Fox’s free online preview of the first episode (it appeared briefly at the end of August) have seen the pilot. For the rest of us, it’s still quite unclear how New Orleans will be portrayed in the series. But the city faithful are cautiously optimistic. No one wants to see the city presented as a crime-infested mess, but the reality of crime in New Orleans these days will hardly be news to most viewers. And then there’s the less-than-stellar reputation of the New Orleans Police Department, where some police officers looted in the days after Katrina (vividly shown in When the Levees Broke). Will the public really buy into a show about two hopelessly altruistic New Orleans cops? (The show presents the police in such an approving manner that the New Orleans Police Department has given its preliminary blessing to the show, allowing the actors to use authentic NOPD uniforms, badges, cruisers, etc.)

The best New Orleans can hope for is that the show will somehow portray the city as a teeming, exotic, culturally-vibrant hot spot, a fresh portrayal that can help re-invent the city in the American imagination – much the same way Miami Vice took the rundown debris of South Beach and turned it into the thriving tourist mecca it is today. There’s a definite lesson for New Orleans here: When Miami Vice first hit the airwaves, the local powers that be did everything they could to try and shut it down, believing that the last thing their city needed was a show depicting it as a drug-infested crime capital. Even the title offended them. The reality is that the show did more than any other single factor to lead to Miami’s rebirth: most of the viewing public cared far less about the drug dealers on the show than the art deco hotels, the palm-studded sunsets, and the evocative music. The show made Miami cool, and within a few years, life began enthusiastically imitating art. Can the same thing happen in New Orleans?

“It’s incredibly complicated for me and for the people of New Orleans,” New Orleans Times-Picayune TV columnist Dave Walker said in a recent interview. “The stakes are indescribably high. The benefit of the production in the city – the money they’re going to spend, but then there’s the potential deficit to the image of the city based on the product that they actually produce.”

As Walker mentions, K-Ville at the very least provides New Orleans with a much-needed economic boon, at least for now. Setting up production for 13 episodes of a major TV series is a multi-million-dollar affair, what Walker describes as “a bonanza for the local production community.” If the show becomes a hit, the benefits will be even greater.

But Walker also worries about what the average viewer will take away from K-Ville when they tune in. “Almost nobody,” he wrote back in March, when it was still unclear whether Fox would pick up the series, “documentarian or dramatist, gets New Orleans quite right. Finding the fine line between rosy affirmations and reality – while still making an entertainment – heightens the heat on the show’s creators even further.”

Of course, whether the show has any impact at all depends largely on whether it sticks around longer than 13 episodes. The early buzz on K-Ville is pretty good: TVparty.com calls it “a breathless, wild ride” that is both “heart-wrenching and action-packed.” You’ve probably already seen the promos airing on Fox; if you haven’t, you can watch the trailer on the network’s website and a whole range of promotional goodies on the official K-Ville website.

Katrina was certainly a major media event, so there’s something fitting and proper about its aftermath hitting the prime time airwaves. Educators have an obligation not to let K-Ville have the final word on New Orleans, any more than Lisa Simpson should get the final word on Buddhism. But we do have a golden opportunity to use the show as a springboard to further investigation of the many important issues raised by Katrina. (For a whole range of curricular materials about Katrina as a media event, see Chapter 2 of the Teaching the Levees curriculum, “In Our Own Image: Using Representations of Katrina to Empower Media-Literate Citizens.”)

And just in case you were wondering, “K-Ville” is reportedly a shortened version of “Katrinaville,” a term Walker of the Times-Picayune says “I’ve never seen or heard used by anyone here.” He says the show’s creator, Jonathan Lisco, saw the words “Welcome to K-Ville” graffitied on a wall in a destroyed neighborhood while researching the show.

Stay tuned.