“There’s something full circle about our Katrina baby protecting swimmers in the Lower 9th Ward from deep water,” Lens editor Katy Reckdahl writes in an essay about the city and her son, who was born 23 hours before Katrina struck the city.
Author Archives: Katy Reckdahl
Katy Reckdahl is The Lens’ managing editor. Reckdahl was a staff reporter for The Times-Picayune and the alt-weekly Gambit before spending a decade as a freelancer, writing frequently for the New Orleans Advocate | Times-Picayune, The New York Times and the Washington Post.
She’s received more than two-dozen first-place New Orleans Press Club awards, the James Aronson Award for social justice reporting, a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism and three TV-documentary Emmy Awards. In 2020, she was a producer for The Atlantic’s Peabody Award-winning podcast, Floodlines.
Posted inOpinion
Power out, profits gone: how Louisiana’s grid failures harm local businesses
Lost Coyote restaurant in Treme was on track for its first record-profit day during Memorial Day weekend, when a sudden blackout brought it all to a standstill.
Posted inLens Carnival Edition
Big boots to fill
Anthony Hingle Jr. didn’t touch beads or feathers for 32 years. Now he’s back in town, continuing the work of his father, Flagboy Meathead, a legend among Black Masking Indians.
Posted inOperating Capital - Executions in Louisiana
Explaining Jessie Hoffman
People still say, ‘That’s not the Jessie I knew.’ But most didn’t know what he endured at home – and that’s likely what drove him on that day, psychiatrists say.
Posted inEmbracing our narratives
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.
Posted inCriminal Justice
Fifth Circuit appeals court sides with Angola’s Farm Line workers
Though the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals differed with some of the district court’s July 2 decision, the higher court agreed that Angola Farm Line workers deserve water, rest, and equipment to protect from heat
Posted inCriminal Justice
Judge orders Angola to provide Farm Line workers access to shade, rest, sunscreen, and water
DOC must submit plan within a week to protect incarcerated persons laboring on the Farm Line, who otherwise face “immediate threats” including death and permanent injury
Posted inSchools
A concussion and a missing dreadlock
After a teacher held him by his hair, a 13-year-old child was punched by a classmate and suffered a concussion. The teacher had been arrested for a similar classroom incident nine years ago in another parish.
Posted inCriminal Justice
‘Show us the video’
It’s been almost a year since Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office deputies shot and killed 18-year-old Calvin “Trey” Cains III in the parking lot of his mom’s Metairie apartment complex Yet his mother, Mallory Woodfork, and his father, Calvin Cains Jr., are still searching for answers about their son’s final moments — and demanding accountability from […]
Posted inSchools
Let the bargaining begin
In a Tuesday letter to Tulane University president Michael A. Fitts, a group of non-tenured faculty asked him to recognize their new union, Tulane Workers United. An election is likely in early May.