Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV 20240622

Candidacy but havent release books. Next up a Panel Discussion on new orleans, ten years after hurricane katrina. Thank you all everyone for coming this evening. Its my pleasure to welcome you to this wonderful public launch of robertas new new book. It is how the people of new orleans rebuilt the city. On behalf of the new school and nation books, its my pleasure to welcome everyone. Before we get started i just wanted to say a couple things about some people would have helped helped make the series possible. They are mary watson and pamela tellis from the executive deans office and they are wonderful partners. I also want to think cspan. Its so great that you are here filming us and the cspan audience. Thank you. It is such a pleasure to get to publicly introduce roberta gratz, someone who has been a hero has been a hero of mine for a long time. She is an amazing writer and thinker. She is an acclaimed urbanist and has published for previous book including the battle for gotham. Her writing has also appeared in the Nation New York Time Magazine and the wall street journal. As many of of you know she previously served on new york citys Landmark Committee and advisory board. She also founded a center for city living. As many of you know she splits her time between new york and new orleans. Roberta thank you and enjoy the panel. [applause]. Thank you taylor and thank you to the Nation Institute for sponsoring this evening. Im going to introduce my friends and colleagues. Then jed is going to lead us in conversation. We lost one person for the evening having to do with a good reason in regard to his own book and we excused him and said we will manage to self organize. So we have and we expect it to be a lively conversation and that some port he will open up for questions from the audience and there will be cards passed around for you to put questions and post them to us. I will start on my right with jed who i thought wrote the best post katrina book called breach of faith. [applause]. Until now yes. He became a good friend and even an editorial critic of mine over the years. He was on the city editor at the times at the time of the pulitzerwinning coverage of katrina. And of course course you know breach of faith. Then we have to my right karen who, if and when you read the book is one of the herons of the book. I like to describe her as the civic activists who became a civic activist the usual way. She got angry. She started a blog right after katrina called squandered heritage tracking the houses that were demolished without the owners knowing. The contractors taking money for work they were not doing and leading what turned into a revealing corruption in the removal system and people actually went to jail. That led eventually to her and a colleague starting the lens which is an online investigative journal which i consider one of the best things that happen in new orleans after katrina and its just fabulous. She continues to write and make trouble in the way that i think works. To my left is lois eli and for those of you who followed the hbo story, she is the story writer and editor on that series. If you may have seen and, and if you havent its Available Online he produced a wonderful i guess its a video, called the unknown story of black new orleans and its wonderful. [applause]. Further to my left is randy who among many things runs the foundation devoted to education and new orleans and is an author of a recent wonderful book called taste for chaos which is basically about literary conversations and many other things. He also wrote wrote a book prior to that about his own crazy family story. His mother was and i wont even tell you, its a good good book. I have one little thing to tell you the title of the book was a real graffiti after katrina not the one on the cover of the book the Art Department took it and redid it but it was real graffiti and the reality was such that we used it as the title because it really was capturing the feeling of so many new orleanians since the whole world was assuming it wont be rebuilt or recovered. Were still here. Were not going anywhere. Thats the overall spirit of the book. I wanted you to know thats where it comes from. At this point im going to turn it over to jed to sort of lead this little pack of talkers into some organized. Three items i want to start with, i havent heard a cell phone which is good so please turn them off if you havent done so. Secondly something roberta already said, if we Say Something totally of noxious or stupid, feel free to rise and quiz us here now but for the most part i think people will be better off if your questions can be held to the end. Youre asked to write down your questions and submit them somewhere. Thirdly you will hear us using katrina and federal flood and collapse interchangeably. We do so fully cognizant but katrina, as we speak of it in new orleans was a manmade disaster. It was an engineering failure. It is in fact the secondworst engineering failure in human history. Does anyone know what the worst engineering history was . Chernobyl. I was just over doing a documentary and its an ambiguous situation about bringing that to the ground. We hope that doesnt make it to the top. The question i think hans a lot of katrina discussion is whether it takes katrina to provoke the things youve dealt with so beautifully in the book. Does it take a katrina. Are there lessons here and broader themes that apply to cities everywhere or is this something that is just eccentric and peculiar itself . Can you make it a little louder. Is this better . There are two ways to answer that because i should preface it by saying this is my sixth book about urban change. I have been writing about how cities grow fall apart, recover , how they stray urban for a long time. When i watched katrina on television, i said to myself how is this going to play out . There were two ways to go. Was this going to be another one of those post disaster attempts to reshape the city in a sort of robert moses image from the top down . Big project planning big money . Or was this going to emerge in the way that i had seen every success in every city in every neighborhood that has succeeded, they have succeeded from the ground up with citizen lead citizen initiatives. Which way was way was this going to go . My immediate feeling was i had to get down there. I did three weeks after the storm, get my first story going into the lower ninth ward with a gentleman who could only get in there with my press credentials because the lower ninth ward was not reopened. The last neighborhood allowed back in the city for months after an long after the water had receded. We walked in and he looked around, i have to tell you if it was me i wouldve turned around and never looked back. It was everything you can imagine and he said it was in dad shape when i bought it i fixed it once and ill do it again. I was so inspired and i felt if this was the spirit, i was gonna stay in new orleans this was a story i had to tell. I continued to go and that was the spirit that i did find in new orleans. As far as other cities this story has every tale, good and bad, that every other city has peers it has the tragedy, the disaster capitalism stories, the demolitions which have should have never happened. Its as bad of an urban destruction story as i have ever seen and it has all the wisdom where local wisdom trumped distant expertise. So yes there are a lot of lessons. What i never expected in new orleans even though i had been there and written a little bit about it, but new orleans is so much more urban than the world thinks. Its deceiving because the housing you see is mostly two or three story historic housing. It is urban in ways which i wont go into here but i do outline in the book, and the lesson its urbanism is a lesson to the cities around the country that are struggling to get back there urbanism after being devastated by topdown projects. The lesson lesson of urbanism is definitely in new orleans. I hope this book is read not just as a specific story, but as one with lessons also how to deal with the disaster and we can discuss some of those issues. Its both the story of where we are and why with our city and where we should be going from when it was an urban renewal disaster or a manmade disaster or natural disaster. Im remembering, and of of course its the tenth anniversary this year and im remembering the agony and the misery and the people had died but we had to look ahead and think about rebuilding. In the early time there was anxiety about the city losing its cultural pizzazz. Whether we we become a toy version of what we had been witches and afro caribbean culture. There certainly have been an onslaught but how have we done . Is it still full of cultural originality . At the time of the flood, i tried to call the smart people i knew and he put me in touch with a bunch of experts and said after all these big disasters, and hes going back to the earthquake and people always talk about how can you do things differently, but in the end it will pretty much go back to what it was before. In in the context of new orleans culture, going back to what it was before dash people are coming back to the city with the kind of determination i had not seen any other time almost lost those things and it seems as if there has been an attempt to reclaim that. They did an informal survey and what they concluded is that more people were than ever before. You you have to put it in a historical context. We talk about the disasters that have hit new orleans. Americans have tried to impose american racism and while its imperfect it isnt as bad and many other areas. In addition, new orleans has been at war with its culture for a long time. They made it illegal on carnival day and there are old laws going back to the 1700s. They want to charge them ten times the amount of money that they were charging the richest people. He wants to charge the poorest people ten times as much as he wants to charge the richest people. Moving forward to our current mayor who arrest Young Musicians playing on the streets of new orleans. That is to say that the culture of new orleans has been at war against the city of new orleans and the war continues much today. Sometimes they they win. I dont agree with you that they made it illegal to mask. The indians emerged in the 1880s after the wild bill. I think you need to go back further than wild bill. For those [inaudible] i think certainly, the tradition that we speak of relates to that but its not exactly saying dash for those who want a footnote here, the upshot of the indian suppression, if you will, the will, the masking and all of that was a wonderfully statistical counter thrust by black new orleans. They proceeded to put on blackface over black skin and where we exhume grass skirts and make themselves a parity of the image that whites had of black people and of indians. To this day, the parade runs through the street of new orleans sometimes and you can go back to the indians if you are is fascinated with them as i am. They have been called the northernmost banana republic. It has also been called the southernmost part of rusk belt. It links us to detroit which is similar dash and mediterranean one of my favorite jokes is you have to go north to get to the south. Thats true. Its very different. All of which is a way to say that they had been struggling well before katrina and the collapse. That was certainly not one bit on 200 30,000 Housing Units being destroyed in the flood. We have in our midst a very close scholar of the particular entities in new orleans and i thought they could bring us up to speed on that whole part of the recovery. I think its interesting that its often referenced apart from the culture of new orleans when actually the culture is embodied in the housing which many of our craftsmen were also musicians et cetera, et cetera. Even though there and client on intertwined, a little water was not going to wash them away, but broken levees didnt accomplish what we had a Public Policy and a few dollars from the federal government really pushed along. I did spend a lot of time documenting demolitions which were done against homeowner wishes but i also catalogued thousands of homes that people who had already disinvest it in the city in the white flight era and had no Homeowners Insurance and no intention in returning those properties to commerce had opted to take a few bucks from the federal governments to demolish. I just started going through the catalogue of photos and what im finding is about 90 have results from that loss. I did spend a lot of time looking at blight and that is a very fun word to play around with because you can use it as an excuse for just about anything and it often does get used. I know there is one person in the audit audience who picked up where i left off and he catalogued a lot of properties that had been slated for demolition where neighborhoods were taken out for things that are still not functioning. My interest in cataloguing the demolition of new orleans was we were at the beginning, and even you said, get said over and over again that 80 of the city was destroyed. 80 was not destroyed, 80 was damaged and some was horrific and resulted in homes being lost. For the most part the houses are built with materials that could take the water. If we were educated about how to mitigate that water damage we would have seen a lot less lost than weve seen. One more thing, that that money that came from the federal government for demolish could not be used to demolish prekatrina blight. So all of the stuff that existed before katrina continued to flourish. [laughter] be sure to Pay Attention when you read the book to karens advance as a journalist because she was doing something quite different before that. Its a wonderful testament of the power of citizens to rise up and make things happen in the aftermath of disaster. There were a lot of big ideas sitting around after katrina there was highspeed rail, they were going to put casinos all over the downtown area the one thing that certifiably did happen was an enormous shakeup of the School System in new orleans. It was very controversial and you had 5 of kids going to Charter Schools so ill leave it to randy to comment on where were at in new orleans. Who one who lost and whats going on with the schools . It is a very complicated story and Charter School in america is very controversial. In new orleans theres some very triplex schools. They emerged where the school board was utterly corrupt and bankrupt right before katrina there are statistics that show that things were improving a bit in 2005 but after katrina there was this movement to start Charter Schools. I had been supporting a Charter School school that emerged in the 90s and right after katrina i met alice water and she told me a wonderful story and she wanted to do something for new orleans. There was a Wonderful Program where kids learn to garden sustainably and eat sustainably and understand where their food comes from and if they grow at the eat it so they learned how to eat good food. Now we have five of these schools and one of the interesting things about this was that first line was one of the first schools we opened after katrina in january and their focus on the edible schoolyard was taught that by focusing on something that created a marketability. One of the things that happened was that it was decided that students could go to any school in new orleans. It didnt have to be neighborhood bound. It would it would be busing from anywhere to anywhere. So schools started competing and one of the thing they competed on was focus. One school is Math Sciences in one school is this or that. The edible schoolyard has help shape that. Now the busing thing i think is one of our ongoing problems because we spend a lot of problems on busing and the students are spending a lot of time on buses. The neighborhoods are the losers because i think theres benefits in schools. That was half a block from where i live. I feel strongly about that. Im not a fan of all the Charter Schools but im supporting them. Im not sure its comparable to the rest of america, i think its working very well in new orleans in general. I dont think any city has made a complete commitment to charter i have not looked totally into this yet but i am seeing pieces of it. You have state money from the Recovery School district rebuilding some fabulous School Buildings all of which were allowed to deteriorate and never had anything done to them. So public money is restoring these schools. They are then being sold were turned over to schools that are not fully public. There are all these little sometimes lost in the picture. The beginning of a lot of the Charter Schools swept everything clean and among the things they eliminated without understanding the culture was a lot of schools eliminated the bands. The bands defined the neighborhoods in the schools. Its coming back and randy is supportive of a program that has helped bring it back. Putting it back in the School System but what has happened over the 10 years because i started out more negative than i ended up, was that at least the Charter Schools are listening to the criticism and making adjustments, some of them are and some of them are failing and closing and its a very hard system to get a picture of access its not centralized. Its not easy to get a full picture so from a National Perspective i think it makes an interesting study of the evolution of whats happening in the charter system and its only because katrina that they could sweep the clean the way they have so in that way it doesnt really compare with others but its being watched for reasons that are evolving. I will see your negative and go several negatives more. [laughter] the first thing that these people did to remake the School System was fire all the teachers teachers. I cannot understand how you can care about the kids in fire all their others mothers and an occasional fathers to teach in the schools. And even replace these with competent and experienced teachers i might go with that but without a doubt many of the teachers werent competent. To prove that they werent all incompetent after this middle School System and i used a word system in the word system in the loose as possible cents after the new system of was serving kids frozen sandwiches and the like and they sometimes seem to be far more concerned about security than education they then began to hire some people back then they had fired. So you have to be careful in terms of what the politicians want to do is pronounce Postnew Orleans a success only time the Charter School statistics are out about how well they are doing, theres a group called research on the forum with Robert Ferguson and they study all of these pronouncements of the Charter Schools make. They found a whole lot of holes and without going into detail its not clear for Charter Schools are nearly as good as they supposed to have been. One interesting facts before the floods there was a threshold when the school felt the need for the threshold this day would allow to take it over. After the flood they decided to make it easier for the state to take over more schools. I began to wonder if this was about a public School System and about educating kids and whether its about the resources not unlike what you are saying about them using public money to refurbish the School System and render to a private organization or notforprofit organization to run the School System. I think we are rushing to pronounce success. I have two jump in. The devil is in the details of the nuances are worth so fascinating about the katrina story and report his ability to understand those new options in training them in ways that are communicable and analytically charade. Its worth remembering and i will make this observation that these schoolteachers were fired horrible event that is exactly symptomatic of what was wrong with the old system. The people who fired the teachers in new orleans were not the takeover guys coming from baton rouge hellbent to charter the whole world. It was the Orleans Parish school board which had lost 80 million whose president was on her way to prison and which had developed a system in which a 30 illiteracy rate was noted among graduating seniors in which a valedictorian at one of the schools had failed the exit exam five times and the same school board had proposed to shut down the entire system for a full year at which point the charter crowd, the people in baton rouge came rushing in and said and scott callan who who was the head of tulane and very active in the School Recovery movement generally set if you do that we dont have a shot at recovery. Nobody can come back if there are no schools for their kids and so a deadline was imposed on the orleans schools to start school again and yes many of the results remain. The fact is the Graduation Rate has gone up nicely. 54 use to graduate and now with 73 . Thats not bad, getting into college. In fact many of them twothirds of the schools had failure before katrina and now twothirds of them by perhaps some wiggle room in how you evaluate the failure and success but now twothirds of them need minimum meets minimum state standards. The district has risen from being the second highest in the state to being 49th. These are eight games over a decade are remains to be seen whether this is sustainable whether the youngsters that were brought down from teach for america and so forth whether the burnout ratios will be so high that it cant be kept up after new orleans loses its luster and a young and the restless move on to whatever comes next. But i mention all of this to add that level of complexity that makes the new orleans situation to be so very fascinating. I want to turn back to roberta. I got the number somewhere here. Its 45,000 kids. How many are white clad its about 90 . Its a city. The interesting thing is that the School System for all its gains or lack there of is actually educating a more challenging population because there are more kids who qualify for what do they call it reduced lunch free or reduced lunch which is a measure poverty and the new orleans alas poverty is a big factor. Also its not easy you cant look at the new orleans School System the way you would look at any other city because one of the things that new orleans have bigger than any other city is the parochial School System as well. So its got parallel things. Its very complicated which is why i say it was nuanced for me in the book but i also think its important to put it in the largest perspective to understand that what has been described here as having happened could not have happened without the disaster because politically it was an untenable situation so for those of you who know naomi kline disaster capitalism this is the next chapter. Cap and the system. Happened with the hospital. A terrible story, the worst urban renewal demolition story as i mentioned earlier in the country that i have seen still a disaster. 10 years later this over expansive new system cant even open because there is not enough money in the neighborhood was destroyed so you have got schools coming up a hospital in the Public Housing pic story in my book. What has happened with the Public Housing whether you agree or not could not have happened without katrina. The Transit System was turned over to a private company. A French Company now runs public Transit System in new orleans and its not better. Cities across the country are improving their Transit Systems, new orleans is going backwards. He was the head of the Regional Transit authority and help me remember. We have a wonderful opportunity to clean up the city. We just need to get rid of the poor people. His Israeli Commando lances kill a cop or because he was across the street. So i tried to put this in perspective. These differences on separate issues. Theres a constant conversation in new orleans and for those of you who might be writers you can imagine it made me dizzy at times. I would interview 11 morning and someone else in the afternoon and i would and they both seemed valid so its hard to sort out the details of the largest picture. This is a National Story that really bugs me because this is disaster capitalism. The worst story of katrina, and i going to this in the book as much as i could find, this was about contracts. It was all about contracts. The money coming from washington was going to the political cronies fan of the Bush Administration a few cronies of the democratic governor blunt go not from even the louisiana but all over the country and i will give you one description and then jed you had the other one. You had to explain it. Everybody saw a blue t. A. R. P. On rooftops to protect from the rain. A square. A t. A. R. P. 175 charged by the shah group. They had no expertise doing anything with the roof so they subcontracted to the next people for i dont even remember. No expertise contracted to the next people. The guy who put the contract ref, 2. Thats where the money went to i make a projection the book and im open for anybody challenge me. If they were lucky 20 of the money from the federalnt to the recovery new orleans 20 as a generous maybe hit new orleans. Its analogous to what roberta said. In the case of the debris removal which is a gigantic problem is the whole city had been brought to its knees, the halliburton and i think dick cheney was a Vice President at the time and halliburton was landing a huge contract shaw which is a jv halliburton piece out of baton rouge. Very similar. If i can do the numbers right they were collecting 23 bucks per cubic yard of debris subbing it just is roberta has described with the blue roof t. A. R. P. Jobs through various bodies in cronies and so on. No handson ability or contact and was hitting the streets for the local guys with were local because they would have to come in from elsewhere were getting 3 a cubic yard. Essentially 20 bucks out of 23 just going just being skimmed effectively. And this is also happening statewide. The Governor Jindal the words cannot describe. [laughter] but he keeps giving out contracts and for those of us who follow the Charity Hospital disaster he kept giving out and has these days in terms of the medical system in the state he keeps giving out contracts all over the country because he is basically putting money where he is looking for National Support as he runs for office. So this is the kind of thing that really its like an alert. I dont know what the comparable zhari New York Post sandy but the thing that nobody realizes it seem not is not a Government Agency. Its a Government Agency contracted out. There is no such thing as that government doesnt exist. Government is all contract. I often wonder if the republicans in congress to talk about cutting the pork are ready to cut the contracts. When ed snowden was discovered to have done what he did with nsa and everybody was appalled, he worked for a private contractor. The nations highest secrets were in the hands of a private contractor. So we have to be careful when we look at what we call government incompetence because its more often than not the incompetence of a private contractor that was supposed to improve on the public process and supposedly save money. What youre talking about though is not the problem of government but the problem of government that has believed in governing since reagan the problem is government. And jump over your former colleague at the times tribune was interviewing jimmy carter at the right now are in 2007 and he threw him aloft and said what he think about the femas work after katrina and carter kind of smiled and said well you know no one realizes it but i created fema. When i came into office they were 23 agencies that were not working together and we started and we decided to have one agency we decided they would be three rules. The one they would be wellfunded and we know how that worked out in the 90s. The head of fema would be an expert in emergency management. We know how that worked out and three that ceo of fema would report directly to the president and they we know how that worked out because now he reports to homeland security. And so we said i dont think they could grow well. So its not about government. We need to get back in trust in that government has a role to perform even if they believe all the good stuff comes up from the bottom. Still when government is doing its business it needs to do its business. Randy how are we going to trust the governor as long as bobby jindal is the governor of the state of louisiana i have to ask you and you reference before i did the point another theme i think we should touch on because you know its rising seas and Climate Change and all that stuff in new orleans and as you ever feel parts of new york to be enormous label nepal. We have been cognizant it least and aloof responsive to the threat posed in new orleans by the seas and more pertinent that the distractions of our wetlands by the oil industry which jindal lets call him a friend rather than a prostitute before the oil industry but its the reality there. The flag of texaco flies over the state of louisiana. Tell us a bit we traveled to holland to learn from the dutch who do this a whole lot better than we do. Tell us about the marmot the frontier that katrina obliges us to face. Well 2. 5 miles of wetlands lowers the storm surge by one foot and you used to have stated delaware a landmass a wetlands mass the size of nowhere below new orleans that is now gone. So the threat of hurricanes is not just that they are getting bigger its that which protected us naturally after eons of building up of natural levees and weapons is being destroyed. We lose a football field every hour they say and hear different statistics. My family is from down at the top of the river and i grew up there and when i went back in the 80s i think across the entire bridge and saw this expanse of water which it used to take us i think 25 minutes by boat to get today at an septic expanse of water, it was all bayous and now its right there at the dock. Its really frightening and the need to address it. We need to bucks to address it. New orleans is a very important port, and we are taking care of it. Its also not often recognized and this was pointed out to me by a number of people, this is not a local story. There is a leading businessman in new orleans who is involved in one of these save the wetlands organizations. He said to me in an early interview the worst thing that happened about katrina is it became about norland because it supports services in the country and the statistics of how much fuel fish imports all the stuff that comes to the port is enormous. In fact that organization as he said is taking the story up the mississippi to memphis and st. Louis and all the way up because its not the mouth of the river doesnt just belong to louisiana and in congress, i mean well you dont the comeuppance of course it is however you pronounce it. Dennis hastert. Hastert. If any of you are interested in the state of the coast of louisiana i encourage you to go to the lens which i cofounded. Its our investigative news item we did a project with propublica and you can see a historical slider of how much land lost there has been and what communities are being lost while loosing grounds you can find it on our site. And what you expect to lose by 2045. Right. Its frightening but yet these people in congress who when the money issue comes up for the wetlands and the gulf coast, its like its not their backyard but it is and theres a congressman someone pointed out to me from colorado where they had the mudslides. After the floods thing slid right in 208 adults have disappeared. It wasnt his territory. This is everybodys problem. Its not a local story so thats one of the postkatrina stories that doesnt get heard enough is the National Implications of this story. The dutch dialogues i helped sponsor these. They brought dutch Water Management experts to new orleans to develop it plans that may develop superb plans which they are not finding funding to implement so the lovely irony about bringing the dutch there is that in 19151 Albert Baldwin would develop the screw pump that drain the back swamp and made new orleans possible as we know it the dutch came over and said we need you in holland would you come over and he said no my work is here but here are the plans to my screw pump and that is how they drained the site or received with the dorlands pump. The gist of insofar as i have grasped is they have learned to live with water runoff to wall themselves off from it. He let the water in any build your legs and interior water retention areas and then you have socalled leaky levees this whole elaborate dutch approach that we are beginning to pick up on. Our bayou st. John has been reconnected to the length that it feeds off of and so forth so we are still fundamentally in the barrio to keep it away and hope for the best. When the dutch came over and were shown around new orleans at the end of the day they said we have three questions. Why do you hide the water . Everyone wants to live around water and you say the army is in charge of this . [laughter] and what was the third . I dont remember. Also the thing about living with water i am sure a lot of you have seen different plans because its going across the country as well it should. Its one of those solutions for which there is no downside because you come up with recreational areas. New orleans is a Perfect Laboratory for this. We have canals. They are cemented. All you need to do is remove the cement, take them a little deeper, and make the Recreation Area on either side of the canal and you have put the dutch have our beautiful landscaped areas that wind up holding the water and a flooding keeping it, minimizing how it injures the surrounding neighborhoods. So its like a doubleedged sword in the best way. The real issue and its classic in a lot of Different Things its very hard to turn around the ship. You have a paradigm. I use the parallel in the book. A paradigm of highway building. Whats very hard to turn around in terms of getting people to understand that it wasnt more highways that we are ever going to solve our transportation or our congestion traffic trouble on this. A whole new slew of solutions that started with streets and neighborhoods and all those things that are now complete streets all the mass transit and all the things that are now mainstream but that paradigm took decades to turn around. I will never forget having a conversation with jane jacobs about this. 20 some odd years ago she said its not going to happen until the professors who teach transportation technique in colleges retire and a new generation comes in. They were teaching and even to this day teach some of the same things. So the paradigm in new orleans is still heavily and engineering paradigm which means, and they are doing this now and some of the major streets are boulevard like streets. They are putting in bigger pipes to pump more water out on the very neutral grounds they could be redesigned to absorb the water in a really landscaped way way. So this is the real challenge even in the next decade because the money thats going into the old engineering methods could be diverted if they wanted but then you are dealing with contracts and agencies and jobs and unions and all those kinds of things and thats a hard nut to crack. I believe that the contracts to do the work the right way i think is the kind of conservatism that societies cling to. David said something about right after the storm we wanted to go back to what we had before or perhaps improve that without rethinking the paradigm to if you were ever going to think rethink a paradigm that would be the time. Part of the problem was fema would not Fund Anything unless it was putting it back away it was. He would not Fund Anything that was done better and this is the dumbest government policy ive ever heard of an infected may be a private contractor is doing it. Thats a government policy. Only put back what you had. There was some wiggle room achieve finally and some incremental improvements for love but roberta is absolutely right. The stafford act improved for bids improvement. Its meant to be replacement only in one measure that even though the Funding Sources were different as better levee system which collapsed has been fortified to some extent. They spent 14. 5 billion on the so there something to show for that but it has only been brought up to the standards that were not met in 1965 after betsy betsy. We have a fortified levee system against 100 years socalled 100 year storms which are the storm for that is a 1 chance of happening in any year. Its not something that can happen several times in a decade decade. Katrina was in fact a 300 year storm so we arent even prepared to rebuff a katrina. By contrast the dutch with their far more ingenious and sophisticated way of managing water have fortified their coast against 10,000 year events which is to say a flood that 100 times more robust than the one that is being finished up in new orleans orleans. This thanks i guess to the president of at the time but we wonder why his successor hasnt intervened and said he would do whatever it takes to bring back the price a city of new orleans and then gives us this jerry rigs levee system that cant withstand a storm that just cause its collapse. The good news for you new yorkers is that new york and connecticut apparently were stealing the dutch Water Management experts and they are working up here. I wish them well but send them back when you are done. We should invite questions at a formal way from anybody who wants to ask them. We have been yacking or quite a while. Who has got a question . Thank you. I will ask the question because i have a microphone. Postkatrina new orleans the best thing not caused worst lost, who once explained that question . All right, we will move on. This is an interesting one that i can always understand. The people who left new orleans and never came back who are they, where are they, are they still of new orleans and how do you define that last . Low is what it used speak about the diaspora which we sometimes sometimes sometimes call it. Tonight what we have heard is most of the people have returned to lease to the state. There are still isolated people who fema to hit during on who have not been able to make it back and its interesting implications of it. Harry shearer the satirist and parttime new orleans Resident Voice makes a point to say they didnt ask whether or not you were a katrina like the way which is to say the government through these people everywhere and didnt care what happened to them. Of course there are broad with quotations because most of the folks were democratic and buy them not being there in terms of purple and even read common terms of the implications he gets back to your earlier question about culture because the great fear was that somehow the city would have lost its culture. The truth is if you came to new orleans you would see a whole lot of things he would have gone to see and hear and taste 15 or 20 years ago so in many ways the loss was felt acutely even in the time we were reporting people from all over central and south america to come and rebuild the city at a time when new orleans north indians were not allowed to come back to the Housing Project was done in part in minimizing the chance of people coming back. Another aspect of the educational thing was that the assumption so many of the homes lib dem buy low, middle and moderate income people were built by the families themselves. Their father, their grandfather. Never created a deed no line of succession so comes katrina. Third teensomethings on interest in the property out willing to turn it over to the last sibling. Nor do they have the paperwork. And they didnt have the paperwork or as one person points out in the book because 6000 just to hire somebody to try to find and create the paperwork. So under those circumstances they found shelter elsewhere. They depended on their Public Hospitals if they were elderly or not. Public hospitals was the rock that so many people depended on. And their church which if it wasnt reopened they were coming back so there were so many factors including Public Housing one and one of the things that really blew my mind is while they werent allowing back the very workers who would have been the workforce and as one expert pointed out, he had suggested tent citys credit easily accommodated people quickly like they do in disasters in foreign shores but wouldnt it attain because it had to be a contract for all those formaldehyde fema trailers, but they distributed flyers at the border of texas, looking for immigrants to come to new orleans that they wouldnt do for their own distance diaspora. So a lot of this is a weight but there are a lot of Different Reasons that people didnt come back or have not come back. Also in the no class for professionals, a lot of them were welcomed in other places at other hospitals and law firms in places where they had trouble in new orleans so they found better places to be. Its not an easy answer to why people still have not come back and some of them are still coming. One other point, the state administered program for helping people rebuild have provisions to help homeowners, provisions to help owners but no programs to help renters. The assumption that they are not worth replacement. For context the hispanic population in new orleans the people that came in response to these recruitment drives at the border and sometimes under the last 12 oil of kinds of machinery has increased since katrina by 80 and is a marvelous infusion culturally into our population. There is a tough story behind it it. I have got these numbers here. I tried to do my homework. The plot operation which was at 67 before katrina is now at 56 so it remains majority black fortunately. The hispanics are picked heart of it. At a lot of [inaudible] repeat the question. Stack the question is the Housing Projects under the Clinton Administration there was an elaborate mechanism set in motion to take Public Housing which in many instances had fallen into disrepair was troubling for whatever reason, rebuild socalled mixed income communities where you had fully subsidized housing and had semisubsidized housing, you had market rate housing and this was all to be done consistent with robertos deeper analysis through publicprivate partnerships. Some of these new projects are terrific and if a resident is lucky enough to live in and they are singing hallelujah but a great many people were excluded roman because they began to impose rules having to do with if theres a felon and your family the whole family got kicked out and that kind of thing. So the numbers are very elusive rate im not going to feel the pull one off my crib sheet here. They dont keep track purposefully. And the hope project completed prior to the flood. They were keeping apartments empty. In fact im sort of on the alert waiting for the same kind of thing to happen in new york that happened down there because what happened in new orleans is part of, since nixon there has been a federal policy to get rid of and replaced Public Housing with publicprivate partnerships which is private developments with public funds integrated economically but the percentage of Public Housing tenants that returned to those mixed income projects berries from 7 to 50 but and they get section 8 vouchers to go elsewhere many of whom find themselves trying to rent apartments with landlords who want to take section 8 or from landlords who dont really care about up keeping the property. Its an elusive number. They claim privacy is why they dont keep the numbers very convenient claim and some of us say just keep the record of the zip codes. Where are they whats up codes . They claim to have some numbers and who knows how many and what is true in what they are saying . The projects that have been rebuilt in new orleans many of my friends said well they look great because first of all they think that the socalled neglected brick projects were hopeless, which they were. I go into great detail. They are fabulous and were the model for Garden Apartments in suburbia when they were built in the 1940s and they were solid. Built to last 300 years. Built to last at least, that i dont know. [laughter] [inaudible] if you did i dont remember but they are fabulous with tile roofs and wood floors, all sorts of things. One of those sorry tales but its a cautionary tale. A lot of things bothered me about that Public Housing. My mother lived three blocks from a project which was a gorgeous project but soon after katrina faith took the roof vents off. These triangular things that allowed air circulation to the seek out the movie big charity. And read my book. I think we answer that. We worked on that one. [inaudible] knott. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] i am glad you did. We now have the answer to what happened when person that left after part of the diaspora. Anwr pritikin tell me you up that many more done so brilliantly in the book. A good question here and i will preface it by telling the audience if you are not aware but that we have a School Board President with another School Board President to follow in her wake. We are about to riccio a congressman. We have jailed mayor nagin and the question is has katrina help to improve local Government Transparency . [laughter] and the particular reference is whether the Landrieu Administration included here in parentheses as the current mayor is the Landrieu Administration. Do you want to take it . We have the lens which are editor publishes in the audience a couple of board members. We have filed suit against the city of new orleans recently for lack of fulfillment of Public Records specifically Public Records deal with city budget budgeting bill payment issues a check register if you will. I did ask for Public Records under the nagin have been straight and those were filled more out of laziness than any sense of duty. Under the Landrieu Administration it is very difficult for us to access public information. Incorporated runs a very retentive type of ship so i dont see a tremendous amount of improvement transparency of the word has been adopted. I dont think the deed follows. He is imitating our president. In using the word and not delivering. Much of our reporting live some Public Record so thats our lexmark. Let me wrap up your at least with regard to the panel and of course always open to further questions from the floor. I happen to love the title of robertas book were still here ya bastards. It gets that i think the grassroots were slaves which is a big part of this and also enormous challenges that we face and we have heard a lot of pros and cons about new orleans this evening. Glass halffull was halfempty. I want to put roberta on the spot and ask are even markets that werent there before and an engaged public in many ways serving more than katrina and get we still have the robert moses the urban renewal destroyed neighborhood destroyer project close the Public Hospitals destroy the Public Housing. All the things that i related so you still have both. There is backsliding and i talk about a particular story and the holy cross neighborhood of the lower ninth ward that is where the very engaged community opposed it totally inappropriate over scales badly designed rock kind of project and they were ignored by a city council that really made the deal in the backroom again so there is backsliding, backroom dealing not that there isnt in new york and a million other cities but a process that evolved after katrina that was much more respectful of public engagement. There are some backsliding and some Going Forward there was a tax issue defeated that would have enriched some organizations and it was defeated through social media and the social Media Opportunity in new orleans is totally new since katrina. So its not a linear. Both things are happening. I think its an open question as to which direction we will take the stronger row. Does anyone else want to weigh in . How are we doing . As ed koch used to say. One of the difficulties in answering that question is trying to separate new orleans from the National Trends of economic and culturalism so for the first several years after getting a lot of federal money which meant more opportunity for jobs in that kind of thing at this point the National Economy is improving our improvement in new orleans based on our Credit History based on economic happenstance. If anybody wants an argument for stimulus spending and its validity in new orleans is it. We did not have the 2008 crash like it was somebody elses problem because we were being effectively funded by coincidence by happenstance as lewis put it to. The moderator of the panel [inaudible] one of the leaders on the Lower East Side it was very much which improved a great deal the experience god up there at the very end and said what im really worried about is that the success of our program they drive our neighbors are the community. Yeah. Building it ability well to the to the point where it becomes a habit to others. They drive out the renters and the population i want to find find out whether this is becoming a trend in new orleans and what are you doing to protect the fact that there are a lot of things that come from the grassroots that are innovative programs that roberta talked about but when we revisit these successes the people that built those successes are being pushed out and i wondered if this was an issue. I think the answer certainly is yes. The paradox of urban upgrades generally that you have what an artist in new york the art world discovers discovers soho as it did 50 or 60 years ago it effectively turns it into suburbia and the moves on. The neighborhoods become increasingly expensive as the jackboot of fashion walks over them. We have seen that definitely new orleans. They are still in new orleans a very long way to go. There are a lot of neighborhoods that would in effect from an infusion of money and new ideas and it would remain to be seen whether there was an effective protection in place for the original population is being forced out. There is not. There are nonprofits and philanthropic groups that address those issues bigtime. There are Community Groups that spend a great amount of their energy on protecting against the ravages of gentrification but its not formally any sense of government policy as far as i know. Let me quickly add it to try in the book i make a distinction between gentrification and displacement. Gentrification has many positive sides to it. Its that displacement issue that is the real problem and there are solutions in burying forms but the real missing element is the public commitment to those solutions because government would rather give tax incentives and all sorts of financial benefits to the Large Developers but not comparable advantages to the individual Property Owner whether it be a renter or a resident owner. This is a challenge. There are solutions but again the funding goes only to the top. We are being nudged off the stage in the room. Those that want to hear more from her burger are going to have to buy her book and chat with her after she signs for you. There is time for that to happen. Thank you all for being here. [applause] thanks to the panel for being very patient with their moderator and have a good evening. To explore the combustible mix of faith and morality and politics and yet provocative i want to welcome petes as well as a number of pepperdine students we are excited to have you here tonight also each of you for the actually had to shut down registration i have a full house so if you could not bring friends or they wanted to come we will be recording the conversation and will be putting it on the site where you are welcome to add your comments as well as the Facebook Page for comments as well we work to provide us space and resources for lifes greatest questions in the context of faith and we do this with publications to connect the timeless wisdom with timely issues of the day and programs to connect leading thinkers to thinking leaders to engage the questions of life and ultimately to know the author of the answers. Also in asia will form for roads and scholars to grapple with the questions and to to connect the timeless truth with those issues that confront us. So this year marks the 100th anniversary of the pivotal moments of world war i or the great one of extraordinary upheaval of the Cultural Landscape of the west. Over the course of the next few years after the start of the great war this sense of optimism that had characterized surveys 20thcentury the by the end of the great war there were 60 million dead worldwide over ted million soldiers and 6 million civilians. Lahood offering a healthier and wealthier better life are instead to kill efficiently and destroy completely and the extent of the carnage and the slaughter prompted eight questioning of Traditional Authority and belief and the notion of defined business. One century later there is new uncertainty and threats. But we grappled with similar questions is there a god who can be trusted . Who can resist those extraordinary evils . Fear and despair how do we discern the good and understand our time to work to redeem them . Our speaker tonight to for a case study with two authors of teeeighteen and c. S. Lewis both served as soldiers and use that to ignite their imagination of the jury and the good and the beautiful. Accept better isolation they breathe new life into a literary tradition and to affirm heroism and sacrifice and friendship and divine grace. It is a remarkable and add a gripping story to have that enthusiastically or in jeddah, dash over energetically as joseph laconte. Teaching western civilization having served as a distinguished visiting professor also the heritage addition were heaped certainly not list has served as a distinguished senior fellow for the trinity board. Writing for the Washington Post the Weekly Standard npr and a few International Credits for he is a regular contributor as well as in italy it is for books include the searchers, as well as the cheerful the end of fallujah and. [laughter] elysian. Also the book of tonight a hobbit, a wardrobe, and a great war. [applause] i know you caving here to hear every talk really i am here to announce my campaign as president. [laughter] [applause] there is room for one more. Come on. To have a slogan i lost my passport was docked in naples for me to write to the middle of a campaign the farcical candidate he was his blood dash picture of over italy. I will do nothing but i will do well. I like that. [laughter] theres no one here like itd washington with the work that is so vital there are inequalities faced to florida this amazing events. And whether campaigning he is of man. So thank you i am as astonished by this turn now to. [laughter] thank you so much it is a remarkable testimony raised dues great i cannot help think of my family and the ledger do we have taken to get to the National Press club. Those that had to into and tour the catastrophe of the first world war. My first grandfather left italy in 1921 and 17 years old one year before mussolini and fascism swept into power. Nice timing. Think yogh. Living in the United States when the war breakout american said we will give you the option fight for us and we will make you a u. S. Citizen. Said he goes to the western front with the 91st division in Charlie Company he must acetic good deal of suffering that 91st was part of that final assault that brought the germans to their knees. They were here what might they say . I think it would be Something Like what you doing here . Catastrophe. [laughter] so lets get into it. The last soldier to die in the great war was the private with the missionary force than 59 00 a. M. One minute before any armistice went into effect and was 23 years old. He encountered eight roadblock against the orders of this is sergeant he charged with his bayonet jervis soldiers but he kept coming he was gunned down and died instantly almost as steve bell the right gunfire died away despite marking the end of of world war anguished and bewildered the most destructive war the primal tragedy of modern world civilization was the 20th century turned in such a budget disaster Winston Churchill described it there lots of Human Society which would prove fatal to the present civilization. They call it the of course, to break the world safe for democracy to usher in the kingdom and had been instead inveighed waste to destroy the lives of a generation before it was all over nearly every family was grieving the loss of a Family Member or helping others to grieve or try to adjust to civilian life. It permanently damage and damaged European Society with a season of cynicism toward the values debate deals of the west for a generation of men and women. And brought the end of faith. But fourth to a friends j. R. R. Tolkein and c. S. Lewis did keep it there spiritual quest into the mechanized slaughter of the western front to shape their own literary imagination with some hot it would of the most influential books now raised among the classics the epic tales involving the sorrows sanofi triumphs would never had bed prison. Listen to Winston Churchill the greater the general was of the demands manslaughter by the time the armistice was ted nguyen dead on average there were 6,046 men killed every day of the war every day that lasted 12005 ended 66 days they may easily have been with the british experiment under fire on the western front one of the fiercest concentrations of killing in the history of human conflict. One has is personally comes under the shadow of war to feel the full oppression and it now seems forgotten 1914 was no less hideous of inexperience and 1939 but by 1918 all of my Close Friends were dead. And then to send immediately to the front and a 19 yearold son . Happy birthday the experience of six months of trench warfare remained throughout his life they haunted my dreams for years but lewis lost most of his closest friends. By the mid 20s they both the riding of oxford and baby to for the first 51926. To transform their lives and their careers. J. R. R. Tolkein plays a crucial step crucial role of c. S. Lewis story into a quiet christianity and encourages him to complete though lord of the rings it is hard to think of a more consequential friendship but to step back and appreciate how out of step they were both right epic tales with the mythic world that is the backdrop of a cool old conflict of war and spiritual growth. To see memoirs or porch jury or a large cohort of morals and ethics that sneered the very idea of heroism or virtue in the years after the conflict the senselessness of for, for any reason becomes a dominant motif of a generation and. They all comment quiet on the western front but disillusionment is the key word a cynicism about liberal democracy come to christianity and the achievements of western civilization. The shellshocked veteran and did the post war era in the insane asylum literally becomes a metaphor for postwar europe remember the of character who expects to return to civilian life weary and broken and burned out and ruthless and without hope. That this may was a mainstream concern the prospect of imminent crisis became a habitual way to look at the world. That began with the deployment to do the western front and to be demobilized and to go back to oxford but the early academic success could not ease of heartache of four to have the time of suffering that produces the words of the children a lifelong sadness. He entered the war as the neediest he was an atheist in a foxhole. For all hopes to be as good as dead that was lewis 1918. Where he writes that i could sit and cry all my friends of the of the italian. To resume a the classics to record in the diary a conversation a fellow soldier who was a war veteran. To go for a walk one evening. In all the other horrors to stay the you could not endure this for in our i walked home. While many postwar thinkers are unwilling to into were at the current form with a vertigo to take hold a frantic search for solutions spiritualism and sciences socialism, these and other ideologies are the attempt the horrors of the human race so in the 1920s they are gaining ground rapidly in europe and in the United States of a profound sense of spiritual crisis is though hallmark of the decade to industrialist and factory workers and urban intellectuals. These facts make that eight goals of j. R. R. Tolkein all the more remarkable. With the ambivalence from the air up. Is in committee boesky as a onehalf to convey a hard truth of the human condition with the futility as well as the virtue. And as though whole like the hero in the fairy tale. Because the real world has said message this setting for great complex for violence and suffering as well as sacrifice san valor. But first starting with the bottle of water. [laughter] to be other realistic of that influence with the desire for power to dominate others. In vitter bid is immune to the temptation. But to make the appalling suggested that his comrades in list to say we want power that is on our side. To learn of the teeeighteen trilogy to help struggle has fallen under the sway of the ring of doubt. With a temporary compromise that we can bide our time with the evils the hon with an ultimate purpose is sounds Like Washington d. C. The great war is manifest the lofty moral principles with the most horrific weapons available with starvation but torture and cannibalism that the Christian States are able to deny themselves and communism and fascism eugenics these are the revolutions and the ideologies of the democracy of europe all is in the name of the pnc and the human race and all the cave of instruments of totalitarian control to be acutely aware of the ideology they have no illusions of the influence of the unchecked powers with the concept of heroism in that age of moral cynicism is then defined by a single act of bravery but of well formed character that hero emerges to put ahead of their desires and had damaged the very idea of choice of free will of the conflict they were mutilated and cast and obliterated the other helplessness of the post war literature to be given to extend some of them are on my bookshelf now. Social decay than degeneration with capitalist civilization the twilight looking at then a decline of the west will civilization crash . The day after tomorrow 1931 the problem of decadence and and 1833 the dance of death. How about that for a Book Club Title . Then dance of death. So a enough about me. So to reject the mental outlook is to insist that the choice is a matter iran and a matter supremely. Remember this scene in an area . Winchester to Dundas Shasta helps of the approaching army before reaching the goal there attacked by a lion and. And then to be cut down by the beast to have a choice to make. To hesitate for one hideous hundred the of the second and before he knew how theyre hurt him to help areas. In the soldier threw himself into harms way to rescue the fallen comrade to gather before her as she fixes her eyes on each of them to stand upon of the end of the knife what are they to do . Each is faced with the appalling clarity to continue of the quest of teacher and deprivation in and danger. Each have felt he was offered a choice between as shadow fluffier and something that he greatly desired. And only to turn aside so the bedrock beef in and the responsibility to resist evil to give their ridings of c. S. Lewis and j. R. R. Tolkein their power. Though way it is fantastical and style, the war against evil is the moral landscape of our moral lives. Recalled to resistance to assist our responsibilities the medieval concept of the heroic quest the quest think of bail wolf with the death of arthur to reinvent the quest in the us citizens in irony c. S. Lewis and j. R. R. Tolkein seek to look at the epic hero. Why . Why do the two authors explore the most powerful trend in their culture . Part of the answer lies in the battlefields of france. There that some soldiers saw their virtues in the f officers it was there according to teeeighteen the inspiration for his character ochered. Where was the idea from the comet in the first place