A Tale of Two Cities
September 27th, 2006 | by Ken Grandlund |Just over one year after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city of New Orleans and lay waste to it’s Superdome, and a mere $184.4 million, thousands of cheering fans celebrated the home opener of the New Orleans Saints professional football team. The building, rebuilt by an estimated 850 workers came in ahead of schedule and under budget.
Meanwhile, not far away in St. Bernard Parish (just five minutes or so from downtown), there are ruined Popeye’s Chicken stores and gas stations surrounded by razor wire. I wonder how many people are still living like this?
I wonder how many dollars have been spent rebuilding areas like this?
But hey! Football is back in town! And they’re making plenty of money off those 70,000+ fans too. I wonder how much of that cash is helping rebuild the rest of the city….and how much falls into the pockets of rich, white banker-types.
[tag]Superdome, New+Orleans, St, Bernard Parish[/tag]
12 Responses to “A Tale of Two Cities”
By ascap_scab on Sep 27, 2006 | Reply
I won’t begrudge the money spent on the Superdome. New Orleans is (or at least it was) a tourist destination. Without tourism, NOLA is a hot humid boggy swamp now without half of its port facilities and little else to brag about. Would you have left the Superdome as a towering broken hulk looming over the city, a constant reminder of death and decay??
The money to rebuild NOLA has to come from somewhere. Is it better to get it from conventions and tourism where some value is returned to the patrons from far off states or straight from your taxes that would likely be wasted through no-bid contracts with tremendous cost over runs, kickbacks, theft, graft, etc?? Do you think BushCo gives a damn about old poor homeless people?? The people of the gulf coast are on their own.
And what’s wrong with taking eight days off a year, to get away from the squalor, to escape the tedium by watching a game for a few hours?? God, you’re a killjoy!!
By steve on Sep 27, 2006 | Reply
Ken:
It has been proven over and over again that a sports team brings revenue, jobs and tax dollars to a city. Why do you think the city of Los Angeles is clammering for a NFL football team?
Oh and nice touch on the Popeye’s Chicken stores… We wouldn’t want you to stereotype anything now. You oughta leave that to the Republicans.
By Mark Folse on Sep 27, 2006 | Reply
Brining back the Saints has been a tremendous psychological lift to the quarter million people who’ve come back without any real government aid (beyond the couple of thousand given to people over a year ago for emergency relocation assistance), and to the quarter million still homeless. Don’t begrudge us the $91 million. The Saints are one of the few things that cut through the deep divides of race and class in our city and unite us. It is keeping us together while we fight the central government for real compensation for the losses incurred not because of the hurricane, but because of the entirely predictable failure of the sub-standard Federal levees.
If you want to help people out down here, don’t tear down the one bright moment we’ve had in an entire year.
Oh, and Chalmette is a white flight suburb. If you wanted to make a race-baiting comment, you’d probably have to pick Church’s which tends to focus on black communities. And you won’t find a Church’s in St. Bernard.
By E.J. on Sep 27, 2006 | Reply
Well said, Mark.
And good points about the money spent, which I was first more upset about, but my God, the feeling that event created in this city was worth more than $185 million dollars — and I think it gave us the boost we needed to keep dragging ourselves through each day.
http://noitsjustme.blogspot.com/2006/09/we-still-got-it.html#links
By tos on Sep 27, 2006 | Reply
Ken does anything ever make you happy? Anything at all?
By E.J. on Sep 27, 2006 | Reply
Nobody puts things in perspective like Chris Rose
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/topnews/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_topnews/archives/2006_09_27.html#188597
By Jersey McJones on Sep 27, 2006 | Reply
That’s okay, Righties. New New Orleans will be nice and white for you. Enjoy the games.
JMJ
By Mark Folse on Sep 27, 2006 | Reply
Righties? Maybe you should Google me up. Or search for Markus on Democratic Underground. The fact that people in NOLA universally reject people who complain about the money spent on the Saints, or who threaten to boycott Louisiana (and by extension NOLA) over the late abortion bill has nothing to do with political oriientation. it has to do with people who set themselves up on high thrones and tear down our efforts to rebuild rather than contribute. I have no use for anyone, liberal or convservative, who is anti-New Orleans.
By liberal vet on Sep 27, 2006 | Reply
Let the people of New Orleans decide, we are after all still a democracy. LV
By ken grandlund on Sep 27, 2006 | Reply
Folks- You misunderstand me completely. I do not begrudge happy sports fans their football. I do not deny the economic impact that tourism will bring into New Orleans. I am not an intentional kill-joy, nor do I find unhappiness or discontent with everything that occurs.
The entire point of this post was to highlight the fact that while there apparently seems to be plenty of money available to rebuild privately owned sports franchise facilities, there has been a rather dismal effort to restore a normal lifestyle for the average citizens of New Orleans.
The point is that despite the apparent failure of government at all levels to help put money back into rebuilding instead of lining the pockets of corrupt corporations, that private industry seems to be able to get things done, or at least in this case, private money did. And the question I pose, albeit not in so many words, is why is this the case?
As for the “Popeye’s Chicken” comment, that was no attempt or inference to race-baiting on my part, but a segment lifted from the article linked at the end of the post, written, presumably, by someone in that area who is describing the situation from an on-the-scene perspective. I never once equated fried chicken to any particular consumer base, nor would I since, to me at least, fried chicken is consumed by many different people. Those of you who immediately jump to the conclusion that fried chicken comments are equivalent to racial commentary should examine your own inner workings a bit more closely.
By Mark Folse on Sep 27, 2006 | Reply
Ok, if we take the fried chicken reference to be Any Business X in the (mostly white) St. Bernard Parish area or the immeidately adjacent (mostly black) Ninth Ward area, that seems a reasonable comparison. No business is getting real assistance at this point, except for short-term loans, and those are about done now.
The Superdome, however, is not owned by the franchise or the NFL. It is the property of the state of Louisiana, and therefore a reasonable recipient of public rebuilding dollars.
As desperate as most small business owners are (virtually all of whom have been living and working off savings, by maxing out credit cards and not paying bills), I doubt there more than a few who would grudge the money that went into the down (and thereby indirectly into the pockets of the NFL).
All they want, all we want, is our money. We’re not asking for assisstance, just fair compensation for the losses directly caused by the negligence of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the same shake on OCR oil and gas revenue that inland states (who’s oil and gas industries cause mininal environmental impact) get to help us deal with the immense environmental impact of the off shore oil and gas industry.
By steve on Sep 27, 2006 | Reply
Wait… Examine my inner workings? Try again there pal. You are presuming bigotry on the wrong guy there.
I just call it as I see it. It’s not like you cited anything and then put quotes around it like a normal armchair journalist would. The Popeye’s thing sounds to me like it was targeting a demographic. What about schools or hospitals? Why fried chicken stands?