Quotes on Katrina's Anniversary

Jill Nelson, journalist and author:

“Although billions of federal dollars have flowed into the region, much of this money has gone to major contractors like Bechtel, Fluor, and the Shaw Group, not local government, businesses, or citizens. The services crucial to community — jobs, schools, hospitals, police, a functioning justice system, utilities, other infrastructure — are either nonexistent or woefully inadequate.”

Michael Eric Dyson, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, University of Pennsylvania and author of Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster:

“It’s apparent that Katrina’s survivors lived in concentrated poverty — they lived in poor neighborhoods, attended poor schools and had poor-paying jobs that reflected and reinforced a distressing pattern of rigid segregation. To be sure, concentrated poverty is the product of decades of public policies and political measures that isolate black households in neighborhoods plagued by severe segregation and economic hardship. But the policies of the Bush administration have only made things worse.”

Charles Barkley, former professional athlete, sports commentator and author:

“I don’t know anything about a lot of things, but I would ask somebody and try to make a fair, honest decision for the majority of the people. Not the rich, not the poor, not the black, not the white. When you get elected to public office, you’re supposed to represent everybody. Your job is not to take care of the rich or the poor or the black or the white. Your job is to take care of everybody.”

Bill Quigley, Janet Mary Riley Distinguished Professor of Law, Loyola University and housing advocate:

“The supposed concern for the residents isn’t real. They have a plan to rid the city of the poor. And this attempt to destroy public housing has been in the works; it was just accelerated by Katrina. The hurricane was an excuse.”

Ray Nagin, Mayor, New Orleans, Louisiana:

“The big inhibitor is the lack of flow of resources. If you were to ask me what I’m most disappointed in, that’s the biggest disappointment I have. Here we are, the economy’s totally shut down and for twelve months now, I have been forced to operate this city on a $120 million community disaster loan and $1.3 million in state emergency disaster funds. Everything else has been a reimbursement of cost… I thought I would have overwhelming resources to repair the infrastructure off the bat. But there’s this whole national debate and politicians talking about the footprint of New Orleans. ‘It should be smaller’ or ‘You shouldn’t rebuild in New Orleans East or the Lower Ninth Ward.’ And frankly I just reject that notion.”

Marc H. Morial, former Mayor, New Orleans, Louisiana and current President and CEO, National Urban League:

“I could rattle off tomes of statistics about disparity. I could talk about the wealth gap, the job gap, the wage gap and the health gap. I could speak in erudite and intellectual terms about income, health and equality in America. But I don’t have to: Katrina did that for me through images of people suffering. It was through reality’s lens that Americans witnessed the tragedy not through a full-length movie or cheap sound byte. But the images seen on most Americans’ television sets nearly a year ago were not just pictures of my hometown. They represented people in poverty in urban areas all over the nation.”

Ted Kennedy, Senator, Maine:

“Clearly, the enormous task of rebuilding the Gulf is far from over. But as every American knows, the Administration failed the people of the Gulf one year ago and it continues to fail them today. Hundreds of thousands of dislocated families still are without jobs and unable to return to the Gulf. And we still have not taken the steps required to protect New Orleans from future storms and floods.”

Barbara Lee, Congresswoman, California:

“What is most troubling is the stubborn refusal, one year later, to acknowledge or do ANYTHING to address the endemic poverty and structural inequity that played a central role in the devastating nature of this disaster.”

Gwen Moore, Congresswoman, Wisconsin:

“Every day that the Bush Administration and Republicans in Congress don’t get the rebuilding effort on track is another 24 hours that Katrina victims continue to live the aftermath nightmare. Over 7,500 families are still waiting for their FEMA trailers. Eighty percent of the $10 billion in disaster loans allocated for small businesses have not been disbursed. Sixty percent of New Orleans is without electricity—and much of the city is without potable running water.”

Lani Guinier, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School:

“When are we going to link our fate to the fate of the people who were dispossessed in New Orleans?”

Craig E. Colten, Carl O. Sauer Professor of Geography, Louisiana State University and author of An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature:

“Perhaps the more telling question is what were the historical circumstances that allowed a powerful hurricane, but one arguably within the design range of the levees, to overwhelm a massive and expensive hurricane protection system? I may not be able to provide a complete account, but I have been scouring through historical records for much of the last eleven months to unearth the critical decisions, social conflicts, and funding issues that shaped the levees that surrounded New Orleans and its suburbs last summer. Several aspects of the hurricane protection history stand in sharp contrast to reporting from a year ago, and one can anticipate similar discontinuities between popular accounts and historical events as we pass the storm’s anniversary.”

Barack Obama, Senator, Illinois in his commencement address to the 2006 graduating class of Xavier University:

“Time can heal and cloud a memory, but it’s your responsibility to remember what happened in New Orleans and make it a part of who you are. Katrina might be the most dramatic test you take but it won’t be the last.”

Spike Lee, filmmaker, on his HBO documentary When The Levees Broke:

“You would not think going in that this would be funny. And it is not a funny film. But I think that we captured the characters. I mean they are a special breed of people, I mean black or white in New Orleans. That’s something that is a surprise to me. Funny thing. When “Inside Man” was coming out I did an interview for this lady at the New York Observer. In the article I’m talking about that we were in the process of shooting this film. And I said, I want you to help me. Anybody who knows the guy who told Dick Cheney to go fuck himself please get in contact with the writer. Anybody who knows the lady who got in Condoleezza Rice’s face let me know because I want an interview. So somehow we found out who it was and we interviewed him. But to this day, we can’t seem to locate the white lady who got in Condoleezza Rice’s face at the Ferragamo shoe store. So either she’s camera shy or she’s dead.”