1115.org

President George W. Bush (9/12/05):

My attitude is this: The storm didn’t discriminate, and neither will the recovery effort. When those Coast Guard choppers, many of whom were first on the scene, were pulling people off roofs, they didn’t check the color of a person’s skin. They wanted to save lives.

In that statement, Bush was at least partly responding to this Wall Street Journal story from the week before:

“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.”

Now it seems that not only do wealthy residents want to repossess areas of the city that were hardest hit, they don’t want their own neighborhoods to house temporary FEMA trailers for the displaced:

Many flooded areas were poor and black. Many of those spared tend to have significant white populations. The trailers in Annunciation Square might bring people from areas like the Lower Ninth Ward into a neighborhood they might never have afforded.

“I don’t know what kind of people we are going to be getting,” said Mary Briggs, 52, who lives near Annunciation Square. “I don’t want people coming into my house and taking what little I have left. I really hate to be that way … but you have to think about your own security.”

Jennifer Langkopp, 58, a neighbor, bemoaned the loss of the green space. “ … There are so many other places where they could have put the trailers.”

Luckily for people like Briggs and Langkopp, they don’t have to worry about the President keeping his word on discrimination or anything else for that matter.