"People should not be afraid that we're going to fall into the Gulf. That's not going to happen," said Roy Dokka, lead researcher and executive director of the Center for GeoInformatics at Louisiana State University.

He described the slide into the Gulf as "a kind of avalanche of material, except that it is happening very slowly. It moved about the width of two credit cards this year."

While that may seem trifling in the big picture, Dokka said engineers need to include this reality into their plans for levees, floodgates and other projects.

I'll say this, though: that Manhattan-sized iceberg has me convinced everyone around 20 years old or so should consider moving inland.

Study: La. slowly slipping into gulf
By CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press Writer
Mon Jan 1, 9:47 PM ET

A new report by scientists studying Louisiana's sinking coast says the land here is not just sinking, it's sliding ever so slowly into the Gulf of Mexico.

The new findings may add a kink to plans being drawn up to build bigger and better levees to protect this historic city and Cajun bayou culture.

Policemen Indicted in Post-Katrina Shootings
7 New Orleans Officers Charged in Incident in Which 2 Died and 4 Were Wounded
By Michael Kunzelman
Associated Press
Friday, December 29, 2006; A09

NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 28 -- Seven police officers were indicted Thursday on charges of murder or attempted murder in a shooting incident on a bridge that left two people dead during the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The district attorney portrayed the officers as trigger-happy.

"We cannot allow our police officers to shoot and kill our citizens without justification like rabid dogs," District Attorney Eddie Jordan said.

More than 200,000 homes and thousands of businesses were damaged or destroyed by the flooding in New Orleans. The insurers have refused to pay claims for water damage and the relatively small amounts that homeowners and businesses received for wind damage have been far from enough for most people to rebuild. The federal government has stepped in with promises of several billion dollars in assistance, but little of the money has reached the people who need it.

The insurers said that Judge Duval’s decision was contrary to decades of case law and state insurance regulation and would turn out to be a short-lived loss for their side.

“The judge reached the wrong conclusion,” said Robert P. Hartwig, the chief economist at the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group in New York. “The policies clearly exclude flood-related damage under any and all circumstances. We don’t believe the decision will be upheld.”

Judge Upholds Policyholders’ Katrina Flood Claims
By JOSEPH B. TREASTER

A federal judge offered a glimmer of hope to the tens of thousands of people whose homes and businesses in New Orleans were flooded in Hurricane Katrina, ruling that insurance companies should pay for the widespread water damage.

If upheld, the ruling late Monday by Judge Stanwood R. Duval Jr. of Federal District Court in New Orleans could cost the insurers billions of dollars more than the $41 billion they have already paid to storm victims. But the insurers insist that their policies do not cover flooding, and they said yesterday that they expected an appeals court to reverse the decision. A final ruling could take months, if not years.

Harsh, if appropriate, title... 

“The Death of New Orleans: An Exercise in Political Thought”
A Graduate Student Conference
November 3-4, 2006
Yale University, New Haven

Keynote Speaker: Prof. Ange-Marie Hancock, Yale University

 

Last year an American city disappeared. On August 29, 2005 winds from a category five hurricane hit the Gulf Coast and flooded 80% of the city of New Orleans. Over 1,400 people were killed, another 3,000 remain unaccounted for. In all 1.5 million have become internally displaced in their own country.

The story of New Orleans is being told as one of natural disaster followed by bureaucratic mismanagement. Yet man alone is responsible for the death of the city. Katrina came as no surprise to scientists or the politicians they serve. Hurricanes are not uncommon in the Gulf of Mexico and federal studies had suggested that up to 100,000 lives might be lost if the eye of a hurricane hit the port city. What caused the devastation were manmade factors: inadequate evacuation plans, the failure to maintain levees, and endemic poverty. The city’s poorest were concentrated in neighborhoods that scientists predicted would succumb to such a hurricane, and then not provided with the means to leave. Katrina brought us face to face not with man's inability to control nature but his failure to do so. The death of New Orleans was a political act.

Katrina Research Project on Equity

The Katrina Research Project on Equity (KRPE) is a clearinghouse and network for research on the role of race and class in the Post-Katrina recovery process in the Gulf Coast and in displaced communities. KRPE facilitates communication and collaboration among researchers, volunteers, and community groups interested in research on race and class disparities in reconstruction programs. Our goal is to encourage community-directed research that promotes a just and equitable society. 

We encourage research that is community-directed and produces knowledge that benefits storm-affected groups.  KRPE serves as a clearinghouse for research projects to avoid duplication and to match volunteers to ongoing or new projects.  We facilitate the formation of virtual “Katrina Research Workgroups” that can work from remote locations and/or field projects in New Orleans.  KRPE promotes voluntarism and self-organized research in the service of social justice.

November 7th may be a very big day on the political calendar, but you have just been served notice. If you didn't know it before, you should know it now. The fight does not end on November 7th, it begins in earnest on that day.

Bush White House: "A Cataclysmic Fight to the Death"
by BriVT
Mon Oct 30, 2006 at 11:01:32 AM PST

One guess who a GOP strategist was talking about fighting in that title. Osama Bin Laden? Bwahaha! No. The "insurgents" in Iraq? More plausible, but still no.

No, that unnamed staffer was talking about having a "cataclysmic fight to the death" with none other than the Congress of the United States.

If the Democrats take over and try to investigate the White House, that is. More below ...

“There was never a question we would help,” she said. “We are an HBCU. We knew we had to step up.”...

A total of 2,456 students have enrolled this fall at Southern University at New Orleans, compared with 3,500 before Katrina. At Xavier, enrollment for the current semester is 3,013, compared with 4,100 before the Katrina. And at Dillard, 1,100 enrolled this fall compared to 2,000 in 2005, according to Weaver’s report.

Study: HBCUs Took in a Third of Black College Students Displaced by Katrina
Date: Thursday, October 26, 2006
By: Sherrel Wheeler Stewart, BlackAmericaWeb.com

About one third of the 9,600 HBCU students displaced in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina found a higher education home at other historically black colleges and universities throughout the country, according to a new study by Atlanta researcher Mike Weaver.

In many cases, it meant that the HBCUs accepted the students without the benefit of their financial aid because they had already paid to attend their home institutions, Weaver told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

“If it weren’t for HBCUs, many of the students who were displaced by Katrina may not have gone to school at all,” Weaver said. “We are our brothers' and sisters' keeper. That is what HBCUs have done traditionally. Hurricane Katrina brought out the best in HBCUs.”

A total of 67 HBCUs received students who fled from Dillard, Xavier and Southern University New Orleans. Southern University in Baton Rouge took in the largest number at 960, followed by Texas Southern which took in 600 students.

New Orleans Population Is Reduced Nearly 60% By ADAM NOSSITER NEW ORLEANS, Oct. 6 — The city’s population has dropped by nearly 60 percent since Hurricane Katrina, far more sharply than recent optimistic estimates had suggested, according to an authoritative post-storm survey released this week. The population of New Orleans is now only 187,525, well under half the pre-storm population of 454,863, according to the survey, commissioned by several state agencies. The United States Census Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised those who carried out the door-to-door population count this summer. “We actually knocked on doors and asked how many people lived there,” said Dr. Alden Henderson of the centers. About 490 households were surveyed, and researchers went to more than 1,100 dwellings, he said. Mayor C. Ray Nagin has suggested that about half of New Orleans’s former residents had returned, basing his projections partly on utility users. But the new numbers indicate that repopulation will take awhile to reach that level. “The recovery is going to be slower than we anticipated,” said David Bowman, an official with the Louisiana Recovery Authority, which helped commission the survey. “It’s going to take time to get the housing stock back online.”

Homeowners Stay Put in New Orleans Records show most are using government aid to rebuild their property rather than to relocate. By Jean Guccione and Doug Smith Times Staff Writers October 8, 2006 Most New Orleans-area property owners seeking government aid for hurricane damage are showing a strong preference for restoring their old neighborhoods rather than take the money to seek new horizons. Although federal and state recovery programs offer aid to those who choose to relocate, few applicants have requested it, records show. A Times analysis of data from the Small Business Administration, the federal agency primarily responsible for disaster reconstruction loans, found that of more than 150,000 homeowners and business owners approved for the loans, 2% were transferring the money to a new property. Those who are moving aren't going far. New Orleans suburbs on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain are favorite destinations of the few loan applicants who are leaving the devastated neighborhoods in the area south of the lake. Only a handful have asked to use the money to buy homes outside the metropolitan area. Though the 2% relocation figure may seem low considering the widespread property loss after Hurricane Katrina, it is higher than that of other disasters, said Herb Mitchell, the Small Business Administration's associate administrator for disaster assistance. "In most disasters, there are very few relocations," he said. "Generally they stay in the community and rebuild."

Time to Move the Mississippi, Experts Say
By CORNELIA DEAN

Scientists have long said the only way to restore Louisiana’s vanishing wetlands is to undo the elaborate levee system that controls the Mississippi River, not with the small projects that have been tried here and there, but with a massive diversion that would send the muddy river flooding wholesale into the state’s sediment-starved marshes.

And most of them have long dismissed the idea as impractical, unaffordable and lethal to the region’s economy. Now, they are reconsidering. In fact, when a group of researchers convened last April to consider the fate of the Louisiana coast, their recommendation was unanimous: divert the river.

From a renter’s point of view, New Orleans has become off-limits to all but prosperous tenants, as rents have increased significantly in the pockets of the city that did not flood. Before the storm, the fair market rent for a two-bedroom unit in the city was $676; it is now $940, according to the Brookings Institution.

Renewal Money for New Orleans Bypasses Renters
By SUSAN SAULNY and GARY RIVLIN

NEW ORLEANS — As billions in housing aid begins to flow here in the next few weeks, most of it will go to homeowners, who have been appointed by city officials as the true architects of this city’s recovery, despite the fact that roughly half the city’s residents rented housing before Hurricane Katrina.

The renters of New Orleans, it seems, are on their own.

Rents are skyrocketing across the city, up an average of 39 percent since Hurricane Katrina. The city has announced that it plans to refurbish only a small fraction of its traditional public housing units. Some neighborhoods are campaigning to tear down sturdy apartment buildings and build parks in their place. Though some aid has been set aside for landlords, many lower-income residents who say they are unable to return have been priced out.

For those of you (like me) who don't have HBO, this guy did us a huge favor in the process of listing all the Spike Lee joints up on YouTube.

The biggest surprise was finding the entire version of When the Levees Broke, a 4 hour documentary on Katrina and New Orleans. This film is Lee’s best non-fiction work and the best Katrina related film I have seen. The film goes to the very roots of the Katrina disaster (the man-made one) following the trails of race, Louisiana oil and politics.

The entire film comes in 26 parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26.
Also check out this montage submitted by a user: When the Levees Broke
Another doc by Spike on the Gore and Bush 2000 Election aptly titled We Wuz Robbed

I picked this up from Boing-Boing, which also had BitTorrent links. Think I'll burn me a personal DVD.

After I assured Detective Pananepinto, “I can swear to you that I’m not part of Al Qaeda,” he confirmed that, “Louisiana is still part of the United States,” subject to the first amendment and he was therefore required to divulge my accuser.

Not surprisingly, it was Exxon Corporation, one of a handful of companies not in love with my investigations. [See “A Well-Designed Disaster: the Untold Story of the Exxon Valdez.”]

So I rang America’s top petroleum pusher-men and asked their media relations honcho in Houston, Marc Boudreaux, a simple question. “Do you want us to go to jail or not? Is it Exxon’s position that reporters should go to jail?” Because, all my dumb-ass jokes aside, that is what’s at stake. And Exxon knew we were journalists because we showed our press credential to the Exxon guards at the refinery entrance.

Palast Charged with Journalism in the First Degree
Published by Greg Palast September 11th, 2006 in Articles
September 11, 2006
by Greg Palast

It’s true. It’s weird. It’s nuts. The Department of Homeland Security, after a five-year hunt for Osama, has finally brought charges against… Greg Palast. I kid you not. Send your cakes with files to the Air America wing at Guantanamo.

Though not just yet. Fatherland Security has informed me that television producer Matt Pascarella and I have been charged with unauthorized filming of a “critical national security structure” in Louisiana.

The tune of choice was the free-style "Katrina Clap," which targets the Bush administration for its much-criticized response to Hurricane Katrina last year.

..."Mos Def chose to use his voice to speak for those who are losing their own during this critical period of reconstruction," the performer's rep, Carleen Donovan, said in a statement. "[He] was in the middle of performing and as soon as he was made aware of the police's presence, he shut everything down. His staff and team were willing to comply as well but the police overreacted. Mos Def was not charged but given a summons for operating a sound-reproduction device without a permit, which he is going to contest."

Son, you didn't have a permit. Unless you're going to challenge the constitutionality of requiring permits...which case you will lose...you're just out there for the fine. Your people shouldn't have been arrested, though.

Cops Stop Mos Def's NY Street Show
by Natalie Finn
Sep 1, 2006, 5:05 PM PT

Excuse me, sir, Radio City is that-a-way.

Not thinking too much of Mos Def's attempt to serenade the people crowded outside of the building where, inside, the MTV Video Music Awards was taking place, New York police arrested the rapper-actor Thursday night and charged him with disorderly conduct. He was released early Friday morning.

The lawsuit contends that boat owner John M. Lyons Jr. suffered his own distress, in the form of "grief, mental anguish, embarrassment and suffering . . . due to the removal of the boat," as well as its replacement costs.

Grief and anguish my ass...it's about the replacement cost, you selfish bastard.

"Embarassment"? 

Cheerful acceptance of good done with your property was your ticket to Hebbin, you Mammon-worshipping dick. Now the second circle is the best you get.

Katrina rescuer is sued by boat owner
He took craft and never brought it back
Saturday, August 26, 2006
By Steve Ritea
Staff writer

A Broadmoor man who said he rescued more than 200 residents after commandeering a boat during the flood after Hurricane Katrina is being sued by the boat's owner for taking it "without receiving permission."

Mark Morice, who by the Wednesday after the storm said he "couldn't get more than a block or two without people screaming to me for help," took the boat "out of necessity. . . . I did it for my neighbors."

"The economy is growing, and someone is getting the growth," said Sharon Parrott, a senior analyst at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "So now we know who it is."

President Bush and the Republican Congress, take a bow: You took power to make the well-off even better off, and you have succeeded brilliantly.

As for the poor and the middle class, maybe they'll do better after the next hurricane, or the one after that.

Perfect Storm for the Poor
In Income Data, Something More Damaging Than Katrina
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, September 1, 2006; A21

After a week of remembering the horrors of Hurricane Katrina, the most depressing realization is how easily our leaders forgot their fervent promises to lift up our nation's poorest citizens.

All manner of politicians and columnists said in Katrina's wake that this was the time to revisit the problems of the destitute. The anguish of the people of New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward would have at least some redemptive power if the country took poverty seriously again.

It didn't happen.

One of the reasons I've hesistated to give out rhetoric lessons and such in the past was the fear that people would mistake rhetorical technique to support one's position for reasoning methods to establish one's position. Rhetoric produces a line drawing of the photograph that is our reasoned (or chosen!) position. We can agree the line drawing looks like our photograph but the impact of each image is different; the impact of the line drawing dependsas much on what you leave out as what you include.

Juan Williams' Getting Past Katrina is based on a line drawing of history.

A YEAR ago this week, the entire nation caught a chilling look in the mirror. We watched as the citizens of New Orleans, clutching their essential belongings in plastic trash bags, struggled through fetid flood waters in search of shelter. But even with all that’s been said and written on this painful anniversary, one of the real issues remains unaddressed.

Jonah Goldberg: Give Bush a Break
The president's most stubborn critics won't stop beating the Iraq and Katrina drums despite much success elsewhere.
Jonah Goldberg
August 31, 2006

LORD KNOWS I have my problems with President Bush. He taps the federal coffers like a monkey smacking the bar for another cocaine pellet in an addiction study. Some of his sentences give me the same sensation as falling backward in one of those "trust" exercises, in which you just have to hope things work out. Yes, the Iraq invasion has gone badly, and to deny this is to suggest that Bush meant for things to turn out this way, which is even crueler than saying he failed to get it right.

But you know what? It's time to cut the guy some slack.

You know what, pal?

Bush Sees `Optimism' After Katrina
The president focuses on Mississippi's successes and tours past the scars the storm left a year ago.
By James Gerstenzang
Times Staff Writer
August 29, 2006

BILOXI, Miss. — On the eve of the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush returned to the once-devastated blocks he walked after the storm, cheered the progress made in rebuilding the Gulf Coast and told those whose suffering continued: "The federal government stands with you still."

In the clean white sand beaches, he saw a metaphor for what he promised would be "a new Mississippi."

A year ago, Bush said during one of four stops here Monday, "the beaches were cluttered with debris and garbage; the beautiful beaches had been destroyed. And now they speak to the hope of this part of the world."

Lotta mo' links over there.

Welcome to New Orleans: future home of rich, white condo dwellers
By Mark Oliver / Hurricane Katrina 11:11am

The US officialdom that ignored the plight of the poor residents of New Orleans - many of them black - as the Hurricane Katrina disaster unfolded a year ago is now accused of a new kind of racism.

The charge is that plans to rebuild the city seem to be more about expensive condominiums than affordable social housing that would allow the less well off to return and prosper.

Bush Visits Gulf Coast, Stressing Progress
By ANNE E. KORNBLUT

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 28 — On the eve of the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s strike here, President Bush returned to the devastated region on Monday promising to continue federal assistance and, with his presidency still under the shadow of the slow response to the storm, eagerly pointed out signs of progress in reconstructing the Gulf Coast.

But as another storm rolled toward Florida, with thousands of victims from Hurricane Katrina still uprooted, Mr. Bush admitted there were “a lot of problems left.”

Winding his way through tattered towns in Mississippi on his way here, Mr. Bush spent the day demonstrating empathy and optimism, touring rebuilt areas and meeting with local officials and residents in his 13th trip to the area since the storm.

AN HOUR ON THE GULF COAST RECONSTRUCTION EFFORT WITH:
JED HORNE, Author, "Breach of Faith"
CHARLES C. MANN, Contributor, Fortune magazine,
"The Long, Strange Resurrection of New Orleans"

CLICK HERE TO WATCH FRIDAY’S SHOW

via Afro-Netizen  

ONE YEAR AFTER KATRINA
Gulf Watch releases most in-depth report to date on the state of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast
Wednesday August 23, 2006

August 29, 2006 marks the one-year anniversary of the day Hurricane Katrina hit shore, setting in motion events that devastated thousands of lives and shook the country. One year later, what's the state of the Gulf and its people?

Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch has published "One Year after Katrina" (pdf), a 96-page report that reveals the state of Gulf Coast rebuilding on the anniversary of the storm. Through statistics, status reports, in-depth investigations, and profiles of community leaders, "One Year After Katrina highlights the challenges ahead for a just and sustainable renewal.

Let me know  if you need more.

Rev. Willie Walker, Noah’s Ark Missionary Baptist Church, Senior Pastor shares his experiences as a community activist including his search & rescue efforts during Hurricane Katrina.    00:20.

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Hurricane Digital Memory Bank - Preserving stories from Katrina, Rita and Wilma (George Mason University)

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GenerationPULSE - Stories and art by youth survivors of Hurricane Katrina (Boston College)

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The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
Douglas Brinkley
Watch

C-SPAN has a 15 minute interview you should watch. 

Malcolm Suber, People’s Hurricane Relief Fund & Malik Rahim, Common Ground

Malcolm Suber, People’s Hurricane Relief Fund, Founding Member & Head Organizer & Malik Rahim, Common Ground , Co-Founder discuss their organization's recovery efforts one year later and their experiences as community activists.

ABC sanitizes Spike Lee
Posted by David DeGraw at 12:21 PM on August 20, 2006

Spike Lee was interviewed on This Week about his new Katrina documentary. The portion that aired on TV stripped out all of Lee's critical comments towards the Bush administration. Check out both versions and see how ABC sanitized Lee.

 

George shipped me a copy of this press release. I just emailed the guys to see if I can get one of those pre-release copies of the article.

NOLA is being treated much like Iraq in that its seen as fertile ground for any number of experiments. I really want to see what's going on.

LATER: Damn, that was quick...give me a couple of days with this thing.

After Katrina, School Reforms Make New Orleans Most Chartered City in U.S.

STANFORD--One year after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has become one of the most chartered cities in America, with nearly 70 percent of its public school students in schools of choice, according to a new report in the forthcoming issue of Education Next, on newsstands September 1.

"In the insurance coverage debate over wind versus water, Judge Senter's ruling has taken much of the wind, literally and figuratively out of the plaintiff attorney's argument," Ernie Csiszar, president of the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, said in a prepared statement. "Judge Senter has made it very clear that the flood exclusion applies to storm surge."

...If upheld, it could save the industry -- and cost policyholders -- tens of billions of dollars in unpaid claims.

Storm Surge Is Flood, Judge Says
Standard Insurance Won't Cover Damage
By Kathleen Day
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 16, 2006; D01

A federal judge sided with the insurance industry yesterday and against water-battered victims of Hurricane Katrina by ruling that storm-induced surges are floods and therefore not covered by standard homeowner policies.

Big Katrina Contractors Win More FEMA Work
By Griff Witte and Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 10, 2006; D01

The four giant construction firms that received controversial no-bid contracts to house Hurricane Katrina evacuees last September will be earning up to $250 million apiece to do similar work after future disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said yesterday.

Unlike the Katrina deals, the contracts announced yesterday were awarded after a bidding process. But most of them went to the same four firms: Bechtel Corp., CH2M Hill Cos., Fluor Corp. and Shaw Group Inc. Two new consortia of companies were also chosen for a share of the work. Together, the six winners will receive up to $1.5 billion for hauling and installing temporary trailers to house evacuees during future emergencies.

[T]his freewheeling approach has shifted attention from the critical and more daunting challenge of reimagining the city’s infrastructure, from levees to freeways to its ecological footprint. It is the failure of that infrastructure, after all, that exposed the inequities that have been eating away at New Orleans for decades.

How and whether these problems are resolved will tell us whether our country is capable of assuring the future of American cities.

...Armed with a $3.5 million grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Greater New Orleans Foundation has chosen 15 planning teams who will develop designs for the various neighborhoods. The groups of neighborhood residents, many of them still displaced, met directly with the teams for five hours last Tuesday to get a sense of which ones they may want to work with. (Not surprisingly, the more affluent neighborhoods have been the best organized.)

Critic’s Notebook
In New Orleans, Each Resident Is Master of Plan to Rebuild
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 3 — Rebuilding a city, it seems, is too important a task to be left to professional planners. At least that’s the message behind a decision to place one of the most daunting urban reconstruction projects in American history in the hands of local residents.

Call For Papers for Graduate Student Conference

"The Death of New Orleans: An Exercise in Political Thought?"
November 4-5, 2006
Yale University, New Haven
Keynote Speaker: Prof. Ange-Marie Hancock, Yale University

Last year an American city disappeared. On August 29, 2005 winds from a category five hurricane hit the Gulf Coast and flooded 80% of the city of New Orleans. Over 1,400 people were killed, another 3,000 remain unaccounted for. In all 1.5 million have become internally displaced in their own country.

The story of New Orleans is being told as one of natural disaster followed by bureaucratic mismanagement. Yet Katrina came as no surprise to scientists or the politicians they serve. Hurricanes are in no way uncommon in the Gulf of Mexico and federal studies had suggested that up to 100,000 lives might be lost if the eye of a storm hit the port city. What caused the devastation were manmade factors: inadequate evacuation plans, the failure to maintain levees, and endemic poverty. The city?s poorest were concentrated in neighborhoods that scientists predicted would succumb to such a hurricane, and then not provided with the means to leave. Katrina brought us face to face not with man's inability to control nature but his failure to do so. The death of New Orleans was a political act.