Portside

Ten years after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, the author looks at the pain index for those who were left behind. The population of New Orleans is noticeably smaller and noticeably whiter now and despite the tens of billions poured into Louisiana, the impact on poor and working people in New Orleans has been minimal. While not all the numbers are bad, they do illustrate who has benefited and who continues to suffer 10 years after Katrina.

Even with the inflation of the 2013 school performance scores, RSD has no A schools and very few B schools. In fact, almost the entire RSD– which was already approx 90 percent charters– qualifies as a district of “failing” schools according to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s definition of “failing schools” as C, D, F schools and whose students are eligible for vouchers.

The prison is too large; it's understaffed, and it's filthy. In 2013 federal Judge Lance Africk found conditions in Orleans Parish Prison unconstitutional. Federal law does not permit the judge to close the jail, or even transfer prisoners out of it. And yet conditions are so bad it's likely to be years before reforms can be completed. In the meantime, the prisoners must try to survive in conditions that the federal court has already declared unconstitutional.

One feature of recent Mardi Gras celebrations is missing this year, however. Thanks to a city council vote, the growing trend of taking over swaths of sidewalks and neutral grounds (as we New Orleanians call medians) is a thing of the past. The long walls of chairs and ladders at the very front of curbs that impeded visibility and mobility, and the roped-off areas that effectively privatized city grounds, are now illegal. It is a vote in favor of the commons.

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Didn’t Arne Duncan say that Katrina was the best thing that ever happened to the schools of New Orleans? Didn’t he celebrate the abrupt firing of all these teachers and their replacement by TFA? Well, yes. The courts say he was wrong.