The book promised to the world by former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin concerning his memories and thoughts about Hurricane Katrina is expected to be released at the end of June. The book, Katrina’s Secrets: Storms after the Storm, discusses the days after the hurricane and includes Nagin calling out public officials for their poor response.
In two paragraphs posted on his Twitter account, Nagin specifically targets public officials in Jefferson and St. Bernard parishes and in Gretna, La.
“First our neighbors in Jefferson Parish secretly pumped their floodwaters into a breached levee, further flooding Lakeview and the city’s core, at least twice. Next, Gretna officials armed with machine guns and attack dogs stopped suffering people in the Convention Center from marching on a federal interstate,” he writes.
“And then we had St. Bernard officials block a critical road by the lower ninth ward before Katrina hit that created a barrier for escape and impeded floodwater drainage. They would subsequently pass an ordinance that prohibited people of color from renting in St. Bernard.”
The self-published memoir gives several examples to support his contentions. The first involves what is already on the record regarding attempts by St. Bernard officials to impede the development of affordable apartments in the parish, which have subsequently been ruled as being actions taken with discriminatory intent by a federal district judge. Another concerns the decision on August 30, 2005, by Gretna and Jefferson Parish law enforcement officials to bar African American citizens from walking across the Crescent City bridge to the West Bank.
The press release states that Katrina’s Secrets: Storms after the Storm sounds intriguing because it will cover “institutional issues of race and class that secretly conspired to control and slow down the recovery.” The book can be purchased online at Amazon.com for $17.99 plus shipping.
Torrance Stephens, Ph.D., his blog is https://rawdawgb.blogspot.com and twitter.com/rawdawgbuffalo
