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booktv, 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors, television for serious readers. for complete television schedule visit booktv.org. now we kick off the weekend with gary rivlin who reports on the aftermath of hurricane katrina and the current state of new orleans and other areas hit by the storm. >> thank you for joining us this evening. it is an honor to have gary rivlin with us to discuss his book "katrina: after the flood". for all of us who lived through katrina and the aftermath is important we think about what really happened in the days and years following hurricane katrina. we all have our views of it. great to have someone like gary

do researches and looks into what is going on during the storm. without further ado, gary rivlin, thank you for being here. [applause] >> i want to start by thanking maple street books for having c-span, for coming, we spent three years, and talking about it. in a way, i have been working on this for ten years, office of the new york times, i was on staff covering google going public, facebook, firing of carly fiorina. my phone rings after we are seeing the images, the rest of the country seeing images of the

tech ahead. do you mind going to new orleans. i was on a plane within a day or two. and suffering to be part of it. and a breakfast on the first few days. how and why did the levees fail. how did the most powerful country on earth fail so miserably to rescue tens of thousands who were trapped here for five days, 6 days, 7 days, and it was a grisly task of counting the dead. all of that is important to essential journalism but my fascination for whatever reason

was what you going to do now? the water is going to receive. the national guard came and took control of the city but what next? 80% of the city was covered in water, 100,000 homes in new orleans were flooded, 20,000 businesses, schools were flooded, the utilities, the electric system practically destroyed and had to be rebuilt from scratch. i never thought about this, there are roughly 250 billion gallons of water on the streets of new york, of new orleans and the thing about water is it is really heavy so it broke the streets, broke the sewer pipes, broken gas pipes underneath. you can't just start turning on the gas, there are broken pipes everywhere. you had most of the city's bus is destroyed, 24 streetcars were flooded, $1 million a piece.

half the fire equipment, fire engines, police vehicles, police headquarters was flooded, criminal courts were flooded. the evidence rooms were flooded, it was necessary, wasn't working 911. virtually every business closed. for the new york times for tweet months doing a story at a six months point at the development portrait, the revolving door was blocked by would. you have to use a side entrance to get to the economic development, so symbolic six months later how winded the city was in the economic development director, 22,000 still closed.

they didn't even have the ability to send property-tax bills to ask, the most extraordinary moment in urban history after katrina, called the worst urban disaster in modern u.s. history. we had to go back to 1906, the earthquake in san francisco, galveston in 1900 to find a city damaged this badly, the largest diaspora, forget the dust bowl, 2 million people to evacuate unparalleled in modern times in this country so fascinating, the cultural jewels, extraordinary city, what was going to happen. u.s. forces in washington d.c.

republican president, republican controlled senate, republican controlled house, people publicly saying i don't think there's money to rebuild that place, you had dennis has stirred, then speaker of the house saying it should be bulldozed. how is the city going to recover? what will it take? my focus was on the recovery, most of my book, i do open the book with the blockade in the vernacular, mississippi river bridge, i call it the great neck bridge. don't know if anyone is bothered by that but shorthand, as much as my fascination was with the rebuilding i was preoccupied by what happened on the bridge. we have a story we tell

ourselves that is often true, after a crisis will come together, black, white, rich, poor, we are in this crisis together, beautiful notion and often true but then there is the grander bridge. if it was up to me it would be synonymous with howard beach, ferguson, missouri, west baltimore, freddie gray died. one of those incidents the shows that race is just underneath the surface, whatever you think of what happens race is right there in the middle of that story, a few things before i read, you all understand but perhaps others don't, the carson city connection, with the escape routes for a lot of people from the center of town the way from

flooded new orleans to the drop was going across the mississippi that was shot down by the police department, city of 18,000 and the sheriff had no right to do that. state run bridge, the governor could shut down the bridge, secretary of transportation could shut down the bridge, they had no right to do what they did. when the governor found out they had shut down the bridge she was furious but so much chaos going there, failure of communication, took a couple days before she learned what was going on. it didn't have to be. i won't read this section but piece of what i write about is wednesday evening a police sergeant and two other officers, this is extraordinary, coming over the bridge, first exit, gestation two police officers there while he was working,

whenever communication equipment he had to get buses and make sure everyone is orderly and a 12 hour, 14 our period they got 1500 people out of town but for some reason that was pretty much the end of it. the next morning the police, the sheriff in jefferson parish and the bridge police decided to close it down. one last piece adding to the chaos and craziness of this, the bridge is blocked but the mayor who is holed up in the hotel with his staff has no idea, his communications director on her blackberry tap out we are telling people cross over the carson city connection, go to the west bank because it is dry, the city is sending people over the bridge and they are being blockaded, so the scene is a group of 300 transit workers,

workers and their families, headquarters and a part of the story that never flooded but after katrina it did and there is water everywhere. tuesday morning low on water, low on food, generator flooded, they broke into two groups, anyone who wanted to walk onto the elevator and make over the bridge, they went one way and those who were scared of that, capable of a six mile walk, they will stay hunkered down and towboats come to rescue them. a little past noon a six foot man, two thirds of their group, 200 people choose to walk rather than remain, children were poised on air mattresses rather than everyone standing under 5 feet, 5 inches tall. the stock in of to walk sloshed

through the oily water guiding each other on makeshift rafts, sharon paul, a 50-year-old dispatcher was a diabetic who had gone 24 hours without incident. paul was a strong swimmer, help pregnant women help herself onto an air mattress with toddlers. and tied a rope around her waist, a and then, she said as they reached the elevated highway but in need to walk four five miles. police officer walked to the front of the line. a police lieutenant and several other officers retreated to the back of the group to wrangle in east race. people pass this superdome like a giant space ship next to the highway. some of their contingent had been at the dome as recently as sunday where orderly lines were weighted to be patted down, checked for weapons before being admitted to the shelter of last resort. thick crowds of people milled everywhere where the national guardsmen, pieces of the

superdome's roof peeled off, the giant hyatt regency next door with the mayor and taught people was worse, every window in the northern face was shattered. in classified five ten but no other contingent was as large as theirs and they seemed to walk for the same purpose. temperature was in the 90s in a suity humid day. a watery new orleans, perfect vantage point for a drowned out home. they took over all but the strongest among them but kept walking. the bridge that had led to out years, new orleans neighborhood on the mississippi, only later did they appreciate the suburb, the first town they reach across the carson city connection. one of the was in a wheelchair with grandmothers, toddlers and several police officers, none were thinking about what it meant to go into a predominantly white community. malcolm butler and his wife with

the first to notice the blockade. malcolm butler started playing tricks on him but was set to retire after 33 years on the job on august 31st next day, the home in new orleans had almost certainly flooded and that was the horrors of the interstate. but there walked greasy water to his aunt, his nose and chin pointed forward, nose and chin pointed upward, they had been on the interstate less than an hour, clothes were dried out as the stink of the water remained, and when she asked if he was seeing what she was a pair of police officers brandishing weapons blocking passage, standing with automobiles blocking the bridge with shotguns and m-16s, some could go no further. wilfred eddington, police officer assigned to walk back as they head for the west bank,

around one thousand yards on the bridge when he saw two police cars parked nose to nose forming a wedge to block their passage leads eventually heard the yelling go back, get off the bridge. they are members of the small force policeing the bridge. a dark t-shirt stand with the word police in large letters, wearing a holstered gun on his belt, after this to slow down as he approached his counterparts, the smaller the two bridge cops a young black women didn't seem to care what it said on the shirt, the closer he got, the latter she seemed to screen. she was out of control, she was i rate, got to bring it down a few notches, he said, you are at around 10. we need to bring it to three. two decades on the job counseling and experienced officer, she remained belligerent. rogan stevens, the police lt. introduced himself to a group of

city workers on duty the time the storm had gone trapped by the flooding, only trying to reach their facility, you better get your rank. these are not permitted on the bridge at any time. as it were any other tuesday. she was hollering i've lost my house, i lost everything but she was also adamant you not going anywhere. in back of the line sharon paul, the diabetic, and she looked at her friends and said the we know we have water in new orleans? i am here in new orleans which feels different isn't talking about this book in other places at the risk of a bad and you're

hearing too much, deluged with the coverage of matt lowry is that i would argue what has been going on is it is a replay of the first month, most of the attention is being paid to those first horrific days, sad stories, important stories to share and joy, heartbreaking stories, i think a really interesting story, a more important story for new orleans and maybe the rest of the country is more what happened afterwards and there is up moment for a journalist, historian, anyone studying, things were crazy, crazy. i am sure some of you had people speaking openly about using the storm to make new orleans a less

for city, we are going to change the city demographically, 68% black city at the time, change it politically, we the uptown whales are weaving, governor ray nagin called, the people who really were helping to run new orleans had a plan and it meant they were going to take advantage of this moment in new orleans history. i call this a blue sky intro. there is the sense that we lost everything but maybe we could remake the city. a lot of us were really positive, imagine remaking everything from the schools to public housing, to shrink the footprint debate by 20%, 40%

until the entire neighborhood, i don't know if we have resources to rebuild. you have a mayor cracking up before everyone's eyes, the husband, the communications director, announcing that he is going to run against his white's boss, you have a mayor and governor who are not talking to each other in the middle of this crisis, the bush presidency for all intents and purposes ended with katrina. his popularity plummeted in the fall of 2005 and never recovered from that. you have a mayor's race, bad timing, six months after katrina a scheduled mayor's rays, they delayed a couple months but in the middle of this chaos suddenly politics is playing at central role, a circus of an election with more than 20 candidates. the debate was on ms nbc, a city

was electing a mayor, broadcast the debate nationally, and every day heroics, storage and water boarding, i don't assume there spoken positively very often, but they were amazing after katrina. fema comes in, the corps of engineers tells the city it is going to take at least 80 days to dry out the city. sewage and water did it in 11 days. it was extraordinary and all of these everyday heroes with from lake view, hasn't been involved in politics but suddenly her community is destroyed, what is she going to do and she steps up and i maintain free katrina, not recognize to she is, people just

made over, matt mclinden, you are the black kind, the same thing, apolitical guy never really let, got involved, don't want to get involved. the mardi gras way of life, have a good time, let everyone be, don't take too seriously, can't change things anyway, a corrupter city so extraordinary time when people were really stepped up and at the same time people shrunk, ray nagin is the obvious example, he had one great moment. at tv camera here, the thursday after the flood, the katrina hit monday morning, almost immediately the city flooded. many people think it wasn't

until tuesday but within an hour or two, pouring into the city, monday, tuesday, wednesday, no buses, no help, 25,000 people at the superdome, 25,000 people at the convention center, thousands more on the highways, any patch of high ground, that is when he got on the radio and said to the president of the united states on the radio, get your bleep down here right now and air force one, the buses started showing up at the superdome. some of what i wanted to do is corrective of sorts. impressions last that are not accurate, the best confidence, i thought i knew it the katrina story, folks out of new orleans,

president bush, that first day, the failures of the president and his white house were near criminal. a botched the recovery, moved slowly, the head of homeland security thursday on npr saying i don't think there are people in conventions and is so the average person at home watching cable knows more than the man in charge. they start showing up tuesday. by the way it was never meant to be a refuge of last resort, had to send the police to break their way in. there were no provisions, 20,000 people but with that said, i give the president pretty good marks on the recovery. he is fighting his republican allies, gave a lot more money than his republican allies wanted to do. the city could say he had a big political problem on his hands

and had no choice, let's give him credit that you cannot blame the sluggish, i think he did a pretty good job on the recovery. kathleen blanko in the days leading up to katrina in those first days was the only one who took this seriously, she declared an emergency before governor haley barbour, the governor of mississippi, two days before governor ray nagin, the president of the united states, did an admirable job, looking for a poll numbers, it just creamed her, she was seen as somebody who was not up to the task so i think she became to my mind, as anybody could in terrible circumstances, with that said, i put the filled

recovery with the slow recovery at her feet. beautiful program on paper, largest housing recovery program, $10 billion, it was created to make a middle-class, working class hole. and what it would take to show up, she based it on the appraised value of someone's home and the cost of rebuilding. it is valued, sell less than home and a white community, the high ground was pretty much taken by the time black ownership as available to most african-americans so who was and always like parts of the city? the majority were african-americans and to do the numbers in the seventh word,

black working-class neighborhood, $60 a square foot. $100 a square foot to rebuild your home, you get a $1,000 check for $180,000 to rebuild, to go to a more prosperous community, that same home might be valued at 2,000 square foot home, they would have enough money because the formula was based on appraised value, so many african-americans were left short, amazing statistic that shocked me, two thirds of houses ruined by the flooding sold for under $120,000. it would cost more than that to rebuild. i want to take, a little scared of bringing this one up, the hole shrink the footprint green dot debate. i was there.

it is pretty much misunderstood. those who don't know, neighborhoods thought they getting from the city commission that governor ray nagin put forward. those who came in november, they in fact said there are neighborhoods in new orleans that a too low lying that should not be rebuilt, they didn't name neighborhoods but they threw this matter up like that of new orleans and there was an elevation mack. think of it as a blood, link the bright red, chilly bright red, new orleans east bright red. don't tell you what neighborhoods they can't rebuild but you look good and mad and know exactly what they were saying. the truth is the man who presented the plan never said that. he understood he is a white man in the majority black city, how

does he declared these black neighborhoods you are not coming back, all the neighborhoods that were all in red not coming back, one study from a brown sociologists said 80% of african-americans in new orleans would be in a community, he had this convoluted plan, his heart was in the right place but was so impractical, impractical in a place like new orleans where people are not planning, impractical for human beings anywhere that his idea was he is going to bomb every community with the facts. they will see the same elevation maps, he will use $8 million of government money to arm them with planners, geographers and other experts who will help from make up their mind, which parts of my community could come back and which are too low lying, did phenomenal work, won two gillick

surprises and they deserved it. this is not one of their finest moments that they take a single map, this is the famous cover many of you have seen, four months after katrina. they put it on the cover and it's his four months to decide and it is the map of the city of new orleans and big green dots over many neighborhoods, and other four five neighborhoods, big got so they took this one map from the study, from larry porche and used that and what it was, planters were saying two great things in new orleans, a city park and audubon park, there is a paucity of parks in other parts of the city. this is a real opportunity to turn some parts it would be park land, they don't want to say

where specifically, circles around the communities, maybe they'd turn parts of it into green space, more park land, take some of the dotted lines with dots on top, really scared people here. i worked for the new york times, made certain assumptions about my politics, a conservative republican, personal friend of george bush's call the cellphone number, generous contributor to the republican party particularly conservative, very conservative politically. i-man in two wee met in two weh

katrina and i got it -- my cellphone rings the morning of the story appears, really early and trustee when i tell you when you are a journalist and your cellphone rings is usually not good news. how are you doing? i am bracing for what did i get wrong? why is he mad at me? the two of us were saying a guy from the new york times, anything you want you got. and so he gave me all this access as he is trying to make up his mind, it is early january, a group of people, committee of 20 people he

created to tried to help him come up with a plan. the meeting in his office, a borgias office, 16, seventeenth century religious art, you bit over and that cost me a million dollars, that kind of thing. i am sitting there and they have their plan but someone says 5:00, we are not going to forbid people but will give them a city permit? at that point everyone through a their hands and joy said i have dinner plans, need to see my wife. okay, how do you do that? that was a big issue, the most controversial thing they did. mayor ray nagin didn't take that piece, the next day, sunday he wants me to meet his wife and me, his wife and his pasture in

his car, driving to his favorite italian restaurant, 3 minute drive to the restaurant and it was interesting about the permit. born in new york, visit san francisco. when i arrived in new orleans, i had a tourist's knowledge of new orleans. it was so cool. never heard of the ninth word, that next day, your city is in trouble. read about my interactions with

joy, looking forward to questions from a new orleans audience but i want to read one last passage. to set it up, a complicated thing. new orleans is two thirds black of katrina and you had a very wealthy community, his home was flooded, lake view, professional class, well-off white community, every home was destroyed. it really wasn't an equal opportunity storm in the sense that if you were of black homeowner you were more and three times more likely to lose your home than if you were a white homeowner. i think that was an important fact that somehow it all the craziness, it hasn't been an equal opportunity recovery. i mentioned there were forces, the shadow government is doing what they can to thwart low

income people largely black from coming back, public housing, the four big housing projects here, there was some water damage that many in the building had no water damage but they were surrounded by fencing, they bring never permitted to come back. away of thwarting low income workers, the working poor, the kitchen workers at the hotel, house chamber, chambermaids at the hotel and there was never really a plan for bringing people back. one thing about fema, they give you a 1-way ticket, put you in that hotel, fema camp, there was never a plan to bring people back, 54% of new orleans where renters at the time of katrina. all of the planning, almost all of the money went to help homeowners but there was never much of any help for the renter.

i mentioned the disparity of homes, that is just me talking, five years after katrina a federal judge ruled it was racially discriminatory but at that time it was only 150 million or so, $10 billion left and a few hundred extra million dollars, mary landrieu deserves credit for that. it is too late, the die was cast and there is a disparity in their recovery, black community, african-american community suffering. one last piece can take questions, the ceo and president of liberty bank at the time of katrina, they've devastated. customer base in the eastern half of the city that is totally covered in water and the other half of the city, not the entire half of the city, branches were

flooded or and/or looted, headquarters was ruined, his records, computers, 80% of his customer base lost their homes, collateral, holmes that used against the home loans he made. his home was destroyed. 11 days after katrina, i counted. i got to get with him 20 times over the last ten years. i would use him to talk about a single business trying to rebuild, a significant figure in new orleans, that gave me a periscope into the planning process of what was going on in the center of town and city hall and his personal story, i had this experience, a hard experience being with several people as they saw their home for the first time after it had flooded. with all the mcdonald's, i told the story of someone seeing

their flooded homes through him. if there is a protagonist, when main character in the book is him. i want to read a passage from 2010, five years after katrina. all the mcdonald's grim survey began in a large board room down the hall from his office. five years after katrina and the sixth floor of his bank headquarters the flood seemed as if it had happened 12 months earlier. that east facing windows looked on a stretched of emptiness that when once been a giant mall. where once there had been forced now there was just asphalt. read boulevard, the next exit up the highway loomed in the middle of the district. mcdonald pointed out at a building the same height as his. the first two letters were missing, focus hospital. the hospice next door was boarded up as was the black office filled with doctors and

other professionals. the windows on the north side of the glass box at the him decenter opened a big picture. a pair of large empty parcels on the other side of the i can, the former site of a wal-mart and sam's's were giant rooms in the landscape. the three story office building was shattered as was the shatter green glass on the other side of that. she pointed out another office building, empty, empty, empty. before katrina and dozen office buildings were in that part of the city. i am the only one open on the east yet he had plenty of vacant seats. five years after katrina, half empty. he continued his tour behind the wheel of a black lexus sedans. near his office was a strip mall, all the occupied, all three now vacant. and abandon nursing home and burke rehab center recovered in graffiti. the next interstate, more of the

same. stretches of boarded up strip mall and destroyed businesses. a days inn had reopened along the highway and comfort suites. he pointed out other motels that had cut their prices and reopened as flophouses for transients. separate car dealerships and gas stations and a few places to grab food but not much else. we had no jobs out here, he said, no commercial business to speak of. to dip into a subdivision, lake forest, the old neighborhood, was buried the most. the lake benefited from an active neighborhood group. they were littered with ruined homes on every street. less fortunate communities were not even one third back. the experts had warned us, the jackal lantern affect. prior to katrina at, there four catholic churches. five years later only one had reopened. eating in new orleans met fast

food, food truck, tempura repurchase in a few open kick outs of mcdonald went west to the center of town. as lunch approach he took a detour through the seventh ward where he had grown up, focusing a lot of post katrina efforts. the seventh word was darker than new orleans east with more shuddered businesses and more wrecked homes sporting natural guard -- national guard. he passed into gingerly, showed off the building he had bought under a government program, created investments turning into a professional building. into the save program, at least there is life back here. i want to welcome you all to ask questions. if you want to walk to the mic

if you wouldn't mind. >> you mentioned the key players, governor bobby jindal, congressional district 1, he was a congressman on the lakefront area being from lake view, we all felt this conspicuous absence, first congressional district, 90,000 square miles of area affected, did you cross his

path, any interaction with the congressman? >> governor bobby jindal essentially running for president. he lost for governor in 2003, in 2007, he beat him in 2003, won by 50,000 votes. in the 2007 election, in that election in 2003 giving the field to governor bobby jindal. the only way i saw governor bobby jindal then was the louisiana congressional delegation, focusing one voice.

governor bobby jindal, very conservative, got behind any plan that would help bring more money to new orleans, i don't know his appearance, they were very resentful about. ray nagin, on a saturday night before katrina had governor ray nagin was out for a leisurely dinner with his wife and daughter in for a few. you have kathleen blanko living in the emergency operation center in baton rouge. governor ray nagin spent the afternoon five hours on a movie set because he had big part as believe it or not a corrupt

mayor for those who don't know. he is now in a federal penitentiary in serving a ten year sentence for misconduct while in office. he spent five hours on the movie studio. you have blanko and the this knowing there's a terrific category 4 at that point to category 5, in lake view his phone rings, the head of the national hurricane center, head of the hurricane center doesn't call politicians but he wanted to scare them mayor of new orleans, you have got to do something. in lake view. he is up in the chopper a couple days after katrina, goes to seventeenth street, now a couple hundred feet on the canal wall fell which flooded lakeview and other parts of the city so he understood lakeview. barely showed up.

he made one appearance and it was conspicuous that he wasn't there. the extraordinary thing about new orleans after katrina when talking about lake view, the lower ninth word, doesn't make a difference, is the same story. people didn't wait. in lakeview they went to a church and started meeting. i don't know where government is, of i don't know where the mayor is, don't know where anybody is but what can we do to take steps to rebuild? velorum ninth word they went to this change is community center, rusted chairs, same thing, they put up a map of the lower ninth word. put a post it up if you are going to come back. there is the sense that something is going on. people didn't wake, waiting on fee not match, had to wait for the elevation maps. it took a year for fema ought to come up with these maps.

do i have to lift my house three fuhrer ten feet? a huge cost difference. is there going to be a school in my area? is my neighbor going to come back? everything depended on everything else and a lot of people that couldn't deal, there were other people who got in and started doing that despite it all. >> the book -- >> chapter 20. >> did you read it yet? i read all the parts i m in. you don't want to admit that. first of all, of all the books, very hard to read about katrina because we lived and breathed it

every day. i don't read it because i can't. i started reading the book, i promised him i would, i am two thirds will end i have to say thank you for your incredible factual research, effectively so right on, so well balanced. he does show the good, the bad, the ugly, everything in it. it has an incredible balance. to me i had to come tonight because i have been so troubled this week with so many reporters and interviews and the same questions keep coming up. all they talk about is what failed, where the in justices were, at one neighborhood, one class of people end i am so troubled. my question, what is your take

on this week? tons of parties and things like that. i personally witnessed in justice, we ran a recovery center, a 50,000 residents came through my center and i lived within justices across the board. where there was water there was injustice. water didn't discriminate, neither did injustice. i keep hearing the same in justices. one targeted area. i think it is wrong and i would like to know what your take is on that. >> the new orleans recovery story is a complicated one. i have a real lead vantage. i could tell if in all its complication in book form. i spent ten years looking at this as opposed to reporters

parachuting in for a few days a week, television, there are exceptions but looking for the simple narrative and the simple narrative is wealthy whites and for blacks and the lower ninth word is the stand in for the low income african-american community, represents 3% of the population, the community is devastated, the lower ninth word is very important but it is just one story but there was this fixation. i almost took it as a challenge. i talk about the lower ninth word but what about the black middle-class, the black professional class, 96,000 people, one fifth the population, the pre katrina population, black professional class community and that is the shame of it all. it was cast ten years ago as a simple story and the media is

finishing the narrative, and all so this is something that requires nuance. i am biased unless i can print the isn't tv, radio is pretty good at nuanced too but there are two story is here, one is it is extraordinary, i will i use this with anyone, if you were here in the first month after katrina i was here for eight months i didn't know if entire neighborhoods were going to come back. it was possible that this was going to turn into a disneyland version of itself and there would be the quarter, and the uptown royals, and the garden district, the black middle class, wasn't clear about the white middle class and the fact that you are here and the city

is doing well and it is thriving. i love the term, the young urban recovery professional. they came in the first months, fell in love with new orleans and behind them came people, this was a cool place to live relative to brooklyn or san francisco, cheaper to live and you have the food, music, culture, history and you could buy a house for $150,000 earlier on in the recovery. you have all this energy, the beginning of a startup, communities remain at the same time identification is a complicated thing. ground zero for this, it used to be a home would be $100,000 a year, now is $250,000 a year. all these restaurants, culture,

arts, wonderful place to be, but all these people have been priced out, people to six, eight years after the storm had the idea when kids are done with school, they are priced out so there is this tension, what the media is seeing, i am talking about this myself. the eastern half of the city it is a long way, the five year mark, new orleans east doing better than it was back then, but empty office buildings, abandoned strip malls, new orleans east even though it is a black prosperous community on par with a lot of scattered housing, voucher housing, it is 80% back and a lakeview i would say is better than it was, you

get a check to remake your mouth, the edge of downtown, it is beautiful, amazing, money washing through here, the seventh word, the ninth word, black working class, 60% that post katrina, they were left short, historic black middle class community, the first of the development in louisiana, hand mixed race, 3-quarters, african-american, mix of races there.

and the black neighbor, and three borders back. there is a shock, it is shocking to drive and the blocks without seeing a house, streets full of houses, overblown bleeds, it should be torn down, but you have to go to this one small piece, black middle-class, and the wealthiest communities in this city, used to have a golf course, doesn't have a golf course anymore, two quarters occupied, haven't checked in the last year but something like that. the race element is because there really is a lot of pain in the eastern half of the city. >> thank you for recognizing that. the 70% minority, i feel the

resentment that they feel. what about us? new orleans east, what about us? were very little health and injustice. >> our work in a charter school. to buy water. and education changes. >> this one is asking about school reform.

before katrina at new orleans had legendary problems, crime, corruption, don't know if you can call it the worst school system in the country but really bad school system, blue sky syndrome, that you can remake it. i will confess there is one issue, i feel i want to go straight down the middle, school reform, so complicated because anything could change the system is terrific, it could cause of much confusion. rolling stone ran about the katrina case, those who were 8, 12, 14 at the time of katrina and they saw the government didn't care, largely african-american group they talk with and what impact it had on them at the convention center, walking through the water and they all talk about the schools and the thing about school reform, the cliche you have to

break some eggs to make the omelet, those first years were so traumatic. everything was changing, schools would open, schools would close, they fired on mass every teacher. so many inexperienced teachers who were not prepared to deal with these traumatized kids. i feel sympathy for the teachers. these kids were traumatized at the age of 8, 10, 12 going to experience that causes adults to break down crying. the first four, six, eight years, what people needed, neighborhood school, my kids were going there before katrina, we're back two or three years later, that wasn't the reality. neighborhood schools pretty much all charter schools and kids going to school across the city and other places. this course were finally going in the right direction.

at first until the last two or three years that criticism of the charter schools where they were cherry picking. anyone who was up problem or seemed like they would be a challenge wasn't accepted. a staff i saw couple years back that the greatest number of kids expels in the country were in orleans parish. charter schools want to make sure their numbers are good but that has changed the lot. you have to take care of special needs schools. the thing, the scores really started to change dramatically. we did too much attention to scores. how else to prepare schools. as of a few years ago most whistle felling but no longer. that is the great thing. the thing i wonder about, there is deep resentment in the african-american community, it has been ten years.

the state took over the city's public schools, october, november of 2005. august of 2015 no schools have been returned to local control. there is an elected school board in charge of 10 schools give or take. ..