Behind the scenes of Super Bowl shelter planning
Emails show that state officials considered creating a shelter in a barge moored in Industrial Canal — and that prominent local developers knew about the shelter long before some city officials.
Recent Posts
Council condemns mayor’s threat to scuttle $20 million settlement with Orleans Parish School Board
OPSB had sued because the city was skimming a portion off of the top of its OPSB tax payments; district officials agreed to settle last year, when the School Board realized it was facing a $36 million deficit.
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Super Bowl planners: ‘Anticipate any features of the [Lower 9] neighborhood which could be used by media to substantiate Katrina narrative’
This is the introduction to a five-story project, The Lens’ Embracing Katrina Narratives project. Last summer, in July, a group of influential New Orleanians gathered, with hopes of preparing the city for a national spotlight ahead of Super Bowl LIX. Michael Hecht, the CEO Of Greater New Orleans Inc., who was tapped by Governor Jeff Landry…
Though she was an infant when Katrina hit, she still feels its effects today
Her family house has framed her world. With its doorway, marked with penciled hash marks to show her height over the years, the house tracked her growth at the same time she tracked its years of repairs after Katrina.
Thwarted from connecting the Lower 9 to its wetland roots
After Katrina, environmentalists built an overlook on Bayou Bienvenue to give the community access to the wetlands, which had been devastated by salt water from a now-closed canal called MR-GO. Recent construction threatens that key post-Katrina achievement, Arthur Johnson says.
She saw ‘a public-health crisis’ and opened a clinic in the emptied Lower 9
“Alice saved my life,” neighbors say. In 2007, Alice Craft-Kerney helped to launch a post-Katrina clinic that was invaluable to neighbors. But it closed its doors after an inexplicably short time.
Planting a flag in the Lower 9 ‘wilderness’
Every year on August 29 – the day that Katrina hit, in 2005 – Green’s family gathers by the place where his mom’s house once stood, in shirts that read “Roof Riders.” Then they walk the two-block route taken by the floating house, to the oak tree where it stopped.
opinion
Vote to reject the state’s costly push to fill Louisiana jails and prisons
Voters have a chance on March 29 to turn the tide against Gov. Jeff Landry and his legislature’s extensive, expensive plans to expand the criminal-justice system in Louisiana, which already incarcerates more people per capita than any other state
True Terror: New Orleans Likely Not Prepared for Much
“As a researcher who has closely observed, personally experienced local struggles,” says the writer, Bethany Garfield, “it’s with a heavy heart that I say that investigations into the state of our city’s protective plans and systems will likely garner the following conclusion: New Orleans isn’t ready for much of anything..”
Making the grade – or not.
What Louisiana’s school letter grades don’t tell us about school quality. Despite our F grade, the students at Noble Minds are not failing, and we are not failing our students.
Ensuring we all feel safe and are stably employed
“We have much work to do,” Hunter writes, “to ensure that an anti-terrorist component is part of the planning process for every special event that attracts thousands – Mardi Gras, festivals and holiday celebrations, even our Sunday second-line parades.”
PODCAST
Behind The Lens episode 264 Part II: ‘Our Katrina narrative’
The Lens spent January talking to Lower 9th Ward residents to tell their stories, narratives a Super Bowl committee wanted to control.
About the Lens
The Lens aims to engage and empower the residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. We provide the information and analysis necessary to advocate for more accountable and just governance.