By Karen Gadbois, The Lens staff writer | The New Orleans City Council’s commitment to openness and transparency wavered a bit Thursday as it considered the process to fill the soon-to-be-open seat of Arnie Fielkow. At least three of the seven council members wondered whether it is a good idea or necessary to make public […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics
Lower 9th Ward residents tell mayor to speed progress or lose their votes at next election
By Ariella Cohen, The Lens staff writer | A week after Mayor Mitch Landrieu announced he will spend $45 million on street repairs in the Lower 9th Ward, residents said the Landrieu administration has many more promises left to deliver on. “If you expect residents to return, there must be faster progress on the infrastructure […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics
Clarkson offends crowd with remarks praising '50s as a golden age, refuses to apologize
Update 9/1: Clarkson issued a statement Wednesday night stating that she is “sorry that there were a handful of people in the crowd that didn’t appreciate what I’ve done for them.” By Ariella Cohen, The Lens staff writer | Marguerite Blunt, 91, remembers the 1950s as a time when she couldn’t enter restaurants through the […]
Posted inOpinion
Problems at Blair Grocery's farm/school follow a familiar pattern
By Evan Casper-Futterman, The Lens contributing opinion writer | I was saddened by Ariella Cohen’s feature on problems at Blair Grocery’s urban farm and school because, without ever setting foot on the property or meeting its leader, Nat Turner, I felt an intimate familiarity with the situation Cohen identified. As a volunteer with another post-Katrina non-profit […]
Posted inOpinion
Gung ho for demolition: FEMA pays, but neighborhoods lose
By Brad Vogel, The Lens contributing opinion writer | Over the weekend, David Simon, creator of HBO’s Treme, publicly critiqued the city’s ongoing blight fight. Addressing the sixth annual Rising Tide conference, he noted how odd it was to see politicians standing in front of demolitions crowing about progress. Referring to a spat with the […]
Posted inOpinion
Recent London riots insult the memory of Katrina's greater toll
By Matt Davis, The Lens staff writer | After plenty of research, reporting and countless conversations on the riots in England, it is my considered opinion as a native Englishman with dual U.S. citizenship, that sometimes, weird things just happen, and that the riots in England were just that: weird. I arrived back in Blighty […]
Posted inSchools
The Lens kicks off new Charter School Reporting Corp, plus community-sourcing effort
The Lens announced the kickoff of its newest initiative, the Charter School Reporting Corps, at its latest salon on Thursday. Charter school stakeholders crowded the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities building to hear our plans for covering board meetings of the 45 school boards that govern the 65 public charter schools in New Orleans. Along […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics
Diminished black middle class a sobering factor in assessing progress since Katrina
By Ariella Cohen, The Lens staff writer | A tone of triumph and hope characterized a forum of academic, nonprofit and governmental leaders held Monday at the University of New Orleans to mark the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Yet despite the overall positive message, concern about the city’s shrinking black middle and upper class […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Land Use
City bulldozes Gert Town neighborhood pool but without securing committee's OK
By Karen Gadbois, The Lens staff writer | Ignoring a committee’s request for more information about redevelopment plans, the Landrieu administration on Monday bulldozed the Gert Town Pool. The pool, housed within a distinctive geodesic dome, was owned and, until Katrina, operated by the city on property owned by Xavier University. Xavier representatives were not […]
Posted inEnvironment, Opinion
On this anniversary, it was a good idea to not keep things bottled up
Two months after hurricane Katrina and the Federal Flood, I drove back to the Broadmoor neighborhood to gut my house. Slaloming around debris, I became overwhelmed with cognitive dissonance. The new imprints on my senses didn’t jibe with my old memories of home. For instance, all the pleasant greens were now desolate browns. The fragrant […]