How are the people of New Orleans approaching rebuilding?
Overall, there’s a profound sense of grief and loss in the city that I also experienced after 9/11; when people slowly realize that no matter what their best efforts, a world they knew is irrevocably gone, and every effort is nonetheless toward, at best, re-creating it or, at worst, building something new from scratch — even if that’s eventually for the better. But the poverty and politics of the place make it feel pretty unlikely that most New Orleanians will be able to reclaim anything close to what they’ve lost, and that’s a pretty hard pill to swallow. Q: What more do you think could be done? A: I wish that more was being done at the federal, state, municipal and grassroots organizing level to help those permanently relocated to new places around the U.S. rebuild their lives with some dignity and opportunity that they otherwise lacked in relatively poor, service-sector-dependent New Orleans. I wish the U.S. had better policies to address displacement following disasters, including
