New Orleans Follow

Some 400 people marched with Occupy New Orleans last Saturday. Mostly young, about 50 of them were African-American.

The Soul Rebels Brass Band are a New Orleans marching band. They infuse this traditional style with soul, hip‑hop, funk and R&B, throwing the genre into the 21st century.

Zeitoun – Dave Eggers This is an account of Abdulrahman Zeitoun who stayed behind when hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans. He travelled about in his canoe to rescue neighbours and see the drowned city.

Treme exposes New Orleans’ corrupt legal system and the despicable political response to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. It explores the rich culture of the city and its deep inequality through a multitude of interlocking stories and characters.

New Orleans is often regarded as the birthplace of jazz. Martin Smith spoke to jazz musician Christian Scott about growing up in the city, the devastation after Katrina and making music to move the listener.

They call it "the storm" here, like there never was any other storm—but also like you don’t say the other word, just in case.

All respect to Spike Lee. After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, he felt he had a political duty to make a documentary about it, to make it long – and to make it for television so as many people as possible saw it.

New Orleans is still broken. There is a "beauty strip" along the river in mainly white neighbourhoods, where "les bon temps" are still celebrated, but the heart of the African-American metropolis, middle class as well as working class neighbourhoods, remains a ghost city. Vast areas of the city are still without power and bodies are still being discovered in the toxic rubble.

Letters

"Fats Domino is saved," was one of the headlines that came out of the New Orleans tragedy.

"I’m going to go home and walk my dog and hug my wife and maybe get a good Mexican meal and a stiff margarita and a full night’s sleep."Michael Brown, resigning from the US department in charge of the New Orleans rescue when his lack of experience was discovered

We live in a world where the US had to send troops into both New Orleans and Baghdad to try to keep control.

Halliburton poised to profit Earlier this year US multinational Halliburton confirmed that it had hired the former head of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), Joseph Allbaugh, as a consultant on issues including disaster relief and homeland security.

The population of New Orleans is 67 percent black. 35 percent of black households do not own a motor vehicle, compared to 15 percent of white households.The city has the second highest rate of child poverty in the US. It is the tenth poorest city in the US. The population of the devastated Lower 9th ward has an average household income of £14,600. A quarter of the households there survive on less than £5,400 a year.Across the state of Louisiana, where New Orleans is located, the equivalent of more than two classrooms of young people drop out of education every day. Many young black men from New Orleans end up in Angola prison, a former slave pla

I’m surprised that in all of the press coverage of Hurricane Katrina there is no mention of Hurricane Ivan, which hit New Orleans, Louisiana, about a year ago.

The hurricane that hit New Orleans was a natural disaster. But what followed was pure criminality on the part of George Bush and his administration.

Imagining 20th century music without New Orleans is like imagining painting without Picasso. The city has a rich and varied musical tradition, but it is above all the birthplace of jazz.

New Orleans will not be forgiven. It is a turning point in history. Today tens of millions of Americans hate George Bush with an endless, ragged, bleeding rage. I am one of them.

I’m originally from New Orleans. I know my immediate family there is safe after a few anxiety ridden days of not knowing their situation. The fate of members of the more extended family is not known and we hope for the best.

The US 82nd Airborne Division was deployed to New Orleans last weekend, the first time it had been sent into an American city since the Los Angeles rising of April 1992.

Life had a price in New Orleans last week. The rich survived. The poor — and especially the black poor — were abandoned to their fate.

Valerie Martin’s novel Property tells the story of a slave revolt on a sugar plantation in the US Deep South. Manon, the planter's wife, narrates it. Manon misses the excitement and culture of New Orleans, where she was brought up. More than anything she wants to be free of her boorish husband. She is appalled by his violence and sadistic cruelty and contrasts him with her father, who had a paternalistic attitude to his slaves. In the background there are rumours of slave rebellion.