XPost: soc.culture.bulgaria, soc.culture.german, soc.culture.greek   
   XPost: soc.culture.turkish   
   From: nicolai.vladirmirescu@gmail.com   
      
   -- Published on Thursday, September 8, 2005 by the Wall   
   Street Journal   
      
   Old-Line Families Escape Worst of Flood And Plot the   
   Future   
      
   by Christopher Cooper   
      
      
   NEW ORLEANS - On a sultry morning earlier this week,   
   Ashton O'Dwyer stepped out of his home on this city's   
   grandest street and made a beeline for his neighbor's   
   pool. Wearing nothing but a pair of blue swim trunks   
   and carrying two milk jugs, he drew enough pool water   
   to flush the toilet in his home.   
      
   The mostly African-American neighborhoods of New   
   Orleans are largely underwater, and the people who   
   lived there have scattered across the country. But in   
   many of the predominantly white and more affluent   
   areas, streets are dry and passable. Gracious homes   
   are mostly intact and powered by generators.   
   Yesterday, officials reiterated that all residents   
   must leave New Orleans, but it's still unclear how far   
   they will go to enforce the order.   
      
   The green expanse of Audubon Park, in the city's   
   Uptown area, has doubled in recent days as a heliport   
   for the city's rich -- and a terminus for the small   
   armies of private security guards who have been   
   dispatched to keep the homes there safe and habitable.   
   Mr. O'Dwyer has cellphone service and ice cubes to   
   cool off his highballs in the evening. By yesterday,   
   the city water service even sprang to life, making the   
   daily trips to his neighbor's pool unnecessary. A pair   
   of oil-company engineers, dispatched by his   
   son-in-law, delivered four cases of water, a box of   
   delicacies including herring with mustard sauce and 15   
   gallons of generator gasoline.   
      
   Despite the disaster that has overwhelmed New Orleans,   
   the city's monied, mostly white elite is hanging on   
   and maneuvering to play a role in the recovery when   
   the floodwaters of Katrina are gone. "New Orleans is   
   ready to be rebuilt. Let's start right here," says Mr.   
   O'Dwyer, standing in his expansive kitchen, next to a   
   counter covered with a jumble of weaponry and electric   
   wires.   
      
   More than a few people in Uptown, the fashionable   
   district surrounding St. Charles Ave., have ancestors   
   who arrived here in the 1700s. High society is still   
   dominated by these old-line families, represented   
   today by prominent figures such as former New Orleans   
   Board of Trade President Thomas Westfeldt; Richard   
   Freeman, scion of the family that long owned the   
   city's Coca-Cola bottling plant; and William Boatner   
   Reily, owner of a Louisiana coffee company. Their   
   social pecking order is dictated by the mysterious   
   hierarchy of "krewes," groups with hereditary   
   membership that participate in the annual carnival   
   leading up to Mardi Gras. In recent years, the city's   
   most powerful business circles have expanded to   
   include some newcomers and non-whites, such as Mayor   
   Ray Nagin, the former Cox Communications executive   
   elected in 2002.   
      
   A few blocks from Mr. O'Dwyer, in an exclusive gated   
   community known as Audubon Place, is the home of James   
   Reiss, descendent of an old-line Uptown family. He   
   fled Hurricane Katrina just before the storm and   
   returned soon afterward by private helicopter. Mr.   
   Reiss became wealthy as a supplier of electronic   
   systems to shipbuilders, and he serves in Mayor   
   Nagin's administration as chairman of the city's   
   Regional Transit Authority. When New Orleans descended   
   into a spiral of looting and anarchy, Mr. Reiss   
   helicoptered in an Israeli security company to guard   
   his Audubon Place house and those of his neighbors.   
      
   He says he has been in contact with about 40 other New   
   Orleans business leaders since the storm. Tomorrow, he   
   says, he and some of those leaders plan to be in   
   Dallas, meeting with Mr. Nagin to begin mapping out a   
   future for the city.   
      
   The power elite of New Orleans -- whether they are   
   still in the city or have moved temporarily to   
   enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo. --   
   insist the remade city won't simply restore the old   
   order. New Orleans before the flood was burdened by a   
   teeming underclass, substandard schools and a high   
   crime rate. The city has few corporate headquarters.   
      
   The new city must be something very different, Mr.   
   Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor   
   people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want   
   to see it done in a completely different way:   
   demographically, geographically and politically," he   
   says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way   
   we've been living is not going to happen again, or   
   we're out."   
      
   Not every white business leader or prominent family   
   supports that view. Some black leaders and their   
   allies in New Orleans fear that it boils down to   
   preventing large numbers of blacks from returning to   
   the city and eliminating the African-American voting   
   majority. Rep. William Jefferson, a sharecropper's son   
   who was educated at Harvard and is currently serving   
   his eighth term in Congress, points out that the   
   evacuees from New Orleans already have been spread out   
   across many states far from their old home and won't   
   be able to afford to return. "This is an example of   
   poor people forced to make choices because they don't   
   have the money to do otherwise," Mr. Jefferson says.   
      
   Calvin Fayard, a wealthy white plaintiffs' lawyer who   
   lives near Mr. O'Dwyer, says the mass evacuation could   
   turn a Democratic stronghold into a Republican one.   
   Mr. Fayard, a prominent Democratic fund-raiser, says   
   tampering with the city's demographics means tampering   
   with its unique culture and shouldn't be done. "People   
   can't survive a year temporarily -- they'll go   
   somewhere, get a job and never come back," he says.   
      
   Mr. Reiss acknowledges that shrinking parts of the   
   city occupied by hardscrabble neighborhoods would   
   inevitably result in fewer poor and African-American   
   residents. But he says the electoral balance of the   
   city wouldn't change significantly and that the   
   business elite isn't trying to reverse the last 30   
   years of black political control. "We understand that   
   African Americans have had a great deal of influence   
   on the history of New Orleans," he says.   
      
   A key question will be the position of Mr. Nagin, who   
   was elected with the support of the city's business   
   leadership. He couldn't be reached yesterday. Mr.   
   Reiss says the mayor suggested the Dallas meeting and   
   will likely attend when he goes there to visit his   
   evacuated family   
      
   Black politicians have controlled City Hall here since   
   the late 1970s, but the wealthy white families of New   
   Orleans have never been fully eclipsed. Stuffing   
   campaign coffers with donations, these families   
   dominate the city's professional and executive   
   classes, including the white-shoe law firms,   
      
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