Page 7 - Florida Sentinel 8-28-15 Edition

White House News
President Obama Visits New Orleans Ninth Ward 10 Years After Katrina
President Obama Responds To Va. Shooting: ‘Calls It Heartbreaking’
New Orleans Ninth Ward after Katrina hit 10 years ago, August 29, 2005.
PRESIDENT OBAMA
swing.
In the mostly African-Amer-
ican Lower Ninth Ward, where President Obama plans to visit, the recovery ef- forts are varied: he’ll speak at a multi-million dollar commu- nity center, built with the help of federal funds after Katrina, that sits only blocks from the abandoned cars and blighted lots that have become symbols of a slow recovery.
Just more than 50 percent of the neighborhood’s housing units are now occupied, ac- cording to figures from the Data Center, which has tracked statistics in New Or- leans in the aftermath of Kat- rina. The population in 2010 was just more than 2,000 — 80 percent smaller than be- fore the storm.
The average household in- come stands at $33,557 per year — $4,000 less than it was in 2000, five years before the storm. Nearly one-third of the population lives below the poverty line, more than twice the national average.
In his remarks, President Obama acknowledged the neighborhood’s sometimes halting recovery, saying a speech in the Lower Ninth Ward might have “seemed un- likely” in the years immedi- ately following Katrina but that forward-thinking resi- dents had rallied together to reconstruct their neighbor- hood.
“That, more than any other reason, is why I’ve come back here today,” he plans to say.
In some ways, his language Thursday most closely echoes his remarks on Katrina from before he became president, including a 2007 speech wad- ing into the racial disparities visible in the federal Katrina response.
President Barack Obama returned to an out- wardly thriving New Orleans Thursday to mark strides 10 years after Hurricane Katrina. But underneath the visible re- covery lie persistent racial and economic inequities that haven’t receded a decade since
the storm.
Tens of thousands of
African-Americans fled New Orleans after Katrina hit, never to return. The city’s poverty rate has remained near 30 percent. And accord- ing to one analysis, African- American households in the city earn more than 50 per- cent less than their white counterparts — well above the national average.
Those barometers of racial inequality aren’t unique to New Orleans, and haven’t dampened the city’s enthusi- asm for what has otherwise been a steady recovery that in- cludes new construction, jobs and visitors.
But the now-chronic gaps between rich and poor, and whites and Blacks, were poised to provide a sober backdrop for President Obama’s tour of the hard-hit Lower Ninth Ward on Thurs- day, where he plans to visit residents and assess the dis- trict’s recovery.
In 2010, when the Presi- dent marked the five-year an- niversary of Katrina in the second year of his presidency, he scarcely mentioned the is- sues of racial disparity that plagued the city, both before and after the storm, despite speaking at the historically black Xavier University in Gert Town.
Now in his second term, the President has become more open about addressing issues of race, including the opportu- nity gap visible in inner-cities
around the country.
On Thursday, he’ll argue
Hurricane Katrina “started out as a natural disaster” but “became a man-made one — a failure of government to look out for its own citizens,” ac- cording to excerpts of his speech released by the White House.
“What that storm revealed was another tragedy — one that had been brewing for decades,” Obama plans to say. “New Orleans had long been plagued by structural in- equality that left too many people, especially poor people of color, without good jobs or affordable health care or de- cent housing. Too many kids grew up surrounded by violent crime, cycling through sub- standard schools where few had a shot to break out of poverty.”
“We acknowledge this loss, this pain, not to harp on what happened — but to memorial- ize it,” the speech reads. “We do this not in order to dwell in the past, but in order to keep moving forward.”
Book-ended by major events promoting his environmental agenda, President Obama isn’t planning to use the storm’s anniversary to make another push to curb climate change, though the White House said the President would hold a roundtable meeting to discuss steps to prevent the type of infrastruc- ture collapse that devastated the Gulf Coast after Katrina hit.
Instead, he’s expected to tout his administration’s steady success in eliminating bureaucratic barriers to re- building New Orleans, and to point to projects like an over- hauled school system and newly rebuilt hospital as ex- amples of a city on the up-
President Barack Obama says the fatal on-air shooting of two TV News WDBJ7 employees is heart- breaking.
The President says "it breaks my heart every time" he reads or hears about these kinds of incidents.
"What we know is that the number of people who die from gun-related incidents around this country dwarfs any deaths that happen through terrorism," he said.
The ATF says the disgrun- tled former reporter who killed a television reporter and a cameraman legally purchased the gun.
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spokesman Thomas Faison said Vester Lee Flanagan legally bought the gun used to kill Alison Parker and Adam Ward. They were doing a live broadcast Wednesday morning when
PRESIDENT OBAMA
they were shot to death. Faison did not say where or when Flanagan bought the gun. Flanagan said he de- cided to buy a gun after the
Charleston church massacre. The handgun can be seen in a video of the shooting that Flanagan posted on social media. Flanagan later died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 2015 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY PAGE 7-A