February 2007 New Orleans Recovery Report Card
Here is the latest Katrina Recovery Report Card from the Center for Social Inclusion. Please note that the analysis of Federal Contracts related to Hurricane Katrina is part of the Extended Recover Report Card accessible via the web address at the bottom of this page and is not included in the attachment.
Rev. Tony Johnson
National Alliance to Restore Opportunity to the Gulf Coast & Displaced
Persons
212-248-2785 x 1452
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Announcing: The February 2007 New Orleans Recovery Report Card
* 17 months after Katrina, the Lower 9th Ward is the only planning
district without full electric and gas service
* 17 months after Katrina, fewer than 500 of 100,000 Road Home
applicants have received a grant
* President Bush is shifting $1.3 billion away from hurricane
protection systems
**NEW in this month's Extended Recovery Report Card: An analysis of
Federal contracts related to Hurricane Katrina. Highlights include:
* Fewer than half of Federal dollars have gone to Gulf Coast
businesses
* Almost twice as many dollars have been allocated to contractors
in the Washington D.C. area than to those in New Orleans
The Center for Social Inclusion (CSI) announces the release of the
February 2007 New Orleans Recovery Report Card.
The Report Card is an advocacy tool that provides a grade for the 13 New
Orleans planning districts based on the ability of former New Orleans
residents to rebuild their lives. The grade is based on performance in
five categories: economy, utilities, health, housing, and public
education.
The Report Card will be updated and released every month to track
recovery efforts in New Orleans. For a more detailed version of the
February Report Card, go to
http://centerforsocialinclusion.org/PDF/NOReportCard0207_Full.pdf .
The New Orleans Recovery Report Card was developed in conjunction with
CSI's August 2006 report The Race to Rebuild: The Color of Opportunity
and the Future of New Orleans. The full report, Report Card
methodology, and previous Report Cards can be found on
http://RacetoRebuild.theCSI.org
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9/11/05 and The Gulfport Blues
It just so happened that today's WAWA BLOG is Chapter 14
9/11/05 AND THE GULFPORT BLUES
From "KEEP HOPE ALIVE"
For the past twenty-two years of Sunday mornings, Dr. Jake Hunter had navigated the tannic colored waters of the Withlacoochee River in the dark, so as to arrive at the center of Lake Silver just before first light. For miles, the eastern vista manifested multitudes of eighty-feet-tall and six-hundred year-old cypress trees. The rising sun that backlit the cypress always filled Jake with awe, but this morning, his mood was most foul. He had been consumed with rage from the instant he viewed the first images from New Orleans the week before, and deep pain had wounded America’s soul. Jake spit out of the side of the boat and cursed local, state, and federal bureaucracy for failing the least and most vulnerable.
“I am so pissed! What Hurricane Katrina blew in and exposed was that the empire has no clothes! What happened in the Big Easy was foretold three years ago in a five-part series in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Then, last October’s National Geographic fictional story became fact, as it had laid out the scene in incredible detail, which became reality on TV. Christ, have mercy! Local officials and FEMA knew about the probability that even a slow-moving category three hurricane would cause catastrophic loss and a lot of human misery. Those 19th-century levees were not designed for that eventuality! Now, maybe we all will wake up to the facts, that in the third millennium, all our infrastructures need a physician, stat! The very innards of our nation are collapsing, and a government that has been commissioned to protect its citizens blew it, big time! I am so pissed that a billion tax dollars a day go to support a war in Iraq, and not one level of government would bother to scrounge up the bucks for adequate supplies of food, water, and medicine. I am so pissed!