the truth about New Orleans from Sports Ill

the truth about New Orleans

I know you come to this column to read about football, sports and otherthings. I'll get to the regular Tuesday fare, your e-mails, in a fewparagraphs. First, there's something a little more significant to discuss.

I sense that we in this country have Katrina fatigue. The New York Times reported as much recently, saying that people in some of the areas thatwelcomed Katrina evacuees last September are sick of hearing about thehurricane, the flooding and the aftermath.Well, my wife and I were in a car last Wednesday that toured the hardest-hitarea of New Orleans, the Lower Ninth Ward. We worked a day at a nearbyHabitat for Humanity site on Thursday, and we toured theBiloxi/Gulfport/Long Beach/Pass Christian gulf shore area last Friday. Andlet me just say this: I can absolutely guarantee you that if you'd been inthe car with us, no matter how much you'd been hit over the head with theeffects of this disaster, you would not have Katrina fatigue.What I saw was a national disgrace. An inexcusable, irresponsible,borderline criminal national disgrace. I am ashamed of this country for theinaction I saw everywhere.I mentioned my outrage to the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, on Thursday.He shook his head and said, "Tell me about it.'' Disgust dripped from hisvoice.What are we doing in this country?"It's been eight months since Katrina,'' said Jack Bowers, my New Jerseyfriend and Habitat for Humanity guide through the Lower Ninth Ward, as hetook us through deserted streets where nothing, absolutely nothing, wasbeing done about the wasteland that this place is. "Eight months!" he said. "And look at it. When people talk to me about NewOrleans, they say, 'Well, things are getting back to normal down there,aren't they?' I tell them things are a long, long way from normal, and it'sgoing to be a long time before it's ever normal. And I tell them they'venever seen anything like this.''Our Mississippi guide, Josh Norman of the Biloxi Sun-Herald, put it thisway: "People outside of here are tired of hearing about it. They've moved onto the next news cycle.''How can we let an area like the Lower Ninth Ward sit there, on the eve ofanother hurricane season, with nothing being done to either bulldoze theplace and start over, or rebuild? How can Congress sit on billions oflooming aid and not release it for this area?I can't help but think that if this were Los Angeles or New York, that 500percent more money -- and concern -- would have flooded into this place. AndI can't help but think that if the idiots who let the levees down here go toseed had simply been doing their jobs, we'd never have been in this mess inthe first place -- in New Orleans, at least. Other than former FEMA directorMichael Brown, are you telling me that no others are paying for this withtheir jobs? Whatever happened to responsibility?Am I ticked off? Damn right I'm ticked off. If you're breathing, you shouldbe morally outraged. Katrina fatigue? Hah! More Katrina news! Give me more!Give it to me every day on the front page! Every day until Washingtonrealizes there's a disaster here every bit as urgent as anything happeningin this world today -- fighting terrorism, combating the nuclear threat inIran. I'm not in any way a political animal, but all you have to be is anoccasionally thinking American to be sickened by the conditions I saw.The Lower Ninth Ward is a 1.5-by-2-mile area a couple of miles from thecenter of New Orleans. It is a poor area. I should say it was a poor area.Before the storm, 20,000 people lived there. Fats Domino lived there. So,formerly, did Marshall Faulk. And now you drive through it and see nothingbeing done to fix it or tear it down, or to do anything. In Mississippi, we drove through one formerly thriving beach town that hastwo structures left. We drove past concrete pads with litter and shards ofwood around them. Former houses. The houses, quite literally, have beeneviscerated. Hundreds of them. This is what nuclear winter must look like, Ithought.I'm a sportswriter. It's not my job to figure how to fix what ails the GulfCoast. But the leaders of this society are responsible. And they're notdoing their jobs. I could ignore everything I saw and go back to my nice NewJersey cocoon, forgetting I saw it. And I know you don't read me to hear myworldviews. But I couldn't sleep at night if I didn't say something.On Saturday, at the Saints' headquarters for the draft, I watched the dayunfold with a friend of the team, New Orleans businessman and presidentMichael Whelan. I told him what I'd seen, and asked him what he thought."We spend all this money on the war in Iraq and we can't take care of ourown cities?" he said. "You get out of downtown, and it's like a war zone ina lot of neighborhoods still. The government has been a huge letdown. I'veheard billions of dollars are going to be sent here. Where are they? Nothingis taking place. I certainly think that now it's back-page news; thegovernment is sweeping it under the rug.''[The remainder of the story is about sports and may be viewed here:http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/peter_king/05/02/mmqbte/index.html]