Katrina One Year On
by Jordan Flaherty at Left Turn: "“It was frustrating and painful at first,” former mayoral candidate and lower ninth ward resident Greta Gladney recalls, referring to the people that have come to walk the streets around her home. “Before December, in order to see our own neighborhood, we had to ride on a tour bus, while contractors, insurance adjusters, journalists and police and soldiers could walk around there as much as they wanted. Politicians were using our neighborhood for leverage, to get more money from the federal government. But they don’t want the lower nine to be rebuilt, so the money they get from our suffering is not going to come to us.”
Driving through the lower ninth ward on any given day, you are likely to see scattered groups on guided or unguided tours, tourist-filled buses and vans filled with church volunteers or scruffy activists on bikes. People come to see the levee break - now rebuilt - and to view the general devastation - which is still very much present. In fact, until recently, bodies were still being discovered regularly, and few doubt that more remain buried amongst the rubble. Virtually no one from this large neighborhood has been able to return. Most of the area still has no electricity or running water. "
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