Daniel Wolff's Blog - Posts Tagged "katrina"
"How many years does it take them to do something?"
The temptation to keep updating my new book, “The Fight for Home: How (Parts of) New Orleans Came Back,” is overwhelming. But since it’s due to come out August 6th from Bloomsbury, I’ll have to be content to send addendums your way.
Here’s one. Seven years after Katrina, the city is still three-quarters its former size with many former residents unable to return. Homelessness remains epidemic with the number of public housing units below what there were before the floods.
Yet here’s a story about 5100 abandoned building lots, some with buildings, that the city is paying some $86 million to hold onto while they decay:
http://www.nola.com/katrina/index.ssf...
“The Fight for Home” weighs in at 342 pages. It tells the story of how this came to be. I could keep adding to it but ….
The Fight for Home: How (Parts of) New Orleans Came Back
Here’s one. Seven years after Katrina, the city is still three-quarters its former size with many former residents unable to return. Homelessness remains epidemic with the number of public housing units below what there were before the floods.
Yet here’s a story about 5100 abandoned building lots, some with buildings, that the city is paying some $86 million to hold onto while they decay:
http://www.nola.com/katrina/index.ssf...
“The Fight for Home” weighs in at 342 pages. It tells the story of how this came to be. I could keep adding to it but ….
The Fight for Home: How (Parts of) New Orleans Came Back
NOLA UPDATE2: Semmes
In “I’m Carolyn Parker,” the documentary film directed by Jonathan Demme and produced by Jonathan and myself among others, the Semmes school is a hulking presence. Standing in ruins on a block in Holy Cross, it’s pointed out as a landmark, its roof put on by Carolyn’s last true love with the help of their daughter, Kyrah.
In my about-to-be-published book, “The Fight for Home,” Semmes school is a regular, haunting presence. Named after a segregationist, Civil War-era lawyer, Semmes casts a dark shadow. Over five years, while neighbors struggle to rebuild their nearby homes – some successfully moving in, others forced to sell and raze their homes – Semmes stands there rotting: its windows broken, its interior half-gutted, its playground overgrown.
This week – too late to be included in ether the movie or the book – we begin to understand why this particular blighted property has stayed blighted.
• Semmes school is owned by a not-for-profit called the Ninth Ward Housing Development Corporation (Ninth Ward)
• Ninth Ward is controlled by Jon Johnson, a New Orleans City Councilman.
• After Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) offered disaster relief funds for private non-profits, and in 2006 Ninth Ward received about $140,000 for gutting and removing debris from the school.
• According to the United States of American v. Jon Johnson, filed in a US District Court this July, 2012, Johnson created “false and fabricated invoices,” and the FEMA money went, instead, to pay for his 2007 campaign for the Louisiana Senate.
• Immediately after the indictment, Johnson abruptly resigned from the City Council and pled guilty to charges.
Meanwhile, Carolyn Parker and her neighbors live next to a three-story abandoned school in a neighborhood where such buildings are regularly used by drug users and thieves. In the fall of 2010, a man sprung out of a nearby abandoned building and raped a 16-year old schoolgirl. A block in the other direction, a woman was found dead in her home under mysterious circumstances.
It’s been a long, excruciating recovery for neighborhoods like Holy Cross. Seven years after the floods, blocks are still a patchwork of occupied and abandoned homes. That’s partly due to a governmental response so slow that it borders on the criminally negligent. But beyond the institutional neglect, Semmes school offers an example of a more personal kind of corruption.
As Carolyn and Patsy and Mark put in years of work trying to resurrect their block, the politician they elected to represent their interests is accused of using public money not to improve the neighborhood, but for his personal gain.
Next time you’re asked why the recovery of New Orleans has taken so long, you might start here.
“I’m Carolyn Parker” will be screened in exclusive theatres over the coming month and broadcast on PBS TV’s POV series in September. http://imcarolynparker.com/
“The Fight for Home” will be published August 6th, 2012. http://www.amazon.com/The-Fight-Home-...
In my about-to-be-published book, “The Fight for Home,” Semmes school is a regular, haunting presence. Named after a segregationist, Civil War-era lawyer, Semmes casts a dark shadow. Over five years, while neighbors struggle to rebuild their nearby homes – some successfully moving in, others forced to sell and raze their homes – Semmes stands there rotting: its windows broken, its interior half-gutted, its playground overgrown.
This week – too late to be included in ether the movie or the book – we begin to understand why this particular blighted property has stayed blighted.
• Semmes school is owned by a not-for-profit called the Ninth Ward Housing Development Corporation (Ninth Ward)
• Ninth Ward is controlled by Jon Johnson, a New Orleans City Councilman.
• After Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) offered disaster relief funds for private non-profits, and in 2006 Ninth Ward received about $140,000 for gutting and removing debris from the school.
• According to the United States of American v. Jon Johnson, filed in a US District Court this July, 2012, Johnson created “false and fabricated invoices,” and the FEMA money went, instead, to pay for his 2007 campaign for the Louisiana Senate.
• Immediately after the indictment, Johnson abruptly resigned from the City Council and pled guilty to charges.
Meanwhile, Carolyn Parker and her neighbors live next to a three-story abandoned school in a neighborhood where such buildings are regularly used by drug users and thieves. In the fall of 2010, a man sprung out of a nearby abandoned building and raped a 16-year old schoolgirl. A block in the other direction, a woman was found dead in her home under mysterious circumstances.
It’s been a long, excruciating recovery for neighborhoods like Holy Cross. Seven years after the floods, blocks are still a patchwork of occupied and abandoned homes. That’s partly due to a governmental response so slow that it borders on the criminally negligent. But beyond the institutional neglect, Semmes school offers an example of a more personal kind of corruption.
As Carolyn and Patsy and Mark put in years of work trying to resurrect their block, the politician they elected to represent their interests is accused of using public money not to improve the neighborhood, but for his personal gain.
Next time you’re asked why the recovery of New Orleans has taken so long, you might start here.
“I’m Carolyn Parker” will be screened in exclusive theatres over the coming month and broadcast on PBS TV’s POV series in September. http://imcarolynparker.com/
“The Fight for Home” will be published August 6th, 2012. http://www.amazon.com/The-Fight-Home-...
Fight for Home paperback
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Publication date: August 13, 2013
CONTACT: Carrie Majer
Senior Publicist
(212) 419-5361
carrie.majer@bloomsbury.com
AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK
THE FIGHT FOR HOME
HOW (PARTS OF) NEW ORLEANS CAME BACK
DANIEL WOLFF
“Wolff covers the facts, the politics, the need-to-know information and context of the catastrophe…But this book's essential charm -- and there's plenty of it -- lies in the voices, the strong characters that Wolff translates incandescently onto the page.” —New Orleans Times-Picayune
“[A] moving narrative…achingly poignant. Wolff provides a powerful message about human will.”
—Chicago Tribune
"THE FIGHT FOR HOME tenaciously and colorfully, like the survivors themselves, exposes the initial
trauma and despair, and the subsequent anger, frustration, joy and exaltation of their plight. This is a historic document.” —Christian Science Monitor
“In THE FIGHT FOR HOME, writer/filmmaker Daniel Wolff sets aside national politics and Red Team/Blue Team narratives. Instead he focuses on a handful of New Orleans–area residents and outside volunteers, using their stories to tell the saga of rebuilding the city one house, block, and neighborhood at a time. The result is one of the finest histories of Hurricane Katrina to date, and one of only a few to relegate state and national politics to their appropriate role on the sidelines.” —Reason Magazine
After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans became ground zero for the reinvention of the American city, with urban planners, movie stars, anarchists, and politicians all advancing their competing visions of recovery. In this wash of reform, residents and volunteers from across the country struggled to build the foundations for a new New Orleans.
For over five years, author Daniel Wolff has documented an amazing cross-section of the city in upheaval: a born-again preacher with a ministry of ex-addicts; a former Black Panther organizing for a new cause; a single mother, “broke as a joke” in a FEMA trailer. Told mostly through their eyes, THE FIGHT FOR HOME: How (Parts of) New Orleans Came Back (Bloomsbury / pub: August 13, 2013 / $18 paperback / 344 pages) chronicles their battle to survive not just the floods, but the corruption that continues and the base-level emergency of poverty and neglect. >From ruin to limbo to triumphant return, Wolff offers an intimate look at the lives of everyday American heroes. As they play out against the ruined local landscape and an emerging national recession, The Fight for Home becomes a story of resilience and hope.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Wolff is the author of How Lincoln Learned to Read, a Chicago Tribune Editor’s Choice pick; 4th of July, Asbury Park, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice pick; You Send Me: The Life and Times of Sam Cooke, a national bestseller; and two volumes of poetry, among other books. His writing has appeared in publications ranging from Vogue to Wooden Boat to Education Weekly. He is the co-producer, with Jonathan Demme, of several documentary film projects on New Orleans.
THE FIGHT FOR HOME: How (Parts Of) New Orleans Came Back
Daniel Wolff
Bloomsbury
ISBN: 9781608197514
Pub date: August 13, 2013
$18 paperback
344 pagesThe Fight for Home: How (Parts of) New Orleans Came BackDaniel Wolff
Publication date: August 13, 2013
CONTACT: Carrie Majer
Senior Publicist
(212) 419-5361
carrie.majer@bloomsbury.com
AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK
THE FIGHT FOR HOME
HOW (PARTS OF) NEW ORLEANS CAME BACK
DANIEL WOLFF
“Wolff covers the facts, the politics, the need-to-know information and context of the catastrophe…But this book's essential charm -- and there's plenty of it -- lies in the voices, the strong characters that Wolff translates incandescently onto the page.” —New Orleans Times-Picayune
“[A] moving narrative…achingly poignant. Wolff provides a powerful message about human will.”
—Chicago Tribune
"THE FIGHT FOR HOME tenaciously and colorfully, like the survivors themselves, exposes the initial
trauma and despair, and the subsequent anger, frustration, joy and exaltation of their plight. This is a historic document.” —Christian Science Monitor
“In THE FIGHT FOR HOME, writer/filmmaker Daniel Wolff sets aside national politics and Red Team/Blue Team narratives. Instead he focuses on a handful of New Orleans–area residents and outside volunteers, using their stories to tell the saga of rebuilding the city one house, block, and neighborhood at a time. The result is one of the finest histories of Hurricane Katrina to date, and one of only a few to relegate state and national politics to their appropriate role on the sidelines.” —Reason Magazine
After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans became ground zero for the reinvention of the American city, with urban planners, movie stars, anarchists, and politicians all advancing their competing visions of recovery. In this wash of reform, residents and volunteers from across the country struggled to build the foundations for a new New Orleans.
For over five years, author Daniel Wolff has documented an amazing cross-section of the city in upheaval: a born-again preacher with a ministry of ex-addicts; a former Black Panther organizing for a new cause; a single mother, “broke as a joke” in a FEMA trailer. Told mostly through their eyes, THE FIGHT FOR HOME: How (Parts of) New Orleans Came Back (Bloomsbury / pub: August 13, 2013 / $18 paperback / 344 pages) chronicles their battle to survive not just the floods, but the corruption that continues and the base-level emergency of poverty and neglect. >From ruin to limbo to triumphant return, Wolff offers an intimate look at the lives of everyday American heroes. As they play out against the ruined local landscape and an emerging national recession, The Fight for Home becomes a story of resilience and hope.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Wolff is the author of How Lincoln Learned to Read, a Chicago Tribune Editor’s Choice pick; 4th of July, Asbury Park, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice pick; You Send Me: The Life and Times of Sam Cooke, a national bestseller; and two volumes of poetry, among other books. His writing has appeared in publications ranging from Vogue to Wooden Boat to Education Weekly. He is the co-producer, with Jonathan Demme, of several documentary film projects on New Orleans.
THE FIGHT FOR HOME: How (Parts Of) New Orleans Came Back
Daniel Wolff
Bloomsbury
ISBN: 9781608197514
Pub date: August 13, 2013
$18 paperback
344 pagesThe Fight for Home: How (Parts of) New Orleans Came BackDaniel Wolff
