T-shirts say it all: 'Make Levees, Not War'
By JOHN HILL

December 18, 2005

NEW ORLEANS -- On New Orleans' premier shopping street, Magazine, shoppers searched for scarce parking spots last weekend during a highly successful business promotion.

Shop owners, worried about survival two months ago, reported brisk business and an optimism they were going to make it.

Shoppers were snapping up everything that was New Orleans-specific, saying they were determined to buy locally, eschewing catalog or Net purchasing this year.

The hottest selling T-shirt is a play on the 1960s anti-war mantra: "Make Levees, Not War." Close behind is a shirt on which there's a depiction of a junked refrigerator, representation of foul order creeping out. Written on the front: "Mr. Brown, your dinner is waiting."

That's a reference to former Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown, the former horse show promoter whose dismal failure during the week of Katrina's aftermath caused him to be removed. There's a third shirt being promoted by Magazine Street shop owners, one put up by Desire New Orleans (www.desire-nola.org), a nonprofit dedicated to preserving New Orleans business and culture. It's a take-off on the "I (heart symbol) New York" T-shirt, but instead of the heart, there's a red fleur-de-lis.

But the "Make Levees, Not War" T-shirt really says more about where New Orleanians' collective heads are these days.

If the U.S. government can spend $300 billion a year in Iraq, why was it so hard to find $3 billion to repair and improve hurricane levees? Or spending $100 billion over years to improve hurricane levees all across vulnerable south Louisiana?

Last week, the White House made much of President Bush's decision to double the immediate appropriation from just over $1.5 billion to $3.1 billion for improving levees in New Orleans to build what is being called "Category 3-plus," "true Category 3," or "enhanced Category 3."

That tab will include such things as closing the open mouths of the 17th Street and London Street canals, the breaches of which allowed Lake Pontchartrain to drain into the city. The mouths will be dammed at the lakefront, and then new pumps will move water over into the lake from the canals, which are nothing more than very large drainage ditches.

From the beginning, that seemed a no-brainer to the citizens of New Orleans. Had the canals not been open to the lake, Noah's flood wouldn't have occurred, except for the Lower 9th Ward east of the Industrial Canal.

There is a new political reality in the city: Political party doesn't really make a difference. Results do.

New Orleans really is two cities these days.

First, there is the city that is alive, the 19th-century city that existed before the world-class drainage pump system was built in 1898. The system of giant screws that lift water up and into the drainage canals and into the lake was an engineering marvel, studied by the Dutch. The system certainly has longevity, as many of the pumps are originals.

Then there is the dead city, the city built up in the 20th century, especially the ranch houses built up after the nation changed its mortgage laws to encourage new construction over old.

That city, roughly three-fourths of the New Orleans land area, is without power and basic utilities, its residents still scattered across the nation. Many "For Sale" signs are popping up on brick houses with interiors stripped. Others sit idly, no work done at all, as insurance disputes continue. Debris piles still are everywhere.

The people of means in these areas aren't really working on their houses yet. They have been waiting for decisions from politicians on such things as what neighborhoods will be redlined, bulldozed and redevelopment not allowed.

But mostly, people wait for levees.

In the meantime, in the old city, built on high ground more than 100 years ago along the natural levees along the river, there are bustling shops, crowded restaurants, reopenings announced every week for music, art, jazz -- the things that make New Orleans such a grand city.

It is truly the tale of two cities, but there's one thing that all agree on: Make levees.