The Lens

02/21/2025

🔍 The head of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and the president of St. John Parish said the West Bank is “now open for business.”

✍: Delaney Dryfoos

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https://buff.ly/3QthKn7

02/21/2025

At issue is a $20 million cash settlement, and an additional $70 million in promised education funding over the next decade. In November, representatives from city council, school district, and city – including chief administrative officer Gilbert Montano – stood shoulder-to-shoulder to announce the resolution.

https://buff.ly/4i8g3HC

While recent furor has focused on the city’s fumbled $20 million deal with the Orleans Parish School Board, district leaders say it’s more important to stop the city from taking a “collection fee” off the top of school tax payments.

02/20/2025

"Right now, the best way to combat these efforts is to go to the polls on March 29, to vote down constitutional amendments that will send more people to prison and expand an already-oversized criminal-justice system."

✍️: Bruce Reilly

📰: https://buff.ly/4hPacau

02/20/2025

🔍 On Thursday morning, the Orleans Parish School Board, with support of the New Orleans City Council, will square off in Civil District Court against the City of New Orleans, in an attempt to wrestle $90 million from the city’s administrative arm.

✍: Marta Jewson

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https://buff.ly/4i8g3HC

02/18/2025

🚨New Episode Alert! 🎙

Journalist Marta Jewson sheds light on a startling reality: Only 37% of pre-Katrina residents have returned to the Lower 9th Ward. What’s behind this slow recovery? What does it mean for the community today?

Listen now! https://buff.ly/3X54dWA

02/18/2025

This week on 🎙 As the Super Bowl neared, Governor Jeff Landry’s “Super Gras Subcommittee” worked to prep the city—focusing on tourist hotspots but also eyeing the Lower 9th Ward, a symbol of Katrina’s uneven recovery. One slide from a past meeting revealed a telling motive: assessing “features...which could be used by media to substantiate Katrina narrative.”

Listen Here: https://buff.ly/3X54dWA

02/13/2025

“As a researcher who has closely observed, personally experienced local struggles,” says the writer, Bethany Garfield, “it’s with a heavy heart that I say that investigations into the state of our city’s protective plans and systems will likely garner the following conclusion: New Orleans isn’t ready for much of anything.”

✍: Bethany Garfield

Click the link below to read more!
https://buff.ly/4hWOwsn

02/13/2025

The state-run homeless shelter hastily assembled last month came as a surprise to two key people within City Hall: Nate Fields, director of the city’s office of Homelessness Services and Strategy, and Lesli Harris, the City Councilperson most involved in homelessness issues.

https://buff.ly/3WXiRPw

Emails show that state officials considered creating a shelter in a barge moored in Industrial Canal — and that prominent local developers knew about the shelter long before some city officials.

02/13/2025

🔍 Emails reveal state officials considered a barge shelter in the Industrial Canal—while prominent local developers knew before some city officials.

✍: Nick Chrastil

Read more at the 🔗 below!

02/12/2025

Did you catch our education reporter, Marta Jewson, on Informed Sources on WYES? If not, watch now at the link below! 📺👇

https://buff.ly/4gyxiRf

02/09/2025

The “internal Super Bowl team” had taken a drive around the Lower 9th Ward, checking out beautification and infrastructure needs in the neighborhood.

The visit was made to “anticipate any features of the neighborhood which could be used by media to substantiate Katrina narrative,” Hecht had reported, according to a slide presentation from the meeting.

To counter the “Super Gras Subcommittee” narrative, The Lens spoke with current and former residents about what Lower 9 landmarks Super Bowl visitors should see – and what Katrina narratives go with those landmarks.

This is the introduction to a five-story project, The Lens’ Embracing Katrina Narratives project. Last summer, in July, a group of influential New Orleanians gathered, with hopes of preparing the city for a national spotlight ahead of Super Bowl LIX. Michael Hecht, the CEO Of Greater New Orleans I...

02/08/2025

Though she was an infant when the natural disaster happened, for Powell, Hurricane Katrina lasted far longer than the storm itself, stretching through her childhood into the present day, almost 20 years later.

✍: La'Shance Perry

Read the full article here: https://buff.ly/3CvHzzE

02/07/2025

Lionel Milton remembers coming home, seeing his family home in a deplorable state, and still having hope. “After all, the inventor of rock’n’roll lived four blocks away,” he said. That’s the way it is for the Lower 9, it’s both tragedy and comedy, down and up, positive and negative, he said. Here was a neighborhood that was, before Katrina, brimming with musicians, athletes, artists and longtime Black homeowners.

All of this is important for all visitors to understand, whether they’re coming for the Super Bowl or otherwise, Milton said. Because, despite the neighborhood’s rich history and his family’s devotion to the house on Flood Street, the rebuilding process proved too difficult.

https://buff.ly/4hg7pa3

The night before Katrina made landfall, artist Lionel Milton, who grew up in the Lower 9th Ward, suddenly decided to evacuate, after he experienced what seemed to be an omen.

02/06/2025

Buses and vans likely started driving down Robert Green's stretch of Tennessee Street in January 2006, he says. Sometimes, the 2006 tour groups would stop and he would tell his story, his pain palpable. “I want people to know what happened,” he’d tell them.

He feels the same way about this week’s Super Bowl visitors: people have to know the truth. “You can’t ride through the 9th Ward even today and not see the effects of what Katrina did. To deny that is to turn your back on all the families who did not come back, the families who struggled to return.”

https://buff.ly/4aLpgTQ

Every year on August 29 – the day that Katrina hit, in 2005 – Green’s family gathers by the place where his mom's house once stood, in shirts that read “Roof Riders." Then they walk the two-block route taken by the floating house, to the oak tree where it stopped.

02/05/2025

After Katrina, Alice Craft-Kerney was motivated to help her neighbors. In 2007, she helped to open the Lower Ninth Ward Health Clinic. Sometimes, it’s painful for her to talk about this part of her Katrina narrative, because she only could keep the clinic open for two years.

https://buff.ly/4hllov6

✍: Marta Jewson

"Alice saved my life," neighbors say. In 2007, Alice Craft-Kerney helped to launch a post-Katrina clinic that was invaluable to neighbors. But it closed its doors after an inexplicably short time.

02/04/2025

"Every Sunday that the Lord sent a second line, Pableaux was on the streets among the dancers and onlookers taking pictures. It was important to him to give copies of his photos to the people they featured. It was important to him that, if he sold a photo, the person in the photo also received some compensation. Some other photographers have taken more than they gave and were scorned by those within the culture. But to him, it was important that the dancers and the Indians and the brass bands be respected as the artists they are."

Pableaux Johnson, 1966 - 2025

02/04/2025

After Katrina, environmentalists built an overlook on Bayou Bienvenue to give the community access to the wetlands, which had been devastated by salt water from a now-closed canal called MR-GO. Recent construction threatens that key post-Katrina achievement, Arthur Johnson says.

https://buff.ly/3WJQfsS

After Katrina, environmentalists built an overlook on Bayou Bienvenue to give the community access to the wetlands, which had been devastated by salt water from a now-closed canal called MR-GO. Recent construction threatens that key post-Katrina achievement, Arthur Johnson says.

02/04/2025

Happy Black History Month! Louisiana has been a stronghold of activism, and this month, we celebrate the sacrifices, dedication, and lasting legacy of Black history here in New Orleans. 🤎