[R-G] Rulers plan to remake NO with fewer Blacks and poor

[Fred Feldman]

("The power elite of New Orleans...insist the remade city won't simply
restore the old order" based on a "teeming underclass", according to a
report in today's Wall Street Journal. The head of the city's transit
system says there need to be "fewer poor people". The motive is
political as well as economic. Although the wealthy whites, mostly
untouched by Katrina and living comfortably uptown, cultivate the black
mayor, Ray Nagin, black leaders charge them with wanting to "prevent
large numbers of blacks from returning to the city" in order to
"eliminate the African-American voting majority", which is
overwhelmingly Democratic. New Orleans business representatives will be
meeting with mayor Nagin in Dallas tomorrow to "begin mapping out a
future for the city", the Journal reports.) 


Old-Line Families Escape Worst of Flood And Plot the Future 

Mr. O'Dwyer, at His Mansion, Enjoys Highball With Ice; Meeting With the
Mayor By CHRISTOPHER COOPER Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 8, 2005; Page A1 

NEW ORLEANS -- On a sultry morning earlier this week, Ashton O'Dwyer
stepped out of his home on this city's grandest street and made a
beeline for his neighbor's pool. Wearing nothing but a pair of blue swim
trunks and carrying two milk jugs, he drew enough pool water to flush
the toilet in his home. 

The mostly African-American neighborhoods of New Orleans are largely
underwater, and the people who lived there have scattered across the
country. But in many of the predominantly white and more affluent areas,
streets are dry and passable. Gracious homes are mostly intact and
powered by generators. Yesterday, officials reiterated that all
residents must leave New Orleans, but it's still unclear how far they
will go to enforce the order. 

The green expanse of Audubon Park, in the city's Uptown area, has
doubled in recent days as a heliport for the city's rich -- and a
terminus for the small armies of private security guards who have been
dispatched to keep the homes there safe and habitable. Mr. O'Dwyer has
cellphone service and ice cubes to cool off his highballs in the
evening. By yesterday, the city water service even sprang to life,
making the daily trips to his neighbor's pool unnecessary. A pair of
oil-company engineers, dispatched by his son-in-law, delivered four
cases of water, a box of delicacies including herring with mustard sauce
and 15 gallons of generator gasoline. 

Despite the disaster that has overwhelmed New Orleans, the city's
monied, mostly white elite is hanging on and maneuvering to play a role
in the recovery when the floodwaters of Katrina are gone. "New Orleans
is ready to be rebuilt. Let's start right here," says Mr. O'Dwyer,
standing in his expansive kitchen, next to a counter covered with a
jumble of weaponry and electric wires. 

More than a few people in Uptown, the fashionable district surrounding
St. Charles Ave., have ancestors who arrived here in the 1700s. High
society is still dominated by these old-line families, represented today
by prominent figures such as former New Orleans Board of Trade President
Thomas Westfeldt; Richard Freeman, scion of the family that long owned
the city's Coca-Cola bottling plant; and William Boatner Reily, owner of
a Louisiana coffee company. Their social pecking order is dictated by
the mysterious hierarchy of "krewes," groups with hereditary membership
that participate in the annual carnival leading up to Mardi Gras. In
recent years, the city's most powerful business circles have expanded to
include some newcomers and non-whites, such as Mayor Ray Nagin, the
former Cox Communications executive elected in 2002. 

A few blocks from Mr. O'Dwyer, in an exclusive gated community known as
Audubon Place, is the home of James Reiss, descendent of an old-line
Uptown family. He fled Hurricane Katrina just before the storm and
returned soon afterward by private helicopter. Mr. Reiss became wealthy
as a supplier of electronic systems to shipbuilders, and he serves in
Mayor Nagin's administration as chairman of the city's Regional Transit
Authority. When New Orleans descended into a spiral of looting and
anarchy, Mr. Reiss helicoptered in an Israeli security company to guard
his Audubon Place house and those of his neighbors. 

He says he has been in contact with about 40 other New Orleans business
leaders since the storm. Tomorrow, he says, he and some of those leaders
plan to be in Dallas, meeting with Mr. Nagin to begin mapping out a
future for the city. 

The power elite of New Orleans -- whether they are still in the city or
have moved temporarily to enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo.
-- insist the remade city won't simply restore the old order. New
Orleans before the flood was burdened by a teeming underclass,
substandard schools and a high crime rate. The city has few corporate
headquarters. 

The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with
better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city
rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way:
demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just
speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to
happen again, or we're out." 

Not every white business leader or prominent family supports that view.
Some black leaders and their allies in New Orleans fear that it boils
down to preventing large numbers of blacks from returning to the city
and eliminating the African-American voting majority. Rep. William
Jefferson, a sharecropper's son who was educated at Harvard and is
currently serving his eighth term in Congress, points out that the
evacuees from New Orleans already have been spread out across many
states far from their old home and won't be able to afford to return.
"This is an example of poor people forced to make choices because they
don't have the money to do otherwise," Mr. Jefferson says. 

Calvin Fayard, a wealthy white plaintiffs' lawyer who lives near Mr.
O'Dwyer, says the mass evacuation could turn a Democratic stronghold
into a Republican one. Mr. Fayard, a prominent Democratic fund-raiser,
says tampering with the city's demographics means tampering with its
unique culture and shouldn't be done. "People can't survive a year
temporarily -- they'll go somewhere, get a job and never come back," he
says. 

Mr. Reiss acknowledges that shrinking parts of the city occupied by
hardscrabble neighborhoods would inevitably result in fewer poor and
African-American residents. But he says the electoral balance of the
city wouldn't change significantly and that the business elite isn't
trying to reverse the last 30 years of black political control. "We
understand that African Americans have had a great deal of influence on
the history of New Orleans," he says. 

A key question will be the position of Mr. Nagin, who was elected with
the support of the city's business leadership. He couldn't be reached
yesterday. Mr. Reiss says the mayor suggested the Dallas meeting and
will likely attend when he goes there to visit his evacuated family 

Black politicians have controlled City Hall here since the late 1970s,
but the wealthy white families of New Orleans have never been fully
eclipsed. Stuffing campaign coffers with donations, these families
dominate the city's professional and executive classes, including the
white-shoe law firms, engineering offices, and local shipping companies.
White voters often act as a swing bloc, propelling blacks or Creoles
into the city's top political jobs. That was the case with Mr. Nagin,
who defeated another African American to win the mayoral election in
2002. 

Creoles, as many mixed-race residents of New Orleans call themselves,
dominate the city's white-collar and government ranks and tend to ally
themselves with white voters on issues such as crime and education,
while sharing many of the same social concerns as African-American
voters. Though the flooding took a toll on many Creole neighborhoods,
it's likely that Creoles will return to the city in fairly large
numbers, since many of them have the means to do so.

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