A Tale of God's Will: Requiem for Katrina

Yesterday I spent a lot of time on airplanes -- it was supposed to be four in all to get to New Orleans and back -- but I didn't quite make it to the last leg and thus had to spend the night in a Best Western near the Detroit airport and catch the fourth flight this morning. (I'm still recovering.)

As I flew, a few different songs came to me that I considered blogging about, but they were all drowned out by the sheer force of the poverty and devastation that continues in New Orleans. This August will mark 5 years since Katrina -- but what struck me during my meetings was not really the result of the flood, but rather, the attention being paid to an area where poor black people had been getting a shitty education (if they got an education at all) for decades.

For someone like me, dedicated to finding a way to improve the lives of the urban poor, I see so much possibility in New Orleans. There's been a steady influx of federal funding (which is now starting to dry up), there are lots of foundations investing heavily in the recovery of the city's schools, and there's a general embracing of change and reform. Two of the people I was meeting with had grown up in NOLA and had returned, after the hurricane, out of a sense of civic duty, and no doubt there are many others who did the same. And yet, so much remains undone, and not just because of the storm, but because of the devastating poverty that has been there for generations.

Terence Blanchard grew up in New Orleans, and he wrote this song for Spike Lee's documentary When the Levees Broke, as a response to the aftermath of Katrina. As you may know from the songs I've posted to date, I'm a big fan of lyrics, but I can't imagine any words more powerful than this man and his trumpet. This live performance is really great -- you just have to wait a bit for Terence to pick up his horn.

Flying through Memphis, I saw the mug of my man MLK, Jr. on the wall. I share your dream, I assured him, and I'm going to keep working for it.