Morial blasts city's slow Katrina recovery(Ex-Mayor of N.O.)

Times-picayune ^ | July 6 2007 | Frank Donze

[BBell]

Making a rare public appearance in the hometown he led as mayor for eight years, National Urban League President Marc Morial employed multiple civil rights-era references Thursday to criticize the laggard pace of recovery in post-Katrina New Orleans, which he depicted as a national embarrassment and "this generation's Birmingham."

In a short but rousing address to a mostly black audience of more than 300 attending the opening day of the 2007 Essence Music Festival, Morial called on Congress to pass a law guaranteeing the "inalienable" right to return home to the tens of thousands of Gulf Coast residents still displaced nearly two years after the storm.

After the speech, Morial refused to comment on an ongoing federal investigation into contracts awarded by his administration that has resulted in more than a dozen guilty pleas and a recent jail sentence for a former top aide.

Questioned by WWL-TV, Morial said he had traveled from his current home in New York "to speak about the recovery," which was the main topic of his 15 minutes on stage.

"In 1962, Bull Connor's dogs and the firehoses of the Birmingham Police Department turned on peaceful demonstrators shocked the conscience of this nation," Morial told the small but enthusiastic audience gathered in the cavernous Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, the building named for his father, the city's first black mayor.

"In 2005, it was doggedly disgusting policies. It was a question of where was the urgency of the fire departments and the rescue officials when there were people in need."

Morial said the same federal government that failed to act decisively in the days and weeks after Katrina also has failed to recognize what he said is the lingering injustice of New Orleanians unable to return to their homes and families.

[RichInOC]

Marc, I agree it's a shame. One of the primary reasons, though, is that the current city administration, and going several terms back, prior city administrations (ahem), turn out to have been almost completely unprepared for a major flooding disaster. Considering that senior leadership in New Orleans is almost without exception New Orleans born, bred and raised, and could therefore reasonably have been expected to be aware not only of the possibility of future flooding, but the reality of past floods, I find this completely unacceptable. Don't you?