Walking to New Orleans

It's four days till my New Orleans doc, which I've been working on about as long as the city has been trying to rebuild, airs on Frontline. I've been working on this documentary for so long I've lost perspective: I've become friends with the family who's featured; developed a point of view about what I think is happening in the city (it's a mess, and the mess now needs to be laid squarely at the feet of Mayor C. Ray Nagin); and I'm a walking compendium of trivia facts about the culture, history, and conundrum of the city.

I was doing an interview with KMOX radio in St. Louis today and the moderator asked me whether the problem was whether "the residents of the lower ninth ward needs some help" decoding the systemic bureaucracy they're facing. Implied in that question was that somehow folks just weren't smart enough or sophisticated enough to figure out how to navigate the bureaucracy. They're plenty smart; and they're not the only ones trying to figure out how to navigate the bureaucracy. The family featured in the film, the Gettridges, are African-American - and (for the record) college-educated, but there are plenty of white New Orleanians who've also lost homes, husbands, and their net worth, who have given up because the tidal wave of obstructions just seemed too much. Look at the figures in this Brookings Institution report: those who are moving in are not the same people who moved out.