Gratz - Were still here ya bastards: how the people of New Orleans rebuilt their city

Praise for Were Still Here Ya Bastards

Gratz provides a moving chronicle of the efforts of real people to rebuild their battered city in the face of bad engineering, cynical politicians, incompetent bureaucrats and greedy developers. It frames the challenges urban revitalization, inequality and gentrification in a smart and nuanced way. This book is an absolute must read for anyone who cares about the future of our communities and nation.Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class and professor at NYU

Roberta Gratz knows as much about the way cities work as anyone alive. In Were Still Here Ya Bastards she turns her sharp, experienced eye on New Orleans, post-Katrina, and delivers a lucid assessment of the citys stunning progress as well as its chronic, sometimes toxic, problems. Drawing on a broad variety of voices, this is a valuable addition to the growing body of literature about this most complex and beautiful city.Tom Piazza, author of Why New Orleans Matters and City of Refuge

No major American event of this century has generated so much myth as the 2005 flooding of New Orleans. Roberta Gratz tackles these assumed truths with two essential tools: the tenacity of an old-style journalist and the devotion of a Jane Jacobsstyle urbanist. She chronicles the citys improbable and unpredicted recovery, without the dubious help of big plans, a recovery that, like her reporting, was and is literally ground-up. Most important to me, she writes not only with understanding, but with deep affection for this incomparable city.Harry Shearer

Do we need another Katrina book? No. Not just any book. We need this one. Whether the subject is education, healthcare, urban development or environmental preservation, Roberta Gratz has masterfully assembled a chorus of New Orleans voices to tell the story of their city. This book is a clarion call to the nation and the world.Lolis Eric Elie, story editor, HBOs Treme

After the Katrina and BP oil-spill disasters, officials in New Orleans only made matters worse through incompetence and self-dealing. It took the unelected citizenry to rise up and put things right. Its a hell of a story, painstakingly reported and recounted here in stirring detail.John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

What happens when one of the United Statess urban treasures is damaged, seemingly beyond repair? How does the nation respondand what does the response tell us of the state of the union? Were Still Here Ya Bastards brings to life the immediacy of the struggles to rebuild New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. If you have wondered what has happened in the decade since television cameras recorded the drowning of a great American cityfrom the Ninth Ward to Lakeview, from the French Quarter and Treme through Uptown and Mid-CityRoberta Gratzs page-turning account is for you. As a native New Orleanian, I am grateful to her for uncovering these critical histories.Leslie Harris, Associate Professor of History and African American Studies, Emory University

A great American story: how people who love New Orleans keep saving it, and big money and bad government keep screwing it over.Roy Blount Jr., author of Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans

New Orleanians dont often light out for the territories. So there was no question of their returning from mandatory exile to this semi-ruined city and rebuilding from the ground up. As Roberta Gratz shows in this brilliant book, it was their grassroots activism, reinforced by cadres of voluntourists who came for a week then decided to stay put, that has been bringing this storied town back from disaster.Lawrence N. Powell, author of The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans

Roberta Gratz is Americas most innovative urban chronicler of our time. If you really want to know the true story of New Orleans after Katrina, you must read her thorough account of one of Americas devastating natural disasters.Laurie Beckelman, cultural consultant and former Chair of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission

Disaster, even terrible disaster, can also be an opportunity. A decade after Hurricane Katrina, Roberta Gratz offers a sharp take on what a recovering New Orleans got rightand wrong. Her assessment is sure to provoke debate. But no one who cares about The City that Care Forgot can ignore this detailed and deeply humane report.Jed Horne, author of Desire Street and Breach of Faith

Roberta Gratzs collage of post-Katrina New Orleans sparkles with stunning and sometimes controversial insights. Written with grace and deep feeling, she takes Jane Jacobs heritage into new territory and confirms the authors status as our leading urbanist.S. Frederick Starr, Chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University

Were Still Here Ya Bastards is a colorful, authoritative account of how the unsung people of New Orleansinstead of inept Federal agencies, crooked local leaders and soulless developersrefused to let a great American city die.Curtis Carter Wilkie, co-author of City Adrift: New Orleans Before and After Katrina

In this powerful book, Roberta Brandes Gratz turns her deep understanding of the work of Jane Jacobs into an astonishing account of how imaginative community activists like Jacobs emerge and grow in the wake of a disaster like Katrina. In virtually every domain of urban lifein housing, health care, education, economic development, and environmental protectionshe discovers New Orleanians whose diagnosis of the problems and alternatives to the solutions are vastly more creative and effective than all the politicians, bureaucrats, and professionals who have dominated our television screens. That we have heard little or nothing about these people says much about our distrust of democracy. A masterpiece of reportage and analysis!Richard Rabinowitz, Phd, President, American History Workshop

Ten years after the flooding of New Orleans, the city is still recovering. A street-level portrait of the people who came back to rebuild their homes, Were Still Here Ya Bastards illustrates how the tight-knit communities of the Crescent City are reclaiming their cityin spite of the so-called experts, predatory free-marketeers, and government bureaucrats.Josh Neufeld, author of A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge

Were Still Here Ya Bastards

Also by Roberta Brandes Gratz

A Frog, A Wooden House, A Stream and A Trail: 10 Years of Community Change in Central Europe (2001, Rockefeller Brothers Fund)

The Living City: How Americas Cities Are Being Revitalized by Thinking Small in a Big Way

Cities Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtown

The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs

Were Still Here Ya Bastards

How the People of New Orleans
Rebuilt Their City

Roberta Brandes Gratz

Copyright 2015 by Roberta Brandes Gratz

Published by Nation Books,

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Nation Books is a co-publishing venture of the Nation Institute and the Perseus Books Group.

Excerpt from Pretty Boy Floyd, page 199

Words and Music by Woody Guthrie

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