Mayoral Candidate for New Orleans Speaks at Georgetown
Although it has been three years since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the city and its population are nowhere near a full recovery. As a result, lifelong New Orleans resident and attorney James Perry is busy campaigning for the 2010 mayoral elections, hoping he has the opportunity to instate change in the city.
Yesterday, the Georgetown University Law Center hosted Perry for a speech entitled “New Orleans: A Test Case for the Campaign of Change.” Perry spoke to a group of about 20 law students, asking each of them to introduce themselves and briefly elaborate on what their interest was in his home city. He listened to each response before taking the floor himself.
Perry opened with a reference to Charles Hamilton Houston, who he described as, “essentially the most important African-American attorney of all time.” He went on to cite Houston’s philosophy on fellow lawyers, a maxim that provided a consistent theme to the rest of Perry’s talk.
“[As a lawyer] you can either be a civil engineer who helps shape society, or you can be a leech on society,” Perry said. As a lawyer, Perry emphasized the civil engineer route as most beneficial for future lawyers.
As executive director of the nonprofit Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, Perry deals every day with housing problems, which he says are at the root of the New Orleans; recovery difficulties.
Perry spoke about the struggles homeowners and renters currently face as they try to return to the city. Renovation costs are huge, programs designed to help are insufficient and as a result, the population has dropped to 300,000, about half of what it was before the storm. According to Perry, this decrease in population size means a decrease in tax dollars, which is only slowing the already sluggish pace of recovery.
He also said that, in his opinion, the worst day that the city has experienced besides the day the levees broke was when the city council voted to demolish all public housing, and to rebuild only a third. There were 12,000 homeless people in the streets outside City Hall to witness this verdict.
Perry outlined many of the problems New Orleans faced before Hurricane Katrina and noted that the damage inside the city itself did not directly result from the storm, since the hurricane did not hit the city itself. Rather, the damage was a result of the levees’ failure to prevent flooding.
“Today, the levee systems in New Orleans are only as good as the day the hurricane hit,” Perry said. “This fact is frightening, because it means it could happen again, whenever.”
Perry called the recovery of New Orleans a modern-day civil rights movement, lacking support from those in power.
“Everyone is fighting for our recovery, except for our government,” Perry said.
Feb 27 2009 at 2:00 p.m.
the article is filled with errors. First, the levee system is completely different from the day the storm hit: the 17th street, London and Orleans Canals are now gated. This means that all of these canals, which all breached and flooded much of the city, can no longer flood. They have been removed from the flood equation entirely. Second, the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (or MR. GO) is being closed. This canal was called the Hurricane Highway and was responsible for funneling water into St. Bernard Parish and the lower 9th ward. These changes alone, not to mention the many others, are categorically significant changes. Another error is the population estimate. Prior to the storm the population of Orleans Parish was near 455K. Recent estimates using 3 different methods (postal delivery, utilities hookups, door to door counting; just see the AP articles) by independent companies (e.g., GCR associates) puts the present estimate at 320K and growing. Now if you divide 320/455 you get 70%. Not half. A simple google or lexus nexus search would have helped here. As a New Orleanian I am proud of Mr. Perry's effort and care for the city. He is a model citizen. But, it sounds like he spoke in hyperbole, which is regrettable.
Feb 27 2009 at 5:41 p.m.
This comment is off a bit. I attended the event.
First, although the quote is correct regarding the levees, Mr. Perry's point was that the levee system would probably not be able to withstand a category 5 hurricane. He didn't say that there have been no improvements, his point was that a hurricane, even a category 3 hurricane, could potentially flood the city again. For a recent article on the subject, see http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/02/corps_again_delays_category_5.html.>
There is also a slight misunderstanding about his comments regarding the population. Mr. Perry said that the peak population - not the Pre-K population - of New Orleans was over 600,000. His comment was part of a larger discussion about black politicians rising to power in hollowed out cities - not a problem unique to New Orleans and certainly a problem that can be traced back further than 2005.
Through my work for Gulf Coast Recovery I've met Mr. Perry a couple of times. Every time I ask questions he seems to have deep substantive knowledge of the issues and never responds with rhetoric and hyperbole.
Also - if anyone is interested there is a fundraiser tonight at 18th & Red for Georgetown Law students going to New Orleans next week to work for the Student Hurricane Network. There will be drink specials all night. Please come.