OP-ED: Moving forward and towards the next anniversary

The incredible amount of coverage on TV, in magazines and newspapers on the anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina will hit a high this weekend. For those of us who have gotten past the dark days of early recovery and the forced evacuation from our homes and way of life, this sudden burst of celebrity is most unwelcome.

And, yet, we cannot close our eyes to the fact that it did happen.

We suffered catastrophic devastation not from a simple force of nature, but more specifically from a complex series of man-made breakdowns. It’s easy to point an accusing finger at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. After all, it was their faulty designs and implementation of levee protection using inferior materials that ultimately failed. But where were the politicians we elected and the appointed levee districts who we expected would safeguard our lives and property by testing the structures in question and making sure they surpassed minimum standards?

In Metairie, men who would have manned the drainage canal pumps were given permission to vacate their posts because there was no structure standing from which to withstand the hurricane-force winds. Former Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard took the heat for that decision, but we should remember, he has and will never serve a day in jail because of it. Broussard is languishing in prison for payroll fraud, not poor executive decision making.

The other main figure from the City of New Orleans, the Honorable C. Ray Nagin, is also serving out his time in a federal prison, not because he erred in rendering policy. Rather than being found guilty of hubris – if that were a punishable offense – and failing the mandate of the people who depended upon him for their very protection, he was found guilty by a jury of his peers for a series of acts of corruption.

And the heir apparent, Oliver Thomas, the City Councilman, who most of the city expected would take over following Nagin’s term, found out that a brilliant political career could be tarnished by the scandal of taking a $19,000 bribe to look the other way over the renewal of a parking lot.

Indeed, history teaches us that seemingly good men have failed us many times more than the levees. Yet, the record breaking damage from the storm and the breaches of the levees are what most national news organizations want to focus in the short term.

Just like after the storm’s passage, these news units and reporters will move out of the city soon enough to dispatch reports from other sites and record still more anniversaries. Just like after the storm’s passage, they will leave us to pick up the pieces of our lives and move on.

With the wisdom of hindsight, we should not let this weekend pass without thinking of the souls whose lives were taken by the force of the storm and those who left us in the days, months and years thereafter because they could not be consoled by the changes they witnessed in the city they loved.

We are a stronger, younger and better prepared city than we were ten years ago. National pollsters consider the post-Katrina New Orleans scene as one of the hippest and most desirable in the country. That is little consolation to those who have been unable to return because they lost everything and who, in all due consideration, will probably never be back.

So whether we close our eyes and ears to the ongoing weekend events or wish that this weekend was already in the past, we should keep in mind that the spirit of the people of New Orleans has always been stronger than earthen dams designed to protect it or politicians in whom we have placed our trust.