Silence

Too much is and is not happening here. Some money is on the way, at some point, to help some people do some things—indefinite pronouns are the only nouns appropriate here. From the Times-Pic:

While the largest stake of the Road Home by far is $3.5 billion for homeowners, the plan also provides funding for renters, developers and homeless people in Louisiana.

The Road Home reserves $25.9 million to repair and expand the state's homeless shelters and programs.

Homeowners must have uninsured damage of more than $5,200 from Hurricanes Katrina or Rita to be eligible. An estimated 123,000 people are expected to be eligible. About 80,000 people already have registered, but Blanco said all residents should sign up, even if they are unsure of their eligibility.

In New Orleans alone, the number of households affected is over 200,000, twice the number expected to be eligible. Not that every person affected needs assistance but because of the delays prices rise and insurance payments buy less then there are the people who weren't required to buy flood insurance, low-income homeowners, people whose houses were decimated by the Army Corps of Engineers' bullshit levees. . .there are more than 123,000 folks who need help returning or starting over. Crime is up, especially property crime (flooded houses looted, architectural items stolen, etc.) and murder. The police chief hypothesized that drug criminals are returning because the court system here was a “revolving door” without Katrina and failed levees and pumping stations. The flooded parts of town look as they did 2 months after the storm, some dotted with a few trailers, husks unconnected to sewers or power lines or without keys to open them.

The people who write about New Orleans post-Katrina largely do so because they do not live here. They are elsewhere or in some way insulated (isolated?) from the day-to-day erosion of your hope, your deepest reserves, your patience and you keep trying to hide your will to live from the shit of daily life in a city it feels like the nation has spit on. Those insulated, isolated, elsewhere in whatever way write because they can. We here do not write because we can’t.

pics from http://www.nopd4.org/9th_ward_&_east.htm

tag: post-Katrina, New Orleans, Louisiana, Road Home, looting, crime, New Orleans court system