The murder of a great city
25 questions about the murder of New Orleans
The Nation
by Mike Davis & Anthony Fontenat
10/03/05
We recently spent a week in New Orleans and southern Louisiana interviewing relief workers, community activists, urban planners, artists and neighborhood folks. Even as the latest flood waters from Hurricane Rita recede, the city remains submerged in anger and frustration. Indeed, the most toxic debris in New Orleans isn't the sinister gray sludge that coats the streets of the historic Creole neighborhood of Treme or the Lower Ninth Ward but all the unanswered questions that have accumulated in the wake of so much official betrayal and hypocrisy. Where outsiders see simple 'incompetence' or 'failure of leadership,' locals are more inclined to discern deliberate design and planned neglect -- the murder, not the accidental death, of a great city. In almost random order, here are twenty-five of the urgent questions that deeply trouble the local people we spoke with... [editor's note: What is remarkable here is, they have correctly identified the source of each "troubling question" ... mainly, incompetent and/or unconcerned government, at all levels! - SAT]
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051017/davis
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
The Nation
by Mike Davis & Anthony Fontenat
10/03/05
We recently spent a week in New Orleans and southern Louisiana interviewing relief workers, community activists, urban planners, artists and neighborhood folks. Even as the latest flood waters from Hurricane Rita recede, the city remains submerged in anger and frustration. Indeed, the most toxic debris in New Orleans isn't the sinister gray sludge that coats the streets of the historic Creole neighborhood of Treme or the Lower Ninth Ward but all the unanswered questions that have accumulated in the wake of so much official betrayal and hypocrisy. Where outsiders see simple 'incompetence' or 'failure of leadership,' locals are more inclined to discern deliberate design and planned neglect -- the murder, not the accidental death, of a great city. In almost random order, here are twenty-five of the urgent questions that deeply trouble the local people we spoke with... [editor's note: What is remarkable here is, they have correctly identified the source of each "troubling question" ... mainly, incompetent and/or unconcerned government, at all levels! - SAT]
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051017/davis
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 4. Okt, 10:42
