NEW ORLEANS—Visiting residents on tidy porch stoops and sampling the fried chicken at a corner restaurant, President Barack Obama held out the people of New Orleans on Thursday as an extraordinary example of renewal and resilience 10 years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
“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 9th 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 American city that was once “dark and underwater.”
Still, Obama acknowledged that much remains to be done. And after walking door to door in the historic Treme section of a city reborn from tragedy, 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, 92, 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,” Chase said, voicing what could be a credo for the city.
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.
Obama spoke hopefully of coming back to New Orleans after his presidency — when he can go to Mardi Gras and sample other delights.
“Right now,” he said, “I just go to meetings.”
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