Project Katrina

Rachel Maddow is doing her show from New Orleans today. A few quotes from interviews she conducted:

James Perry, the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center:

You know, again, the people are extremely resilient, right? They’re here because they’re fighting to be here. Folks aren’t asking for a handout from government, but just a help up, right? And that’s all that folks are saying.

Tracie Washington, the Louisiana Justice Institute:

There’s been this cross-pollinization of people. People—I was a trial lawyer five years ago. I didn’t work with, you know, the grass eaters and, you know, people who eat tofu [....] I had a hippie-free life. Now they’re all in my office [....] And I love them to death.

Billy Sothern, author of “Down in New Orleans: Reflections from a Drowned City“:

The main thing that I see here in New Orleans is that all of these problems, whether it’s the crime problem, the housing problem, the schooling problem, this is the razor’s edge of problems that exist everywhere in America. And to the extent that they remain unresolved in New Orleans, I think that there’s very little hope that they’re going to be resolved elsewhere.

Garland Robinette of WWL radio:

I spent months in a place in Vietnam where you could barely walk and they could land a helicopter. And five days, president of the United States or nobody else could fly in water or food to people that were dying? And now BP with the oil spill—that took them a while to get going. And we’ve still got people worried about how they’re going to survive on the coast. It’s kind of like we’re not part of the United States.