What’s all this crap I hear about a “smaller but better” New Orleans. A “leaner and meaner” New Orleans. It’s as if we should be instructing the Dutch and not the other way around: Abandon the Lowlands! Resistance is futile.

Why stop there. Global Warming? Hell, Let the waters rise. So what if in a 100 years Denver has a population of 85 million poor. In the great coastal cities, the elite will still survive, taking water taxis back and forth between the high-rise islets of a new granite archipelago.

Talk about waterfront property!

Look, I thoroughly understand the situation back home in New Orleans. Huge chunks of the city are uninhabitable. There is little or no potable water. Business is at a virtual standstill. The economy is in shambles.

As I write, even in the relatively unaffected areas,the Quarter, the CBD, the Garden District, anything approaching normalcy is a prayer and a hope.

Of course, then, at this moment, bringing home the evacuees is not feasible. At this moment!

But I am still appalled at the speed with which this present reality is being accepted as a permanent fixture of a future New Orleans.

What is behind this unseemly haste to abandon 150,000 of our neighbors to permanent exile?

I can easily comprehend the Administration’s lack of urgency. Do you really think that the prospect of at least one less democrat congressman has escaped them.

FEMA? Feeble.

Baton Rouge? They’ve always been a bit of a stick in the mud as far as New Orleans is concerned.

But New Orleanians themselves? What’s that all about?

Could it be the same attitudes that are part of the charm and mythology of the City? Laissez le bon temps rouler! Bury the dead and let’s party? Is is just easier to pass our dirty laundry on for processing to Houston and all points North, East and West ?

Or...after decades of political corruption, corporate greed, public apathy, and our failure to provide our fellows Orleanians a decent education, a viable economy and basic public safety are we just afraid we’re not up to the job?

Or is it something else, something darker? That thing we talk about in whispers. Racism. Pure and simple. After all there’s certainly enough of that to spread around the United States, across both sides of the racial divide.

And I’m no innocent. I knew all the words long before I moved to New Orleans in 1970 and was informed by certain members of my future family that Yankee Liberal Carpetbaggers were not welcome.

Well I’m still a “Liberal,” and once again, sad to say, a Yankee, but I believe I’ve paid enough termite-infested-swamp dues to raise the question without being blown off as a Carpetbagger.

Because it does seem that how you feel about this situation depends on who you think those 150,000 evacuees are.

To those who believe they are the “shooters and looters,” the welfare cheats, the gangbangers and murderers who stuffed the freezers of the superdome with the bodies of their victims (oops, that didn’t happen, did it?) the issue is simple. “We just can’t afford them anymore!”

That’s what I hear.

Isn’t there a name for that? When a community decides it would be better off without a certain segment of its population and then acts on it? Its called ethic cleansing. Or worse.

Of course they will say “We aren’t doing anything, it’s an act of nature! Katrina did it.” And what is that called? Letting a woman do your dirty work for you? Heartlessness? Irresponsibility?

Or just a lack of imagination.

Because they can imagine a New Orleans without the Evacuees and I cannot. I cannot imagine New Orleans without my friend Barbara, a cashier at Walgreen’s on Royal Street, whose conversations and good spirits have brightened my French Quarter perambulations for years. Or the bellboys at the La Salle Hotel (now sadly closed for good) working hard to help their families and to get through school. Or Hack. The Amazing Grace man who blows his trumpet at the Cafe du Monde. Or the oyster shuckers at the Acme.
I could go on. And on.

These people and their ancestors did not come to New Orleans to suck off the public teat. If they even came here voluntarily it was to escape the cotton fields and smalltown Cracker justice.

They built New Orleans. Baled our cotton. Loaded our riverboats. Wrought our ironworks. Raised our children..
Cared for our elderly.

Need another selfish reason to bring them home? If they could build a city they certainly could rebuild one. Or would you prefer Halliburton do the job?

I believe how we respond to this challenge may be nothing less than a battle for the soul of our city.

We must make a long-term commitment to building a city all the evacuees can return to. That means a decent job, a decent place to live and a decent future.

It will be difficult. It will require ingenuity and a willingness to change. But it ain’t rocket science. Here are some ideas:

First, we need to know who the evacuees are and where they are. That requires setting up and maintaining a database. Such a database might include information about family history and the length of time they have been in New orleans.

Second, we must insure that rebuilding money benefits the citizens of New Orleans. We must mandate that all contracts pit out for rebuilding projects include a provision for hiring and housing a certain percentage of the evacuees.

Third, for a certain period of time, say two years, we must freeze the pre-Katrina voting districts of New Orleans as well as allowing any evacuees who wish to retain their legal residency during that period to continue to vote via absentee ballot. Anything less is disenfranchisement by inaction.

Fourth, we need to devise some means, whether symbolic acknowledgement or monetary, of acknowledging those who will have been forced to settle elsewhere.

Fifth, we need to thank the citizens of Houston, Baton Rouge, San Antonio, Lafayette and other cities who so unselfishly took care of our neighbors. This might include a waiver of all state and local taxes for them when they visit New Orleans.

And Sixth, the city attorney of New Orleans should seriously look into filing libel charges or other civil actions against those media which spread all those insidious mistruths about what was happening post-Katrina. They have put a blot upon the reputation of our city and should not be allowed to get away with such irresponsible reporting.

I have always believed that for reasons unique to New Orleans, her history, culture, geography, demographics and size, that it is the true urban laboratory for testing the notions of democratic tolerance and cooperation.

If it can’t happen in New Orleans, where races and classes daily mingle in a way unimaginable, say, in New York, where I now live, then I’m afraid it can’t happen anywhere.

Let’s show them what we’re made of.