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Concering the Ray Nagin T-Shirts, this post over at the New Orleans blog People Get Ready sums up my thoughts pretty well.

Here’s the link:
http://peoplegetready.blogspot.com/2006/01/willie-wonka-ray-nagin-chocolate-city.html

(the repeated Willie Wonka Ray Nagin Chocolate City T-Shirt links are designed to move the Eracism site further up Google’s rankings when people search for Willie Wonka and Ray Nagin. By repeating the link here, elbuzzard.com is also contributing to what’s known as a googlebomb.)

Here’s a bit from Roger Wilson’s editorial for the Gambit. Read the full article at
http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2006-01-17/news_feat.php

It speaks to the “New Orleans isn’t worth rebuilding” argument. Ironically, he draws his inspiration from a recent speech by our previous beloved mayor, Marc Morial.

Beneath a phalanx of camera lights being powered by generators some five months after the fact, Morial spoke in eloquent terms about the previous fates of places such as San Francisco, Chicago and New York City, and how each had been “reborn, rebuilt and revitalized” following events (earthquake, fire and kamikaze terrorists, respectively) that threatened their very existence. In each case, ashes somehow gave way to opportunity. Perhaps because in each case these cities and their traumatized populace were given the time, the money and the chance to rebuild; without compromise, without exclusion, and without explaining their need to do so. Sitting there listening to Morial, one question kept bouncing across my mind, “Why not New Orleans?”

To me, this question is the question in our city’s most uncertain hour. Its utterance has been made necessary by the fact that many Americans, and far too many officials in high office, have unabashedly, almost cockily, debated the merits of making this city whole again. And by that, I mean putting it back exactly as it was before being consumed by the world’s first man-made tsunami. The optimist in me would like to think such a thoughtless and casual attitude towards the future of nearly a half-million Americans, never mind the memory of a thousand more who died only God knows how horribly, owes more to an ignorance of New Orleans’ place in American history than to some undeserved animosity towards its beleaguered people.

Yet this suggestion of a “smaller New Orleans,” what some have called a “better” New Orleans, has for these last five months maintained a remarkable legitimacy around the globe, making my optimism seem about as sound as the walls along the 17th Street Canal. Inside the corridors of our own national government, rather than being excoriated for the blasphemous dialogue it truly represents, this talk of “not wasting money on New Orleans” has assumed the personage of a genuine political discourse. A point wholly laughable in the face of what we spend monthly in Iraq, and one in which our state’s national representatives are asked to grovel for assistance, while the government and private sector are allowed to demure. What makes this even more difficult to accept is the culpability this same government bears in the very unfolding of New Orleans’ present crisis. You know you’re in trouble when the assessment of your worth lies at the very feet of those in great part responsible for its annihilation.

Continue reading More on New Orleans’ worth

www.impeachnagin.com
You will not believe what our beloved mayor said now
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1137481512176100.xml

I broke down for the first time in awhile today at work after reading the Bring New Orleans Back final report that was released this week. Their website is down up and running, and I managed to get a copy of the powerpoint presentation. Here it is converted to pdf. I guess it just hit me again how much of the city really will be lost, and how important it is to do it right.

Continue reading Sinking In