New Orleans has inspired all of U.S., Obama tells city

But same as before Katrina, problems persist, he notes

President Barack Obama meets residents Thursday in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans on the 10th anniversary of the city’s devastation by Hurricane Katrina.
President Barack Obama meets residents Thursday in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans on the 10th anniversary of the city’s devastation by Hurricane Katrina.

NEW ORLEANS -- President Barack Obama held out the people of New Orleans on Thursday as an extraordinary example of renewal and resilience but also acknowledged that much remains to be done 10 years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

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The Times-Picayune/AP

President Barack Obama stops in at Willie Mae’s Scotch House for a lunch of fried chicken Thursday in New Orleans. He said a resulting grease stain on his suit is an indication of how much he enjoyed his visit, marking 10 years since Katrina.

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AP

“The project of rebuilding here wasn’t simply to restore the city as it had been,” President Barack Obama said Thursday in the Lower 9th Ward, “It was to build a city as it should be” with opportunity for everyone.

"There's something in you guys that is just irrepressible," Obama told hundreds of residents assembled at a bustling new community center in an area of the Lower Ninth Ward that was once under 17 feet of water. "The people of New Orleans didn't just inspire me; you inspired all of America."

He held out the city's comeback as a metaphor for what's happening all across a nation that has moved from economic crisis to higher ground.

"Look at what's happened here," he declared, speaking of a transformed city that was once "dark and underwater."

"We acknowledge this loss, this pain, not to harp on what happened but to memorialize it," Obama said. "We do this not in order to dwell in the past but in order to keep moving forward."

But after walking from door to door in the historic Treme section, he cautioned that "just because the housing is nice doesn't mean our job is done."

Areas of the city still suffer from high poverty, he said, and young people still take the wrong path.

There is more to be done to confront "structural inequities that existed long before the storm happened," he added.

In his remarks at the community center, Obama blended the same themes of resilience and renewal that he drew from encounters with the sturdy residents he met along Magic Street and at other locations.

Leah Chase, the 92-year-old proprietor of Dooky Chase's Restaurant, was one of those to chat with Obama and pronounced herself a fan of the man, saying he'd handled "a rough road."

"That's all you have to do: handle what's handed to you," said Chase, who's locally known as the "Queen of Creole Cuisine."

Obama appeared energized by his visits, at one point breaking into a song from The Jeffersons sitcom after meeting a young woman who calls herself "Ouisie." He stopped for fried chicken at Willie Mae's Scotch House and pronounced the resulting grease stain on his suit a good indication that he'd enjoyed his stay in the city.

He held out the community center as "an example of what is possible when, in the face of tragedy and in the face of hardship, good people come together to lend a hand and, brick by brick, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, you build a better future."

"And that, more than any other reason, is why I've come back here today," he said.

Obama described the recovery as a work in progress in a city beset by economic inequality, as it was before the storm.

"The project of rebuilding here wasn't simply to restore the city as it had been," he said. "It was to build a city as it should be, a city where everyone, no matter who they are or what they look like or how much money they've got, has an opportunity to make it."

U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., told the crowd. "There is so much more left to be done."

Obama was a new U.S. senator when Katrina's powerful winds and driving rain bore down on Louisiana on Aug. 29, 2005. The storm caused $150 billion in damage to the Gulf Coast from Texas to central Florida while powering a storm surge that breached the system of levees meant to protect New Orleans from flooding.

Nearly 2,000 people died, most in New Orleans. Video of residents seeking refuge on rooftops and inside the Superdome dominated news coverage as Katrina came to symbolize government failure at every level.

Recovery from Katrina has been a focus of Obama's administration, White House officials say, as the government has poured billions of dollars into the Gulf Coast to rebuild housing, schools, health services and infrastructure destroyed by the storm. The trip on Thursday was Obama's ninth visit to Louisiana, the White House said.

Obama was joined during the day by Mayor Mitch Landrieu and by Richmond, whose district includes most of New Orleans.

The president said Katrina helped expose inequalities that long plagued New Orleans and left too many people, especially members of minority groups, without good jobs, affordable health care or decent housing and left too many kids growing up in the midst of violent crime and attending deficient schools.

"This recovery is at halftime," Richmond told the crowd. "There is so much more left to be done."

The setting of Obama's address at the community center spoke to the stark contrasts that remain. It sits near nicely renovated homes but also next to a boarded-up wooden house. The area is filled with vacant, overgrown lots where houses used to stand. Residents sometimes refer to the area as the wilderness and worry about snakes hiding in the grass.

Colette Pichon Battle, executive director of Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy, cautioned against slapping too happy a face on New Orleans, saying, "Rebuilding since the storm favors privileged private enterprise, and this illusion of recovery is not progress."

City residents, too, spoke of uneven recovery.

"I think we have a long way to go," said Lisa Ross, 52, an appraiser. She said areas frequented by tourists have recovered tremendously but many neighborhoods have struggled.

Harold Washington, 54, a military retiree studying at Tulane, said the city is "better than it was." But he was sad that children are now bused all over town rather than attending neighborhood schools.

Retired Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen called the city's recovery "a mixed bag." In 2005, President George W. Bush named Allen to direct his administration's response to the storm after the Federal Emergency Management Agency was criticized for fumbling the work.

Allen, now an executive vice president at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, was in New Orleans on Thursday to survey its reconstruction, particularly new flood-control pumps near Lake Pontchartrain.

"When you think of a phoenix rising out of the ashes, there's a lot of phoenixes and a lot of ashes," he said by phone.

Information for this article was contributed by Darlene Superville, Nancy Benac, Rebecca Santana, Kevin McGill and Melinda Deslatte of The Associated Press; by Angela Greiling Keane and Darrell Preston of Bloomberg News; and by Michael A. Memoli and Christi Parsons of Tribune News Services.

A Section on 08/28/2015

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