devastated coastal louisiana, forcing one .5 million residents to evacuate and causing $100 billion in damage, c-span is taking a weeklong look at the new orleans disaster and recovery, and it begins tonight with the atlantic magazine conference we covered today in new orleans. the city mayor, richard landers, said that they have to find ways to get stronger, and katrina showed us we are not as resilient as we need to be and that we have got a lot of work to do. says theymes-picayune have to reflect a one of the worst disasters in u.s. history and what came of it. you will see all of those remarks in about 40 minutes, but first, a town hall on what it means to know new orleans. >> my name is madeleine, and i am a 19-year-old. spring, i graduated from a charter school and will be attending princeton this

fall. [applause] thank you. i was nine years old when katrina hit, and so this first poem recounts my experience evacuating to houston. evacuation i evacuated to texas and a piece of gravel found my eye my mother dug it out with an aluminum gum wrapper a tongue is in apple that never knew the ground the state of louisiana said i was black so i became black showerd my hair in the hisown recluse bit me with body.

i rubbed eucalyptus on my skin and think of yo-yo ma cradling a spider to his face water pressure as fickle as cooking meat my twin in a bowl and i thought of a boat full of bodies and slippery brown and yellow at dusk on the dock a horsefly is a fly that only receives its wings after a mother pound meat to leather but this never happens because i did not realize pork was red meat until my twin ate a tenderloin and i could hear his thoughts matalin, i am tired i am sorry i made you wait i ran into a pool while talking to a friend now i have a sore patch of skin

and there are mere gold berries that make you believe the vinegar is cream soda please, ingest them and then look at me [applause] i wrote this next poem for today, and it is in memory of the night before my family left for the storm. the walls still sweat from noon until three but you bring home tsatsumas they will be perfect in a week and it is tood hot to sleep the floors always look black in this brackish heat because you clothes

said we would see a play know this is how storms are made thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much, matalin. madeleine. 10 years after the storm struck. bennett, i ames president and editor in chief of the atlantic, and it is my privilege to welcome you all, including those of you watching on our live stream at thea

tlantic.com, and i also want to welcome viewers watching on c-span and those on wwno. in 1901, the atlantic published a story about new orleans that declared as new orleans is one of those few cities in our country with a past, so, likewise, it has always been the city of the future, a city of vast possibilities in the plans of france and then of spain, of napoleon, of thomas jefferson, and the united states. 10 years ago, there were many who wondered if hurricane had permanently foreclosed those possibilities and put an end to those ambitions, if the city could ever recapture its former , and actually, i think maddy's poetry,

looking at the hard 10 years to bring new orleans back, and the work that is left to be done. city and its people have been transformed by katrina, and what has not really changed, how is life better here now, and in what ways might it the worst, and what might the future look like for new orleans. what big plans are on the table today? i feel particularly grateful to be here, because 10 years ago, i was on a team of reporters that the new york times sent down here to cover the aftermath of katrina. my own experience here was, of course, superficial, but it still left indent level impressions of the suffering and the frustration and the generosity that came during and after the storm. for the conversations today, we

,rought together artists environmentalists, engineers, community activists, and others. we will again -- begin in a moment with what it means to know this city. it is a legend that the atlantic has returned to from time to time across the decades, and some elements of the portrait we have provided have been quite consistent and might have some resonance today, and in that same story from 1901, the writer cityibed new orleans as a of gaiety and pleasure in spite of her mary and sorrows, and then in 1940 -- in spite of her sorrows, and then in 1940, it is a little weary, but she is still beautiful and quietly conscious of her charm. that particular writer went into substantially more, saying new orleans is a pleasure city, who is dead are buried above ground

and whose politics is carried on underground. was, of course, a long time ago, and i will look forward to having the panel update these descriptions, but first, i have a couple of important program notes. twitter, and it is hard, by the way, to know how twitter would have affected response times if it existed 10 years ago. please feel free to join the ve,versation at atlantic_li and we have built in time for q&a throughout the day, and my colleagues will be circulating in the hall with microphones. i want to thank the underwriters that made this possible. we are very grateful for the rockefeller foundation and the kellogg foundation and jones walker and also our collaborators at the urban institute.

would like to remind you to please silence your cell phones, because if it rings while the next speaker is on stage, that would be a grave sin indeed. she is a very great journalist gwen eiffel of the pbs news hour, and she will introduce her -- gwen ifill of the pbs "newshour," and she will introduce her panelists. ♪

gwen: thank you, everybody, and we hope you are well caffeinated, because we are for this for an conversation to start our day about change and about survival and about knowledge, what it takes to know new orleans. it is going to start our entire conversation for the rest of the day, and i want you to know that we are going to come out. i am going to come out and hang out with you as we get questions for this incredibly intimidating panel. , a writer andlois author. he has been writing and thinking for a long time about race, culture, and social justice, one of the founders also of the southern alliance. next to him, you saw the amazing

at aside from being an amazing poet, one of five national student poets in 2014. she is a rising princeton freshman, and she is heading there next month, and she just best part about it is that there is a break right around mardi gras time. she also graduated from a charter school and was nine years old in 2000, writing poetry on the headboard of her bed, which was eventually ruined and washed away in katrina. i am sorry. i am out of order. the founder and executive director of the american young leaders of new orleans, and environmental activist, interested in building the capacity of youth, but not just vietnamese youth. he is also engaged in linking latino, african-american, and other communities. chris rose, who i skip --

skipped past there, he is the d,"hor of the book "one dea and he worked for the thomas picked you and and is currently a show host of a program called and tracietion," washington who is sitting right here is the president and ceo of the louisiana justice center. she is a civil rights lawyer. storm.cuated during the she returned that december, and she remains focused on social justice, and oliver thomas i think is the last person i have here. oliver thomas is probably familiar to most of you. he is a former city council member and also the wbok radio host, and his focus is on community engagement and city government. we have asked to give some. to the full idea of what it means to know new orleans. for those of us who do not live here who watch the entire --

everything, the tales of survival, it kind of unfolded at arm's length, and it is interesting out to find out what we think we know and what people who have actually been fighting the fight do know, and i went to start with you, lois, because you in many ways crossed a lot ofthe pads -- paths washington -- you can tell where i am from, outside of new orleans, the culture and resilience and bouncing back and survival, but tell us, what do you know about new orleans that we should know? quick years ago it was said ago,r famously -- >> years it was rather famously said, and a big was telling, and if you think of it in terms of the sidewalks, there is the street culture that is so much a part of what makes this different.

you would assume that this is the most important part of this pageantry, when it is the people that make this city more interesting. we talk about our food. the usual explanation is that it comes from france. that is why it is so good. for congo square, it is the food of west africa at least as much as it is the food of france. it is his highfalutin. aboutarsalis talks armstrong coming from what he learned from all of the method books that he studied. in addition to that, what a trumpet should sound like, he dealt with the kind of thing that other less trained musicians were dealing with.

about howem talks sydney was attempting to emulate the sound of opera and all of its bravado. my point is that to understand the city, it helps with the glorious mansions. corner, we get a great sense of this place. inclinedly, if you are to blame all of our differences on france, bear in mind that the haitians were the last great coming here in 1810 after being kicked out of cuba. they continued to pay and repay for the revolutions that made this city possible. our population doubled after the haitian revolution.

so much of our culture and our things, we had the greatest collection of survivors. the city washought safe, it was five times are six times more violent. when people talk about the good old days in the school system, people graduated. we were incarcerating more people per capita than any other place. nine. it is down jordan avenue. lands,really know nor you know 12 all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce cheese, mcdonald's does not use that

anymore. there is a narrative created in this town. it is the truth of how everybody lives. if you are really from new orleans, we have more honor roll than in the jail system per capita than just about any other place in america. there is a struggle about the reality of this very special place. the existence for a lot of folks have been, not what they were, but before katrina -- we had 95,000 people living in public housing in a city less than 500,000 people. we averaged between 300 and 400 murders a year. and no matter how good you did in school, you're probably going to work at the motel. setting you all up one by

one. tracy: what does it mean to know new orleans? means i probably have connections with somebody at every single one of these tables. .y boss is sitting over there that, for me, i don't go any place in this city and feel lonely or alone. i don't care how many murders you have. around belfastnd just like i can walk where most people still know me. i never feel unsafe. i know somebody is going to look at my face and say, you are jody

washington's daughter, aren't you? past 22 years, your jacobs mom. city thates in this go generations deep. i am a dark skinned black woman. there are some folks in my family that have red hair. that is what is important about this city. it is this five that sustains us. lots of people can move from city to city. they do just fine. i've lived lots of places and i do just fine. and when we had katrina and that disruption, when we lost 100,000

black folks. thell be the person on panel talking about racism. just be ready. a significant part of what it is to be normal. you can't replace 100,000 black folks with avatars. folks come up here, it's newho dat and say orleans. i miss that. >> let's talk about sustenance. >> what is wrong with that dog? what was the question? >> how new orleans sustains us. >> i will pick up on what miss washington was saying.

it i know somebody at every table here. it is a hard and broad question to answer. i will thing it -- i will bring it back to very simple tropes. and theld be mardi gras superdome on sundays in the fall. the superdome on sundays in the cosmic socialzing experiment that nobody could replicate if they tried to. it is where all races, genders, economicio-, cultural barriers seem to be stripped away. it is crazy to watch. it is a beautiful thing. i have been reliving the past couple of days.

but that was the extreme of it. i rarely get to go to it. i used to go to games and i got sent there for work. to be in that building on a sunday afternoon, watch the way that everything is stripped away. the barriers, the prejudices. everything is gone. watch how everybody reacts. if we can just keep this going. outside andrry this live like this every day, it's all the same people. it's all of us. we retreat to our barriers and lives.

i have lived in other cities. we don't have everything fixed here. i think we try harder than most places. mardi gras, the same thing. do you go down to the same street corner year after year? it's the same people and they are usually not even from the neighborhood. we just go, we set up where we set up. and this is one of the things i did notice in the phenomenon after katrina that was sort of was, where people showed up in that first mardi gras, realize -- over and

hey. we are those dots. you don't even know those names. but you watch their children grow up. what they ate. it you bought the same things. it you know the things they did. the way they act. simplistic.s means -- tropes, or memes as the kids say. >> let me pick up on that. you made the case that we are more alike than different. others have made the case that there is a lot of difference. whereally the way we view they are coming.

it was affected in a very specific way, environmentally. since, on the 10 years does it change the way you see ?he city nobody knew that vietnamese folks lived in new orleans. knew about the restaurant, the bakery. other than that, i think katrina really lifted our community. when the city was trying to .asically make our community refugee.unity

as a community, we have to resist. we can't move again. we can't be displaced again. not justly galvanized the vietnamese folks, but the white folks, the black folks. we need to stand together and unite and fight. >> displaced became a real unifying theme, in a way. >> we must fight. because of the fight, we won. right? we were able to come together and rebuild the city together. continued to face those .hallenges

.t took us seven or eight years we also have a lot of diversity. it is a very diverse city but we are not as racially accepting. i went to barcelona. when i went there, they really embraced tourism. of could get millions different languages. and i was like, why can't new orleans do this? people so many commenting.

-- coming. 92 million people. we need to embrace the culture. the difference is that we have here. need to let folks know that you do exist. >> when people think about culture, they often think black and white. there is something that struck me. she said they told me i was black, and therefore -- >> i became black. i realized that of actuate in evacuating for katrina and going to the high school where the mascot was the hurricanes was just fabulous. [laughter] i would say that i am a child of new orleans. i am still in that stage in my life.

i think that knowing new orleans, when you're born into it, it's kind of like loving a dog. seeuch as you love it, you it as this unique individual. there is a part of you that deep down, no matter what, as much as you write it, you know you would be happy with any other animal. but then you take your first trip away from new orleans, and i will never forget the first i could really look up when i was walking down the sidewalk. i didn't have to look for cracks or potholes. and it was one of the first times that i couldn't -- we always walked in the middle of the street.

i was walking on the sidewalk for one of the first times. but then you come back. and that love kind of changes. we start to love it like a grandparent where you can't why the cityhend is seldom that -- messed up. so old, so damaged. you kind of don't really imagine losing it has as a child, you don't release you losing a grandparent. but it is still there. and something like katrina happens. and you start to love the city like a parent. and as much as you always a to be -- expect it

around, there is the fear and anxiety. when your parents don't come home and they stay out a little bit later than they said they would. you start to get a little anxious. it's like that. and you can't get past it. >> it's been a while since i worried about my parents but i like the idea that you think we still do. there are people around with microphones. i will start with him. wait a second. we really need you to have a microphone. if you will just wait a second. >> i am inspired by all of you. i wanted to share one of the most inspirational moments of my life. that is when i looked back and

from newe hundreds orleans east. they went down to city hall to get permits for people that wanted to rebuild. how many permits do you want? he said, 600. i think all of you will be participating in katrina since then. wanted to share that moment of inspiration. stand up and tell me who you are. >> my name is stephen kennedy. the common sense question. you talked about the culture inclusion. is, how doy question you talk about those socioeconomic disparities here in the city of new orleans.

walls ideal if >>y could be disclosed? oliver thomas, i want you to take that and then tracy. >> $71 million of investment. the disparity, would it be 10% they matriculated through the charter school system. good schools means just passing tests.

they had the statistics because they went to get jobs and in that 52%, 14% pass the duck -- drug test. the great playwright august wilson, when he writes about two trains, he talks about the duality of life. this is going in another direction. >> i said yesterday when i was talking with a group that we are touting spend a week the regrowth and redevelopment. down, and do that.

route intoke that the communities. in, you go three blocks will see that hopefully, you get a chance to talk to some folks. 50% of black children are still living in poverty. it's bigger than it was during katrina. greek and trina, it was ugly and it is still ugly. the sheriff wants to build more jail space. i get the people's lawyer because they know i'm always going to add to that.

i can get a break. every single week, i get parents calling me because their special week.child -- every what does that mean? , we are talking about this disparity. it is 260 pounds. actually, a little bit more. a good friend of mine, they say you are fine. i had to look at myself in the mirror. facts andk the real

take it step by step, we are going to attack this today. we're not going to have those sodas. we're going to have one problem and resolve it at a time. if we stop lying, we do a little redevelopment of houses. i get these guys that are just on the corner. >> we have a lot of things who want to cover. -- keep the he's questions short, we can move on. >> i will make it short.

the katrina foundation was started right after hurricane katrina. seven booksof the we have. ask people, where were they after katrina? -- you can visit us online. got your plug-in. thank you very much. >> speaking as someone who moved here 10 years ago and immediately fell in love with the city, i moved here to run the second harvest food bank. i would like to ask questions about the paradoxes you have all been describing. how can we have this incredible , and yetresurgence have completely recovered, even

having lost population rates. >> i think our measures of progress are based on how quickly rich people are getting richer. [applause] we need new statistics. >> a nice, brief answer. >> i just wanted to give a shout out to the artist of the city that came back very early along thatthe restaurants believed we would come back. the first time we went to a restaurant, there was a jazz band there. the first time you went to a parade. and with a visual performing

media, film, all of them have been hand in glove with everybody else. there has been involved. at the same time, we don't have the resources we need. i would just like someone to address how we might chase down some more sustained funding. >> politics, acting, same thing. but now i work in that industry. i think you are absolutely correct. the artists and entertainers were intentional after katrina. they had different plays and productions.

i tweeted not too long ago. i went on vacation and had the chance to study a little bit. katrina was more humane than philanthropists, builders, and fema. because a lot of traditional cultural organizations are actually being excluded for what's new and what trendy. nonprofits aren being left out for what trendy. new orleans, there's no other place i want to be. we wanted to promote the festival and not deal with the people that can't afford to go to the festival. that there are entertainers and artist working in the french quarter who can't

afford parking ticket. because they have an affordable place to park anywhere. think tracy is right about, when are we going to be intentional? the greatest city, the greatest culture, the greatest people. we have the most wonderful people in the world. stop -- andgoing to behind that smile is a lot of pain? for anotherime question and i would like to hear from the whole panel. somebody back there behind that light. >> my question is, how do we get black native new orleans to reengage in the political

process when they are not being hired and we are touting on the success. had we get them to believe?

. >> this money to do the rebuilding and then they hired other big company and then other big companies. i think that has generally been our approach to the recovery, the idea that the big people should make all the decisions. in a more microcosmic sense, we have great things that have been done to education. the first thing that happened was the firing of all the teachers in the school system. so, we are attempting to improve the lives of these children by firing their mothers, their sisters, their aunts, their uncles. in order

to help these people below, has been a big part of our problem. >> you were nine when katrina hit. looking at it now, what do you see? >> i can say that i will never own a house one day, because i had to watch my parents lose everything. i can say that i have been a voting age for more than a year. i haven't filled out my voter registration forms because i don't trust politicians because my parents voted. they paid their taxes and they still lost their home. and i would say that a lot of people my age and older, that went through that experience, have the same feelings and the

same beliefs and i can't tell you a way to fix it. i would say that the turnout of the bernie sanders event, last month, is a good indication that people are getting roweled up in terms of my generation in louisiana. there's this overwhelming anxiety of having been raised in that type of environment, of kind of just now processing it. because the first days of new orleans after katrina, that was phenomenal, being a child, because we couldn't really process what was happening. our parents were picking up the pieces so it left us with a playground of abandoned houses and graveyards. but now, looking at it, from where we are, we don't know what to do with this world and we don't know how to piece it

together because our parents had to deal with it back then. and i don't have an answer as to how we're going to do it now. >> that's actually kind of heartbreaking. >> let me try to break this into three parts. the first is a self congradualatory. i've done a lot of panels in the last ten years. a lot of panels. [laughter] as the foremost expert and authority on new orleans despair, i want to say, this one sitting up here, this is amazing to sit with you guys. it is so wonderful to be in a group where, actually in the first time in my life, i wanted to listen more than i wanted to talk. i just wanted to say that to you guys. to a point, what i've tried to tell myself, you talk about in in viz bill -- in

visibility of it. to everyone who has katrina fatigue, who doesn't want to hear about it and is resting with these issues, how do we sustain this, how do we get noticed? don't worry, because after august 30th, you won't hear about it again for 15 years. we are a country who fetishizes anniversaries and we are at ten now and 15 doesn't mean anything and 20's not a gold watch. so, if you're tired of it, don't worry. august 30th, you're in the free. i want to do one thing, not to counter what he said. he talked from the talk down, i want to speak from the bottom up. the only reason we are hear on the stage right now and any of us are here in this audience is due to people who are not in this room. to nobody

who is in this room, it's not corporations, it's not government. it is the hundreds of thousands and maybe millions, i don't know, but how many people we will never know, we will never know their names, their church groups, their schools, their families. whoever the hell they were who came down here, bus load after bus load, plane load after plane load, van after van, year after year, to this day, they came down here, they tore our houses apart and then they rebuilt them. and i don't know who the hell they are, but i wish we could line all them up in the superdome someday and give them a freaking party. that's why we're here. we're not here because of the government dollars that helped. this would not have happened without our fellow citizens, who we will

never know, who came down here, not expecting anything. [applause] . >> and i would just argue that those people came when it wasn't an anniversary and they will keep coming. people do things for the right reasons. they focus even when the spotlight goes away. >> so, how do we get noticed? well, we get loud. i evacuated, as a single mom with a 12-year-old. and a jacked up car and an american express and a law degree. that was an awful combination for the evil ones that didn't want black people back. the american expres

people said, you can pay us when you pay us. you will vote because you will get angry. you will buy a house because you're going to want a homestead and you're going to say, doggone-it, i'm not going to live being forced to be resilient. i'm tired of people saying you're resilient. resilient means you can do something to me. i have a right to not be resilient. i'm here, i'll be the one turning off the lights. this city is not going anywhere without me and so i say to everybody else who has that same spirit, we keep fighting. i say to you, we can fight it. we keep fighting and we demand that our voice be heard. you know, we just demand it. i got a lot of grief, can't take it away

from me. i'll sue to be heard. [laughter] and i mean that. >> so, i mean, i shared this story earlier. i agree with you. continue to fight. we fought, too, so we could stay here in new orleans. for us, i think one of the things i really want to share is we have a lot of immigrants who moved into our city and they also need to have a voice, as well, so we've been continuing to fight to make sure that there's language access for our people. i mean, the latinos moved in and helped rebuild our city and they're not being heard now. i'm so sick of people telling our narrative and our stories. right, even this whole entire week of katrina, i'm kind

of sad that the people who have been affected and impacted the most are not at these events are not invited to be at these ev t events and they are celebrating and there are so many people who have made money off of them. they're continuing to be voiceless. we have to contin tu to -- we have to continue to fight. we have to change our narrative. that's the reason why we're being pushed down. right? we've been pushed away because -- right now, people are telling our stories and that's so sad. that's so sad that we -- we have to deal with. i think, you know, for us, it's just, yes, we got to fight, we got to organize, we got to stick together and make sure our voice is being heard. >> oliver. >> the business community and

political community has to be stronger. we need to use public policy to incentivize, not just when they're gentrified. we have to be intentional with funding and targeting homeownership and natives who have been in that neighborhood and have a value. not just the downtown and the french quarter, we have new orleans east, hospitals are a perfect example. because of our diet, we have chronic illnesses. why not create a research and development around new orleans east. we shouldn't have one medical research center. professor tony wrote a study who

is from new orleans. he talked about how do we create citizenship and community in detressed community where they have responsibility and take responsibility and not rely on politicians. there's a sense of ownership even in terms of how many problems we have. in the book of isaiah, god says, i will do a new thing in you. we have to stop practices insanity, we've tried that before. maybe it's time to put the poor people, the children, the elderly and the working class at the front of the line. >> well, we wanted to hear the voices of people who have lived here, who have done this. if you are not in the room, if you're watching us by livestream, please feel free to tweet to facebook to tell us your -- let us hear your voice

so you don't feel excluded from this conversation. if you are in this room, you'll find cards, which are written. i want you to fill those out, you can hang them on the bulletin board. hopefully that will continue to spark conversations. please join me again in thanking this amazing panel. [applause] >> all this week, cspan is marking this. tomorrow night, scenes from new orleans one year after the storm as they tour hurricane damage and speaks with those on the ground. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015]. >> why were we held hostage? i didn't go anywhere. why were we held hostage and not allowed to

rescue our people? we had proof of it. why was that the case? you know what, i'm from the 60's, call the the police, that's the only reason i'm here. i didn't come to represent me. i didn't come representing diane cole. i came representing the people sitting on the street right now, around a brick-made fireplace because that's the only heat we have in september. a hurricane happened in august. somebody needs to hear why we're less than 500,000 spread in less than 50 states. >> it's not really for us to say whether it should be built or not rebuilt. i think it's reasonable to ask that we have a

flood protection system that's, you know, going to work. but when you see this and a few blocks up the road, there's a holy cross with all that vacant housing and you would think, well, first things first. maybe get people to hire ground because that house cannot be rebuilt, it's not possible. and you can still smell that death smell. you'll notice it later when somebody tells you, you smell dad. they are still finding people because they can't go in there until they demolish it. when they tear down a house like that, they bring the dog first to see if they -- this is typical house where we would find a body still. >> more scenes from new orleans

and a 2005 house hearing from testimony from new orleans residents. our focus on hurricane katrina continues tomorrow night at 8:00 eastern here on c-span. >> a headline in atlantic magazine, new orleans is far from healed. next, new orleans mayor reflects on the work that's been done and the work that lies ahead. . >> i'm jeffrey from the atlantic and i want to welcome all of you, again, to this very important conference. at the atlantic, i cover two main subject areas, u.s. foreign

policies and mitch landrieux. i want to jump right into this conversation and since i have you on the couch, i thought i would ask kind of a question. feel free to relax. >> there's no time to lie down. [laughter] >> i want to take you back ten years and i want to talk about how you felt exactly ten years ago. i'm trying to imagine this, i'm trying to picture this. you're lieutenant governor, you're in helicopters, you're in boats, the city is in under water, people are dying. did it ever cross your mind -- did you ever feel like maybe this was simply too big? that maybe the city could not -- no city could come back from this

level of devastation? >> no, i never, for one second -- i don't think most people in new orleans felt anything other than we were 100% sure that somehow, someway, our city was going to come back. all of us -- not only was it institutional failure, we didn't see ourselves as being what we were at the time. everybody in here got hurt. the first responders got hurt, too. we all lost pretty much everything in some form of fashion and it literally never occurred to me that anything other than the city coming back would eventually be where we got. >> we've heard national politicians -- >> that angered me more than anything else. it was a visceral, angry response. it was just insane. who in their

right mind thinks the city of new orleans is not coming back? we've had hurricanes from the beginning of our time. just as -- just as someone from new orleans, my thought was, hell, no, we're coming back. the rage of that comment and the stupid comments that people made, i think it gave the people of new orleans a greater sense and greater purpose. >> thank you for motivating you. >> he wasn't the only one. [laughter] >> let me jump, today, and ask you a question. if, god forbid, the same storm hit the coast next week, what would new orleans look like after that storm? >> first of all, the country has a hard time understanding this,

but we are the veterans of lots of storms. betsy was a big storm. the people of new orleans want people to know this was not a disaster, this was a m manmade disaster. mississippi got the wind, not got what the norm terrible storm is. we got the water, it was an infrastructure failure. you hear that new orleans is the canary in the coal mine. we talked about the difficult things we're suffering through. there are things that have been going on for a long period of time and the people in new orleans want everybody to know that today, we're stronger, we have levee investments. it's only built to category three.

we feel it should be built to category five. if the levees did not breach, if it hit the same way, nobody in their right mind could say that anybody in any city has 100% guarantee that you're not going to get hurt. we need to make sure the levees are strong and make sure the buildings are built the right way and making sure our communities are resilient and strong. you know, whether it's a terrorist attack or a hurricane or an earthquake or a heat wave, communities have to find a way to get stronger. katrina showed us we're not as ready as we need to do. >> you have talked a lot about gratitude. but, you want better

levees, you want a better storm protection system. tell me very specifically why that hasn't happened? >> well, money. that's the specific answer. and the will, on behalf of congress. one of the things -- i'm speaking to the choir in this room. this city and the gulf produces oil and gas, we are the tip of the spear for this nation's in protecting our national security because that's what energy independence gives us and years before the storm, we kept begging people to pay attention to us and they wouldn't and katrina hit and they said, oh, man, something big is happening there. if you want this city to survive, you have to make sure you protect us. that's why the investment's necessary. the levee system is better than before. it was an engineering

failure by the government. if you wanted to get to a place where you could actually resist risk more, it would be a category 5 storm protection. that is a discussion that is ongoing, it's a big battle that we have about restoring the coast and the levees, you got to get to the other part and it's a long discussion. >> let's talk about the way the city has changed over the past ten years. one of the things -- you heard this on the first panel and one of the things that people talk about -- in many ways, it's a richer city, it's also a whiter city than it used to be. what are you -- what are you going to do or what do you want to do to bring back that population? >> i hope everybody comes home. i traveled to houston and atlanta because those two cities

are housing the majority of our residents. to my brothers and sisters in new orleans, this week is designed to do three things. one is to remember all of the family members we lost. personal stories of strategy. fathers letting the hands of their daughters go, it's going to be hard to relive that. we're here to remember. secondly is to thank the rest of the world and all of our friends and neighbors for helping us lift up and expressing gratitude to cities that took us in. 32 cities received our people and made sure our kids got in school and we had a roof over our head. in some instances, they have kept them. i think it's important for us in new orleans to spend a moment to be thankful for being alive today. then the

third is what i think is just a miraculous thing that the people of new orleans have done. when you have a near-death experience, either personally or institutionally, you want to get to where you were the day before the bad thing happened. the people of new orleans actually spent a minute and i think did something that was amazing by being honest. katrina and rita did not cause a lot of our problems. they were here well before the storm and they are issues that are coarsening through the presidential debate, whether it be evidence from the tea party on the right or the folks showing up at the park. i think there's uneasiness on income and equalty. it is true this city has changed. it is still 60% african american. it is a majority/minority city. we

have an influx of hispanic brothers and sisters that stormed into the city and helped us rebuild. the caucasian population is 32%. and then other. the other is hispanic, vietnamese. people in new orleans are different in that we believe diversity is a strength, not a weakness. what we're doing in the city, as we rebuild, is make sure everybody is welcome and everybody knows they have a stake in this game and make sure we don't sweep anything under the rug. he was here a little while ago, he said 52% of african american men are

not working, that is unacceptable. people who are in new orleans and don't get out, if you ask the same questions in oakla oakland, baltimore, the "black lives matter" are around the issue. so what we're trying to do around the city is take the time to rebuild the institutions and make them strong so that people can have the opportunities to do better, that's why we are reconstructuring the health care and education, which is a source of some concern for some folks, so that people can have the opportunities to build generational wealth and have strong generations. >> let me stay on this subject for a minute. our mutual friend said one of the problems me diagnoses is that we tend to judge the success of a city's comeback, a city like new orleans based on how rich the

rich are getting. i want to ask you if you agree with that. and two, let me stay on this issue of what you're doing to make housing affordable so that the african american population have a way to get back here. >> i watched the panel and everybody on the panel was my friend and they speak the truth and have been passionate ad advocates. we are getting back to what was normal before. the normal before was an impatience for what is. it actually takes time to rebuild institutions so that human beings can actually take advantage of the institutions and continue over gen -- generations to do better.

these are crisscrossing. the $1.8 billion for the education are giving people better facilities to go into. they used -- the used to be stories about the bathrooms being not good. what's gone on in the schools, all right, is right now, based on numbers, producing higher graduation rates. what he mentioned before was a serious problem with who is teaching in the schools. there are all kinds of ramifications and that is true. and, just folks in the city can remember, in 1960, this city had 680, 000 people in it. from 1955 to 1960, the population started going down. it was down to 465,000 before the storm. now,

we're the fastest-growing city in america. so, cities have problems. some problems is you are is shrinking. there are other cities that have problems, now you're growing and now people are moving in, that's another kind of problem that you have to work through. you can argue about which problem is better. i'd rather have the growth problem. there are 169 square miles in it, it's got plenty of room to take care of a lot of people, through zoning codes and when we rebuild what used to be called housing projects, whether it's columbia park, is making sure there are incentives in place. inherent in that is some people move in, some people move out. the rate

comes up, it goes down. what we're doing in the city is trying to manage that conflict so that everybody has an opportunity to come into the city. it's a complicated issue. i don't think -- >> let me ask you a question, why is the lower ninth, why is that so slow to come back? >> that's an excellent question. the federal government, the state government, the local governments have money coming in. we have 73 neighborhoods in the city. african americans that don't live in the ninth ward, that want their neighborhood rebuilt are wealthy people. they are saying give the ninth ward everything. everybody is saying give us our stuff now. it's not a racial argument. it's, i want stuff in my neighborhood tomorrow, mayor.

from neighborhood-to neighborhood, they want to get it fast because they don't want an old, nasty thing sitting there. but, here's -- o'neal, all politics are local. if the one next door to the house that's complaining is not down, you haven't done everything. we have tried to manage the allocation. general said this the best, when it gets hot, the poor get hotter and when it gets cold, the poor get colder. the lower nine got hurt. we have spent $500,000 million in the low lower 9th ward. they will say, you didn't give us as much as everybody else. that's not

true. the damage is so significant, it will take a lot more money to do it. just to give you all a metric, we had $150 billion of damages in the city of new orleans. i'm not talking about the gulf coast, i'm just talking about us. we got about $71 billion in reimbursement. when you have a gap, not everybody gets all everything all the time. so i'm completely committed to the lower ninth ward. there's middle 9, there's upper nine, there's seventh ward. there's pension town, a lot of neighborhoods have to get up and when you don't have as much coming in as you need, it takes time to actually get it done. but the ninth ward will eventually get it back. >> let me switch to something we spent a lot of time talking

about, which is violence. homicide is down from its historically-high levels. you are seeing a spike, other cities as well, you are seeing a spike in homicides. you have made this cause, sort of the center piece of your administration. why is homicide going back up right now? given all the resources that you seem to be throwing at the issue of violence in the neighborhoods. >> this is an unacceptable state of affairs. it has gone down. the overwhelming per capta. this is something we have been working on the a long time. this is not a, you need more police officers so you can stop murder. it folds into the entire thing that we are talking about, whether it's education,

health care or jobs, it is about whether the lives of young african american men matter. this is a symptom that we haven't cared our focused. so, we have tried to develop a way of approaching this on the law enforcement side, the bad guys out there that are shooting and killing people, as we speak, they are being prosecuted in court. they are responsible for killing a lot of folks. we've got after gangs because you have to stop them from hurting themselves and hurting other people. my view and the people in this room that know more about this than i do because they're walking the streets. when you see guts blown out, we're losing those young people who are victims that weren't intended, this is something that the country can't look away

from. >> what's your analysis of why this is going on? >> nobody knows. why is it happening all across the country all at the same time? if it was happening in new orleans -- our shootings are down. last time, when our murders were down, our shootings were up. we had the highest number of shootings. this year, we had the lowest number of shootings, but our murder is back up to where it was last year. nobody knows the answer to this. why is it in new orleans, baltimore, boston? i think that this country is -- somebody said that this wasn't a federal response. homeland security and securing our nation is a federal responsibility in partnership with the state and local governments. we have left

this issue and have not put the resources necessary to get this done. however, you got to get on the front side of this. early childhood education, good parenting, making sure the institutions of the school and church because the light goes out with young kids about 7, 8 or 9 years old. they start seeing no sense of hope, no sense of future and all of a sudden, they start careening off to a place we don't want them to go. >> one word that i didn't hear that much was the word, gun. your very good friend, the mayor of philadelphia, says, it's much easier to kill somebody with a gun than without a gun. is there -- are guns a large piece of this for you? is there anything you can do? >> guns are a massive piece of

it. >> what can you do? >> these kids, now -- we were talking to guys who were serving life. you asked them, was it the gun? three of the guys in the room said, no, it wasn't the gun. it was me, it was my responsibility and they said, but these kids today are much tougher than we were. but what i reminded him on, even though he said that, these young men can now rent a gun. you can get a gun anywhere at anytime so it's a massive problem. the next question you asked me is a political question, what can you do about it? in louisiana, they said you can't do anything about it. that's what they have said. one of the challenges we have is how you do a constitutional right and protect folks. i think, from my perspective, there are a couple of things we can do. one, when sandy hook

happened, there was a big falter about ak-47's. most things happen on the streets of new orleans with bigger guns. congress spent a lot of time on ak-47's. they could have a direct statute that allows them to prosecute people if they commit a felony with a gun. they don't have that right now. it has to be with a drug offense. what worked in 19t -- in 1996 is putting officers on the street. when we had our first decline, they were receiving $7 million a year. this it allowed police departments to get into the tough neighborhoods, do community policing and added resources. then finally, it seems to me that even the nra,

right, can agree that we have good background checks and we keep guns out of the hands of convicted felons, people that are having difficulty with mental issues. unless they allow cities like us to do things, we're somewhat stuck. i love mike. i don't disagree with him about it, but the politics of the laws across the south are very different. i think that we can honor people's second amendment right to bear arms, but reasonable limitations. we cannot legally get there because of the restrictions we have. >> let me talk about another response to violent crime. this is noticeable to any outsider that flies into new orleans. you talk about beautiful new school buildings. there's a new

jail, the new parish jail. repeat that in case anybody didn't hear you. talk to me about why -- i mean, you cannot jail your way out -- if you believe that you cannot jail your way out of the homicide problem, then why is that jail there? [applause] >> you might want to ask somebody else that. [laughter] >> i'll give you my thought about this. first of all, it is very important that we secure the streets of new orleans and we make things safe. there are bad people out there for whatever reason that will hurt themselves or hurt other people. you have to have enough law enforcement to do that. 56 to 60% of our budget is spent on the back end, police officers, jails, et cetera, et cetera. that jail -- remember, i said katrina didn't cause all of our

problems. this is a perennial fight between who sits in this seat and the sheriff's office. it was unconstitutional. we have to, if we're going to jail people, house them in a way that's with their constitutional rights. we have a weird system, in this city, where the sheriff gets to control the jail and the mayor gets to pay for it. >> sounds like it's better to be the sheriff. >> whenever you have any system of government set up where someone can spend the money, and somebody else is going to pay it, it is what it is. the legislature ordained it that way. as it is in this country right now, one of the things we have gotten wrong is how to do

incarceration and help our returning citizens come back home. you know this, the numbers, the rate is exponentially high. it hasn't worked out for us because our crime rate, not withstanding what you hear from people in the city. it's bad in shrevp port. it's a nationwide problem. the numbers are, that in louisiana, we have always been a violent community. put people in jail, don't think about it, don't care about how much it costs and when the budget goes from $200 million to $800, money could have gone to education. lock them up, throw away the key is what people are saying. people

are returning and doing more crime. what people in new orleans, some folks on the other end of broad street want to build a bigger thing. the advocates have said we can be tough and smart on crime. if he got pulled over and didn't have his driver's license, instead of taking him down to jail, we would give him a summons -- i'm sorry, i know you never drive without your silence. [laughter] >> for minor offenses, so you can reduce the jail population and spend more money on the front end. we have been fighting that fight. whenever you're under in thumb of a federal judge, they seem to be fair ll power -- fairly powerful and it takes time. >> i want to ask one final thing, it relates to this jail crisis, the incarceration issue and innovation after katrina.

we were together recently, before we got there, you told me that it will bring me to my knees. the highway literally ends. it's a one-way highway from new orleans and a pipeline and the highway ends and there it is. 2,011 residents are permanent of ang goala. what post-hurricane katrina are you most pleased with. what are the specific things your administration has done to cause that jail to be closed from disuse and what will reduce the population in ang goala. >> the way things work down here, there's a lot of responsibility that's spread out over a bunch of institutional framework. whether it's the city of new orleans or the

school district or the health care, the thing i'm most proud of is the level of coordination between all the different entities. i call this the new, new orleans way. nothing has happened without every body having to participate. nobody's got everything we need. we can't get anything done if we don't wrap our arms around each other. we are marching in the right direction and so the institutional changes, with the schools, that will get itself worked out. people believe every child not only has a right to a great education, but an opportunity. i don't think it will go back to 73% to 80% of our schools failing. our graduation was 50% before

katrina, now it's 75%. there is always, down on the ground, at the family table, a lot of elbowing, but that is the single most important thing we can do in this city is make sure the education gets right and works right. the second thing that has to happen is we have to fight hard for early child education because most of these kids that eventually go on to do difficult things, you can tell, very, very early on, the criminal justice reforms that we're working on right now, in terms of partnering with the da to go in and secure the neighborhoods are important. of course, we need more resources. the big danger that we have in the city is the further you get away from katrina and the further out of stress, we will

go back into all the small, little fights we had and lose the overarching arc. i told you this week was about commemorating and remembering and about saying thank you. this week, for the people in new orleans, for all of us -- by the way, there are tons of events that everybody in the city is invited to. this is about the city. this week didn't happened by accident, we organized it. it's about what you want the city to look like and we're going to use a 300th anniversary to think about how we, as a community, are going to keep the momentum up. one of the folks that were on this panel said, how are be going to continue to be out in front? this week is out in front. you have presidents of the united states coming back to see us, that's what's called being out in front and using this week to tell our story of where we've been, where we are and where we're going.

we should -- >> let me interrupt you. tell us about one president coming on friday. how did that come about? >> i invited him. i think it's important, as we think about how this works, to get into an issue of healing and reconciliation. president bush was the president when this event occurred. everybody knows that the initial federal response was slow and in adequate. it took time to get our legs underneath us. we've got through a couple different mayors and governors. after the initial hiccup, we had to work together closer and it's -- he was our commander in chief at the time and we need to say thank you to him. nobody, not one of us in this room, has been perfect. not one of us in this room doesn't have something. this was the united states of

america, all of us, together, not them against them. not republicans against democrats. this was all of us coming together and putting down our jerseys. the people of new orleans need to take a minute and be grateful and thankful to everybody and anybody who helped us. i invited president obama, bush and clinton. they said we are so important to them and the rest of the world, they've all said they are going to come and help us remember all the folks we lost. >> thank you, mr. mayor. we're going to go to questions. just raise your hands. >> we have time for one very quick question. >> one very quick question? anybody have a very quick question? >> hey, allison.

>> i'm allison with the data center. do you want to hold that? so, you know, there's a lot of work that we've all done and a lot more that needs to be done and you and i have had a lot of conversations, mr. mayor. one thing i've never had a chance to ask you about is connectivity to the suburbs when we look at employment rates. we need training opportunities and increased awareness and our data shows us there's great opportunities upriver and there will be more. it seems like helping people connect to those jobs via transportation is a hurdle here. >> one of the things we never did before the storm is we never counted anything in the city. one of the things we do now is count everything. it's hard to

look at the mirror at yourself. you may not mind, i mind. [laughter] to look at yourself. this city has stripped down and done that and there's some things that we saw that we didn't like. allison's team is the one that put the -- does anybody wonder the number? 52% 32,680. we're doing something called the pathway to prosperity. we're trying to find the men, the individuals. now, they're not all the same individual. they're different individuals. they're different ages, they live in different neighborhoods. they're in different parts of their life. some of them didn't get through high school, some of them got a ged. what we're trying to do -- we're terrible about this all around the

country -- work force development and training. in our schools, we are saying we want you to go to college. last year, some of our kids went -- got $75 million in scholarships to the best universities. a lot of our young men are not going to get there. this is what we have in louisiana, though, which is a great opportunity, we have two medical centers, the rebuild of the sewage and water system. lake charles is building plants. everybody in the city knows, folks didn't want folks moving in and out of their neighborh d neighborhoods. there is a huge need to have folks working for them so we're trying to connect these young men with the jobs and create the pathway to them. the important pathway is not the bus. the first and important pathway is the training for the

job. we're talking to all the institutions, all the universities. you have people living in your shadow that should be working in that building. there's no better example of this than the university medical city. you walk across the street, you see the new housing development. individuals that are growing up in that new housing, which is better than it was before, should be able to walk down the street three blocks and walk into that medical center and do a whole plethora of jobs, to being a nurse, diagnostics, doctor, a person that runs the place. my vision is that that pathway will be easy and the people who lives in the neighborhoods would be running those institutions.

>> mr. mayor, thank you very much. [applause] . >> saturday, august 29th, marks the anniversary of hurricane katrina. at 9:30, a 2005 house hearing, featuring new orleans residents. >> they told us they would take us to shelters where we would get help. and, they loaded us up on these military trucks. then, they declared the city of new orleans, orleans parish,eap. >> c-span's 2006 tour and recovery in louisiana. >> you can't describe it, it's

your whole life, gone. rubble. your whole community, all your friends, family, everybody's gone. now it's going to be a year later later and your family and friends you don't see anymore that you used to see. hell of a feeling. you don't forget it. you'll never forget it. >> followed at 9:00 is a town hall meeting. >> i know all this is state-level, federal-level and all other levels. i don't have them. i voted for you. to represent me on the local level. i don't know where else to go. i don't know what else to do. >> thursday night, starting at 8:00, dean and family. we'll

show you president obama's trip to the region and remarks on the recovery effort ten years after hurricane katrina. hurricane katrina coverage all this week on c-span. >> in his quest for the 2016 republican presidential campaign, it called a rally for religious liberty, featured speakers from losing a job to vandalism to losing a business. f >> welcome. welcome to the rally for religious liberties. welcome to iowa. some of you that aren't from iowa. the vast majority of you are