UNDER AMERICAN DOMINATION: THE UNWATERING OF NEW ORLEANS
By Robert Klein Engler (09/10/05)
CHICAGO (10 September '05)--Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville knew what he was doing when he founded the city of La Nouvelle-Orléans in 1718, fifty-eight years before the American Revolution. Bienville made sure the city was situated on the best piece of high ground in a most unlikely area, the banks of the muddy and winding Mississippi River. Almost 300 years later, after a hurricane and devastating flood, the high ground where the French Quarter stands is dry. Even though the contemporary French have sent only some cots to aid the disaster victims in present day New Orleans, those Frenchmen of the past built better than they knew.
"Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater..." --Michael Chertoff
Seventy years after the founding of New Orleans, the great fire of 1788, similar to the great Chicago fire, destroyed many sections of the city. As a result of this fire, and another fire in 1795, much of the 18th century architecture in the French Quarter was built under Spanish rule. What we see today in the French Quarter, a section of New Orleans once described as a place where no one speaks French and hardly anyone has a quarter, is really more Spanish than French.
In 1795, Spain granted the United States "Right of Deposit" in New Orleans, which was also called by then the Crescent City. In 1801 Louisiana reverted to French control and in 1803, Napoleon sold the Louisiana Territory including the city of New Orleans to the United States. At that time the city of New Orleans, or the "City that Care Forgot," had a population of about 10,000 people. It continued to grow and prosper up to the War Between the States.
Early in the War Between the States, or as some diehard Southerners call it, The War of Northern Aggression, New Orleans was captured without a battle and occupied by Union troops. Because of this "domination" New Orleans was spared the destruction suffered by many other cities of the American South. After the war, the people of New Orleans then drained the swamps, raised up levees and built a southern metropolis that holds today both shotgun shacks and glittering skyscrapers.
American Gumbo
Many in the U. S. and Europe are shocked by the news videos coming out of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina passed and the city flooded. They remarked that the confusion at the Louisiana Superdome and the crowds of evacuees they saw on TV, "don't look like America." In some respects they are correct in their observation. The city of New Orleans is now 67 percent black. About 27 percent of the population lives below the poverty level, more than twice the national average. Many are on welfare. There is an illegal drug problem in the city, and it has one of the highest murder rates in the nation. Social disorganization plagued the inner-city in New Orleans long before the flood and cable news networks became aware of how people lived there.
Besides its present day social problems, New Orleans has had a multicultural history unlike most major American cities. In many ways New Orleans is very unlike mainstream America. The city may be understood best as something like what its citizens enjoy to eat--it is a gumbo. People in New Orleans have a sense of not only being part of the U. S., but also of being something different and unto themselves. This sense of being different from mainstream America could not be made more clear then by the street lamps along Canal Street.
At one time what is now Canal Street in New Orleans was the "neutral ground" that separated the old French from the newly arrived Yankees after the Louisiana Purchase. Later, there were plans to actually make Canal Street a canal, like the Grand Canal in Venice. That never happened, but the street did emerge as one of the grand places to walk and shop in New Orleans. But even that grandeur has diminished, especially after the closing of the famous Maison-Blanc department store. The recent TV news videos showing looters stealing arm loads of tennis shoes from shops along Canal that survived Hurricane Katrina but not the flood afterwards is not what all Canal Street has become, but it is certainly part of what it is, now.
When Canal Street was modernized last century, new lampposts were installed. These lampposts had cast on their base significant dates in the history of New Orleans. Besides domination by the French, British, and Spanish, anyone can read on one side of the lampposts the inscription: under "American Domination: 1803 to 1861," then "1865 to Date." The spirit of uniqueness and separation nurtured in New Orleans and suggested by these lampposts inscriptions continues, today. Many in New Orleans prefer it that way. Maybe someday the American Domination will be replaced by yet another domination, or even none whatsoever. It is this unique spirit that will help to rebuild the city better than ever. We may see the same thing happen in New Orleans that happened in ancient Rome. When Nero lost his city of wood to a great fire, he rebuilt it as a city of stone.
The Muck of Politics
The Associated Press first used the term "refugee" to describe those displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Some now say it is better to describe those displaced people as evacuees or simply flood victims. Regardless of the term, it is obvious that many of these people will never return, even when the city is rebuilt. Because so many people have been permanently displaced, the flood in New Orleans will have both local and national political implications. As it looks now, liberals will place blame for the disaster in New Orleans on the federal government and the Republicans, citing budget cuts that could have improved the levee system around New Orleans.
In fact, what was breached was not a levee, but a two feet thick concrete wall miles long that was put in place years ago to survive a Category 3 hurricane. Al Naomi, who manages them for the Army Corps of Engineers reminds us that the walls were designed in 1965 to withstand only a Category 3 storm. Quoted in "The Progressive Populists," Naomi says "It just was overtopped and the water started pouring over the support for the flood wall...it just pushed out and toppled over and that was it," Naomi explains. "You see there was not sufficient money or time to do anything about this," Naomi continues. "I'd of had to start 20 years ago to where I feel today I would've been safe from a Category 4 storm like Katrina.
Republicans and conservatives see the disaster in New Orleans as a failure of leadership on the local level. They remind us that environmental groups sued to block improvements on the levee system and prevented flood gates from being installed. We now know that food and water was available from the Red Cross for those displaced to the Superdome, but this food and water was prevented from arriving there by orders from Governor Blanco's office. State officials were worried that the Superdome would become a magnet for the displaced, and therefore prevented supplies from getting in, adding to the misery of those told to seek shelter there.
I suppose time will show that blame for the disaster in New Orleans is like the flood waters--there is plenty to go around. When the director of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, does not know the difference between the state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans, something in the federal bureaucracy has to change. Nevertheless, after the pumps unwater New Orleans, part of what we will find in the muck will be the political careers of Mayor C. Ray Nagin and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco.
Even if the federal government was late in responding to the disaster in New Orleans, it was a disaster created by poor planning and leadership on the part of the mayor and governor. When Mayor Nagin shouted, "Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They're not here. It's too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something, and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country," it did not help matters nor his political future. The consequence of this poor planning is that Mayor Nagin is now the mayor of a cistern and not a city.
Peggy Noonan thinks that Governor Blanco can "butch up, punch back, wade in," but it is doubtful her political career can withstand the investigation that both Louisiana and Congress will soon make. Why she did not order the National Guard into the city before the hurricane struck and the levees broke is still an unanswered question. Mike Baham of the online "Bayou Buzz" writes that Governor Blanco "piddled" while New Orleans failed. He claims that Governor Blanco "has displayed throughout this entire catastrophe...a greater concern for politics than people... Because Gov. Blanco refused to talk tough when it was still possible to scare off thugs itching to loot, the city burst at its seams...yet she appears angrier with the Bush administration than the looters."
It is obvious now that the evacuation plan developed by the city of New Orleans was as inadequate as the funding for the levees. The fault for this rests with the city's Democratic administration, not with President Bush. More than 150 school buses could have been used to evacuate the poor, but instead they remained parked and eventually flooded. The Louisiana Superdome should have been provided with food, water and sanitation like the Astrodome in Houston before encouraging people to seek shelter there. Instead the Superdome became Pandemonium.
Why there was no "quick response" teams waiting in reserve to mend a levee break is anyone's guess. When we hear that Washington cares little for the people of New Orleans because most of them are poor and black, we should know that it is the very Democratic government of New Orleans that cares so little, not the bureaucrats in Washington. All the local mistakes that make up the crisis that is now New Orleans fall at the feet of the Democratic administration that runs the city. In New Orleans, racism, like charity begins at home.
The disaster in New Orleans cannot be separated from the wide damage caused by Hurricane Katrina all over the gulf coast. State Insurance Commissioner Robert Wooley said that based on preliminary estimates, the insured losses in just the state from Hurricane Katrina will be at least $7 billion and possibly as high as $19 billion. Add to this the cost of repairing other gulf communities and we are looking at a daunting social works project that includes the resettlement of thousands.
Baton Rouge may double its population with the arrival of an estimated 250,000 evacuees there. This will fundamentally change the Louisiana state capitol. Baton Rouge will experience what other communities have experienced with the influx of thousands of illegal Mexican immigrants. Schools, communities and entire blocks will be transformed. Some Baton Rouge residents are already complaining that the drive to work has gone from half an hour to more than an hour because of the extra traffic caused by the arrival of evacuees.
Given these circumstances, it seems foolish not to stem the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico. How much can an established community absorb before it breaks under the influx of thousands who are destitute? Perhaps one solution to this problem is to give those displaced from New Orleans the jobs that normally go to illegal immigrants. There will also be many jobs associated with the rebuilding of New Orleans and these should go first to those displaced by the flood.
Because of the flood in New Orleans, Houston and other Texas cities will also undergo a transformation. All through the country, ripples from the disaster in New Orleans will be felt, even as far north as Utah. The tourist and convention business, so much a part of New Orleans's economy suffered a setback and will be a long time recovering. Illegal drug sales in New Orleans have hit rock bottom, too, so we can expect this underground commerce to move to other cities and evacuee centers in the near future.
The disaster that came in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans is another example of the failure of liberalism and Democratic Party politics in the U. S. Many liberals were not shocked to see evacuees who carried all their belongings in a bundle on their head, but instead they were shocked to see their failed urban policies and leaders on parade. The reason TV images from the flood in New Orleans do not look like America is because Democratic Party policies of urban segregation have prevented many people from being integrated into mainstream America.
Fifty years of Democratic policies promoting urban, racial segregation for the sake of block voting and party politics laid the groundwork for the disaster in New Orleans. Only an urban policy of racial integration can prevent this from happening again elsewhere. Yet, no Democratic politician, let alone a black, Democratic politician, wants racial integration, for it may mean an end to block voting and their tenure in office. Does anyone think that Detroit, recently named as the most liberal city in the nation, could do any better if it faced a disaster and had to be evacuated?
The New Orleans flood is a dress rehearsal for what is to come when another disaster befalls an American city. If we do not solve the problems associated with urban poverty and ethnic/minority segregation, then what happened in New Orleans will be no different from what may happen in Chicago, Washington, D. C., Detroit or Los Angeles when a disaster strikes any of them. These cities with segregated ghettos may present the same images of social upheaval to the cable news video cameras as New Orleans did. Add to that the ever increasing segregation of an illegal immigrant Latino community in many of our cities, and we may be witnessing the advent of 21st century crisis in urban America.
Purple, Green and Gold
It is fitting that a sympathetic federal occupation will save New Orleans again from total destruction. Even though President Bush and Governor Blanco have agreed so far not to federalize the National Guard, it will be federal money and assistance that eventually will rescue the city, in spite of the many corrupt politicians in Louisiana. After New Orleans is unwatered, the French Quarter, the Central Business District, Uptown and the Garden District may all make a comeback along with perhaps the Faubourg Marigny and Bywater. The 9th Ward, however, seems lost.
New Orleans will be rebuilt. Oil, shipping and the port guarantee that this city with a 300 year history will not wash away. Tourists on Canal Street will see again the green St. Charles streetcars making their turn, but it will be a different Canal Street and a different New Orleans. Mardi Gras will not fade away, either. Arthur Hardy, the local expert on this celebration suggests that already some people are making plans for parades and festivities. People outside of New Orleans should know that the celebration of Mardi Gras, like much that is celebrated in New Orleans, is not just an occasion for women to show their naked breasts for beads, but is an occasion grounded in the religious tradition of the West, a tradition that has the Creator say in the Book of Genesis that His creation is "Very good."
I imagine that by next January King Cakes will be baked once again in New Orleans. Just as red ants cling together in a floating ball to survive a flood, so, too, those who love New Orleans will come together. In six months, purple, green and gold garlands will again festoon doorways and railings. The Krewe of Zulu will once again toss their coconuts on Mardi Gras morning. Old Man River keeps on rollin', and New Orleans will emerge high and dry as a 21st century city with proud traditions. After reconstruction, it will be the American domination to date and the efforts of all those who love New Orleans that will again let the good times roll.
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