Wealthy NOLA unscathed; plans for less black folks
Grafwritah
4,184 Posts
Old-Line Families Escape Worst of Flood And Plot the FutureMr. O'Dwyer, at His Mansion,Enjoys Highball With Ice;Meeting With the MayorBy CHRISTOPHER COOPERStaff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNALSeptember 8, 2005; Page A1NEW ORLEANS -- On a sultry morning earlier this week, Ashton O'Dwyerstepped out of his home on this city's grandest street and made abeeline for his neighbor's pool. Wearing nothing but a pair of blue swimtrunks and carrying two milk jugs, he drew enough pool water to flushthe toilet in his home.The mostly African-American neighborhoods of New Orleans are largelyunderwater, and the people who lived there have scattered across thecountry. But in many of the predominantly white and more affluent areas,streets are dry and passable. Gracious homes are mostly intact andpowered by generators. Yesterday, officials reiterated that allresidents must leave New Orleans, but it's still unclear how far theywill go to enforce the order.The green expanse of Audubon Park, in the city's Uptown area, hasdoubled in recent days as a heliport for the city's rich -- and aterminus for the small armies of private security guards who have beendispatched to keep the homes there safe and habitable. Mr. O'Dwyer hascellphone service and ice cubes to cool off his highballs in theevening. By yesterday, the city water service even sprang to life,making the daily trips to his neighbor's pool unnecessary. A pair ofoil-company engineers, dispatched by his son-in-law, delivered fourcases of water, a box of delicacies including herring with mustard sauceand 15 gallons of generator gasoline.Despite the disaster that has overwhelmed New Orleans, the city'smonied, mostly white elite is hanging on and maneuvering to play a rolein the recovery when the floodwaters of Katrina are gone. "New Orleansis ready to be rebuilt. Let's start right here," says Mr. O'Dwyer,standing in his expansive kitchen, next to a counter covered with ajumble of weaponry and electric wires.More than a few people in Uptown, the fashionable district surroundingSt. Charles Ave., have ancestors who arrived here in the 1700s. Highsociety is still dominated by these old-line families, represented todayby prominent figures such as former New Orleans Board of Trade PresidentThomas Westfeldt; Richard Freeman, scion of the family that long ownedthe city's Coca-Cola bottling plant; and William Boatner Reily, owner ofa Louisiana coffee company. Their social pecking order is dictated bythe mysterious hierarchy of "krewes," groups with hereditary membershipthat participate in the annual carnival leading up to Mardi Gras. Inrecent years, the city's most powerful business circles have expanded toinclude some newcomers and non-whites, such as Mayor Ray Nagin, theformer Cox Communications executive elected in 2002.Ashton O'Dwyer relaxes in the driveway of his Uptown New Orleans home.A few blocks from Mr. O'Dwyer, in an exclusive gated community known asAudubon Place, is the home of James Reiss, descendent of an old-lineUptown family. He fled Hurricane Katrina just before the storm andreturned soon afterward by private helicopter. Mr. Reiss became wealthyas a supplier of electronic systems to shipbuilders, and he serves inMayor Nagin's administration as chairman of the city's Regional TransitAuthority. When New Orleans descended into a spiral of looting andanarchy, Mr. Reiss helicoptered in an Israeli security company to guardhis Audubon Place house and those of his neighbors.He says he has been in contact with about 40 other New Orleans businessleaders since the storm. Tomorrow, he says, he and some of those leadersplan to be in Dallas, meeting with Mr. Nagin to begin mapping out afuture for the city.The power elite of New Orleans -- whether they are still in the city orhave moved temporarily to enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo.-- insist the remade city won't simply restore the old order. NewOrleans before the flood was burdened by a teeming underclass,substandard schools and a high crime rate. The city has few corporateheadquarters.The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, withbetter services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this cityrebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way:demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not justspeaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going tohappen again, or we're out."Not every white business leader or prominent family supports that view.Some black leaders and their allies in New Orleans fear that it boilsdown to preventing large numbers of blacks from returning to the cityand eliminating the African-American voting majority. Rep. WilliamJefferson, a sharecropper's son who was educated at Harvard and iscurrently serving his eighth term in Congress, points out that theevacuees from New Orleans already have been spread out across manystates far from their old home and won't be able to afford to return."This is an example of poor people forced to make choices because theydon't have the money to do otherwise," Mr. Jefferson says.Calvin Fayard, a wealthy white plaintiffs' lawyer who lives near Mr.O'Dwyer, says the mass evacuation could turn a Democratic strongholdinto a Republican one. Mr. Fayard, a prominent Democratic fund-raiser,says tampering with the city's demographics means tampering with itsunique culture and shouldn't be done. "People can't survive a yeartemporarily -- they'll go somewhere, get a job and never come back," hesays.Mr. Reiss acknowledges that shrinking parts of the city occupied byhardscrabble neighborhoods would inevitably result in fewer poor andAfrican-American residents. But he says the electoral balance of thecity wouldn't change significantly and that the business elite isn'ttrying to reverse the last 30 years of black political control. "Weunderstand that African Americans have had a great deal of influence onthe history of New Orleans," he says.A key question will be the position of Mr. Nagin, who was elected withthe support of the city's business leadership. He couldn't be reachedyesterday. Mr. Reiss says the mayor suggested the Dallas meeting andwill likely attend when he goes there to visit his evacuated familyBlack politicians have controlled City Hall here since the late 1970s,but the wealthy white families of New Orleans have never been fullyeclipsed. Stuffing campaign coffers with donations, these familiesdominate the city's professional and executive classes, including thewhite-shoe law firms, engineering offices, and local shipping companies.White voters often act as a swing bloc, propelling blacks or Creolesinto the city's top political jobs. That was the case with Mr. Nagin,who defeated another African American to win the mayoral election in2002.Creoles, as many mixed-race residents of New Orleans call themselves,dominate the city's white-collar and government ranks and tend to allythemselves with white voters on issues such as crime and education,while sharing many of the same social concerns as African-Americanvoters. Though the flooding took a toll on many Creole neighborhoods,it's likely that Creoles will return to the city in fairly largenumbers, since many of them have the means to do so.Copyright 2005, Dow Jones, Inc. All rights reserved.
Comments
I'm not sure how to feel on this. Just from the start, the excitement of removing thousands of people who really have no avenues to support themselves is kind of disgusting. From a scholarly standpoint it's interesting because they're doing what could never be accomplished before in all the efforts of urban renewal in the past - they could destroy the neighborhood, but the people never went anywhere; they just proliferated into the surrounding neighborhoods.
Unfortunately, I don't think it's going to benefit many of the displaced people at all. If it was possible to remove dense pockets of poor and integrate them into general society, that would be good (not the natural disaster part, of course) as it eliminates the culture of poverty - people seeing only people in poverty, with no examples of upward mobility.
Of course, most likely, they're just going to land in a shitty neighborhood in another city. So... no good for them.
And is it really any surprise the wealthy get special breaks? They make the rules!
Just as members of Congress exempted themselves from having to pay Social Security tax, these people will change the rules to fit their situation. That's life, and it sucks for the rest of us.
Overall, it's terrible because no one is going to take advantage of a horrific natural disaster and try to flip it to benefit those that are the worst off. But... it makes a good textbook case. I guess.
nevertheless, still relevant
it's all just pretty surreal. i keep thinking that it's bad, and can't get worse, and then...well...
i really don't think you could've written a story like this and have people believe it
THIS AIN'T AMERICA IS IT?
WHERE COULD I BE?[/b]