God Terror Alert (Or, an Open Letter to Condi)

by Elizabeth Keenan

With the one-year anniversary of Katrina upon us, I wonder how those shoes you purchased on Fifth Avenue are holding up? Did they give you blisters or buckle when you were walking to your secret service-guarded car as the storm was being declared a Category 3? And while people were stranded atop their roofs, missing so much more than their shoes, did you stop for a moment to ruminate on your childhood classmates, still in Birmingham living amid "America's poverty problem" while you decided against alligator stilettos that pinched a little too much in the heel?

Granted, you were resting easy that W’s compadre at FEMA, “Brownie,” was handling the weather problems—and why shouldn’t you?

You, Too, Can Play the Katrina Blame Game!

Like those same politicians and pundits who blamed him for his botched effort during Katrina, Michael Brown has effectively engaged in and added to a time-honored game that has been going on since the fierce storm laid waste to the Gulf a year ago. The Hurricane Katrina Blame Game!

My Darlin' New Orleans

by Riggsveda of Recording Katrina

In September, we were notified that we would be released on civil leave to work up to three weeks for hurricane relief. I wrestled with the idea for a few days, then told my husband I wanted to go. He stared at me as if I were mad. A day or two later, as we sat in the dark watching the images flicker past on the screen with tears rolling down our faces, he turned to me and said, “Go.”

I did.

Insurance or Not, in the End, Who Pays?

by Fred Copley

When catastrophe strikes, we expect government to do what it can to protect life and property. But beyond this immediate aid, what responsibility should citizens bear for their own losses? How much should society pay, for example, for people who choose to live or work in risky locations?

Tulane's Team After the Storm

by Bryan Joiner. Bryan writes the Unobstructed View column for The Inquirer.

It is impossible—writing from New York City—to guess how sports are going to affect the rebuilding of New Orleans. It’s easier to gauge how Katrina affected the sports world, and for insight on this, I turned to Andrew Novick, an assistant basketball coach at Tulane University.

Novick and I attended college together in Chicago, and New Orleans is the last place you’d expect to find him. He worked in finance here in Manhattan after he graduated before giving it up to coach basketball. A combination of work and serendipity landed him at Tulane last year.

Then Katrina hit.

Flashback: Geraldo Pleading With Comfy FOX HQ in New York

The images from the days immediately following the storm are forever scarred in our minds, but this exchange is so telling. The reporters seem to not only have lost faith in the federal government, but also in the executive producers back home. Shepard Smith's repeated, "I don't know," speaks volumes that perhaps nobody was enjoying broadcasting his dispatches.

Hip-Hop Quiet After Katrina

And I ain't gotta ball in a Beemah
Man, I'm tryin to live,
I lost it all in Katrina.
––Juvenile,  "Get Ya Hustle On"

by Mik Awake

In the late seventies and early eighties, a rebellious musical movement was birthed in the shattered wastelands of post-Civil Rights America. In the music, artistic, and dance movement that became hip-hop, it was clear that, for most African-Americans, the King-era dream of racial equality was just that: a dream.

Thus, rap music became—for better or worse—the default outlet for this deferred dream. Rap was, and is, as Chuck D of Public Enemy has said, “CNN for black people.”

Katrina, FEMA, and the Crooks Who Love Them

by Andrew Bast

Maybe if the Federal Emergency Management Agency had something better to do, this would all be easier to swallow, but Hurricane Katrina was exactly the kind of disaster the $5.5 billion agency should have been equipped to handle.

No one has forgotten the atrocities that ensued in the immediate aftermath: bodies in the streets, thousands locked in the smelly Superdome. Since, investigations have found "significant fraud and abuse" as the government has farmed out victims' assistance to private companies. According to one report, on a massive level, failure has plagued the last year. And there are plenty more reports, most of which retell the same sordid tale.

Katrina: Shameless Silence

by Andrew Bast

It never looked good.

A year ago, as the storm picked up speed again in the Gulf, we watched with short, quick breaths as the satellite images swelled into circles of billowing white clouds on our television screens. Then the storm hit, the levees broke, and mayhem ensued. It was painful to watch, if not downright disturbing. Dead bodies in the streets. Floating in the rivers. That mystical ray of yellow light that stabbed through the torn roof of the Superdome.

Even HD television sets don't affect your sense of smell, but footage day after day of those decrepit conditions on the football field almost singed your nostrils with a wretched stench of thousands, trapped.

To mark the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's devastating sweep across the Gulf Coast, discussion this week at The New York Inquirer will focus on the seemingly incessant failures that have surrounded the tragedy. From the Hip Hop community's maddening silence to FEMA's disastrous twelve months of "fraud, corruption, and waste," (according to multiple GAO reports), we're going to revert to that tried and true method of journalism: holding the accountable to task.