SATURDAY, AUGUST 21, 2010


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From Page One An uneasy cultural shift in New Orleans after Katrina new orleans from A1


artist Jose Torres-Tama titled “From Chocolate City to Enchila- da Village” is reigniting the con- troversy on local talk radio. Political and physical confron-


tations in the past couple of years have added to the distrust. One parish attempted to limit multi- family homes, a move that critics said targeted the Latino commu- nity. Another banned roving taco trucks, and state legislators con- sidered requiring police to check immigration status after arrests. New Orleans police have report- ed repeated assaults on Latino workers, often targeted because they tend to carry cash, and have appointed one bilingual outreach officer to help combat the crimes. “When I arrived to this city, the


city was destroyed. We rebuilt it,” said Dennis Soriano, a construc- tion worker and organizer with the Congress of Day Laborers, a local advocacy group founded af- ter Katrina. “Do you want us to go back?”


In the Lower Ninth


Nowhere is the shift more ap- parent than in the Lower Ninth Ward, a low-income neighbor- hood that suffered some of the worst flooding in the city. Of the roughly 5,000 residents who used to live here – almost all of whom were black – only a quarter have returned, according to an analy- sis by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. On a recent afternoon, John


Shiſting population Hispanics make up a larger share of the population in New Orleans than they did before Hurricane Katrina.


Percentage of population by race/ethnicity in New Orleans metro area:


BEFORE KATRINA


White 54.8%


African American 37.1


30.5


Hispanic 4.4


’00


AFTER KATRINA


59.9% 54.7% 34.5


Williams, 50, sat on an upside- down bucket inside the garage of the neighborhood auto repair shop where he has worked for more than two decades. Business has been so slow after the storm that it scaled back to just fixing tires. Fifteen dollars for a patch, $10 for a plug, and a dollar for air. Some days he can count the num- ber of customers on one hand. From his makeshift seat, Wil- liams surveyed the remains of the Lower Ninth. The once bustling convenience store across the street that became famous for its cheeky slogan – “You Can’t Beat Wagner’s Meat!” – is abandoned and dark. The house next door has been torn down, an empty lot of overgrown weeds in its place. The public bus doesn’t stop here anymore.


5.7 6.6 1.3 0.9 1.1


’06 ’07 ’08 ’09 1.2


1.2 Total population (in billions)


SOURCE: GNOCDC.org compilation of U.S. Census Bureau data


THE WASHINGTON POST


One of the few signs of life is a taco truck in his parking lot. Lati- no workers in paint-spattered jeans and work boots line up at the tiny window every day for fresh gorditas, tacos and burritos. In what has become a near- daily ritual, Marco Topete, 28, pulled up to the taco truck in his black sport-utility vehicle. Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina, he drove from Houston to New Orleans with about 30 other con- struction workers. There were no houses or hotels to stay in, so he slept under an interstate over- pass with other Latino workers in what became known as Bridge City. Now he is laying concrete for the avant garde homes being built in the Lower Ninth by a nonprofit funded by Brad Pitt. So far, 50 of the planned 150 have been completed, and a spokes- woman said another 25 are ex- pected before the end of the year. Meanwhile, Topete has settled in the more affluent neighborhood of Lakeview and three months ago brought his 18-year-old brother, Rogelio, to the city to work and go to school. “Even to this day, a lot of peo- ple do not understand the idea of Hispanics,” Topete said. “They have to get used to the idea that we are here to stay.” According to census data ana- lyzed by the New Orleans data center, the percentage of Hispan- ics in the New Orleans area jumped from 4.4 percent in 2000 to 6.6 percent last year. Advocacy groups put the figure at closer to 10 percent or more as many work- ers, fearful of interacting with the government, avoid being count- ed. The percentage of blacks fell from 37.1 percent to 34.5 percent, with the decline more pro- nounced in the city, where Afri- can Americans have long been the majority. Before Katrina, the growth of Hispanics in the nation’s major


A5


PHOTOS BY LINDA DAVIDSON/THE WASHINGTON POST


Hispanic workers hang out in the Ninth Ward. While the overall numbers of Hispanics in the city aren’t huge, they continue to grow and have had an outsize impact on the culture of this proudly eccentric city. For more photos, go to washingtonpost.com/katrina.


cities had largely bypassed New Orleans. The area never saw the dramatic housing and construc- tion bubble that attracted im- migrants to other cities, said Steve Striffler, a professor of Lat- in American studies at the Uni- versity of New Orleans. Anecdotally, some are now


leaving as reconstruction of the city has slowed and the economic downturn has taken its toll. But other immigrants say they have put down roots and discovered the delights of overstuffed po’ boys, Mardi Gras and Bourbon Street. On radio station WBOK, pro-


gram director Gerod Stevens fields calls daily from black lis- teners angry because they feel La- tinos have depressed their wages and snatched up their jobs. They are frustrated that the Lower Ninth Ward has yet to be rebuilt like neighborhoods populated by wealthier white residents.


The racial divide


There have been some at- tempts to bridge the divide. Lati- no advocacy groups have been guests on Stevens’s show. Soriano said blacks and Latinos share many of the same concerns post- Katrina, including employers who refuse to pay them after the work has been done. “Here in the South, no matter if you are Latino or African Amer- ican. You are a person of color,” he said. “There are a lot of people who don’t think you have rights.”


Federal taxpayer could foot bill for retrial blagojevich from A1


Illinois will collectively hold our noses and pay the bill if we have to, because everyone is entitled to a defense.” (It would actually be the peo- ple of all 50 states: Funds to pay lawyers for indigent federal de- fendants are appropriated by Congress and maintained by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts in Washington.)


Immense federal budget


The financial travails of an im- peached former governor — who piled up debt and whose family spent about $400,000 on clothes in seven years, according to gov- ernment calculations — might not elicit much sympathy. But they illustrate the vast difference in resources between the federal government and defendants, es- pecially those with government salaries and who might lack the funds for expensive lawyers. Other political figures have


faced financial troubles because of investigations that didn’t al- ways result in charges or convic- tions, including during the spate of independent-counsel inquiries in the 1990s. Bill and Hillary Rod- ham Clinton had to raise millions to contest Kenneth W. Starr’s $52million-plus probe of White- water and President Clinton’s re- lationship with Monica Lewin- sky. They were not criminally charged. “The government’s resources are unlimited. You’re talking about an army of investigators, a battalion. Whatever they need, they get,” said Cyril Wecht, a prominent Democrat and nation- ally known Pittsburgh forensic pathologist who was charged in 2006 with corruption relating to allegedly using his public coroner job to benefit his private practice. After a federal jury deadlocked on 41 counts, prosecutors said they would seek a retrial, but they eventually dropped the case. “It was horrible. It was con- stant pressure,” said Wecht, who said he mortgaged his house and


took out six-figure loans from his children to help pay about $11million in legal fees — and he still owes his attorneys $6.6mil- lion.


Blagojevich, who faces up to


five years in prison for lying, ac- cused the government of wasting money during an appearance Fri- day on “The Today Show.” “This is a persecution by a


prosecutor who for six years has targeted me,” Blagojevich said. “He has spent tens of millions of dollars trying to get me.” Asked whether another stint


on “The Celebrity Apprentice” or other reality TV shows is in his fu- ture, he said: “If the opportuni- ties are there, I will certainly take a look at it.” Blagojevich’s earlier appear- ance on the reality show and oth- er attention-grabbing stunts, such as performing Elvis imper- sonations for cash, often gave his case an element of the surreal. But advisers say Blagojevich, who is married with two children, was forced to do whatever he could to make money after being removed from office last year. “He has a family to raise, like


everybody else,” said his pub- licist, Glenn Selig. He said that the former governor has several entertainment-related projects in the works and that “if he can fig- ure out a way where taxpayers at least don’t have to pay for his side of this case, he’s going to do that.” But without more income, Bla-


gojevich can’t pay for his retrial defense, said Selig, adding that “it’s no secret to everyone that they are not known as savers.” The judge has set a hearing for Thursday to determine how to proceed. In the first trial, the judge, in an unusual arrangement, or- dered the clerk’s office at Chica- go’s federal courthouse to dis- burse the $2.7million Blagojev- ich used from his campaign treasury to pay his attorneys. That account is empty, clerk Mi- chael W. Dobbins said. If Blago- jevich can’t pay, he said, the judge will appoint publicly funded law-


yers for him at the rate of $125 an hour. That’s the same rate the judge had authorized for Blago- jevich’s first attorneys, who could be reappointed.


Cost estimates vary It is unclear how much Blago-


jevich’s seven-week trial cost. Dobbins said taxpayers shelled out $67,463 for the jury alone — which included transportation and meals — and Blagojevich’s at- torneys have speculated that the entire investigation cost between $25 million and $30 million. Randall Samborn, a spokes- man for U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, said his office does not break out individual cases’ costs. “Typically, the U.S. attorney’s of- fice returns more money to the federal treasury each year through collection of fines, forfei- tures and civil judgments than we spend.” A federal law enforcement offi- cial familiar with the case said the defense estimate had “come out of thin air” but acknowledged that the cost was in the millions. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said cost estimates are unfair because government offi- cials “get paid the same, regard- less of what they’re doing.” Assis- tant U.S. attorneys who are not supervisors are paid about $110,000 a year, and U.S. attor- neys are paid about $155,000, ac- cording to Justice Department figures. Steve Bunnell, a former Justice


Department public corruption prosecutor who is now a white- collar defense lawyer at O’Melve- ny & Myers, said defendants “al- ways feel like they are at a re- source disadvantage with the government, and to a certain ex- tent that’s almost always true.” High-profile cases such as Bla-


gojevich’s, he said, get “the Cadil- lac treatment” in resources. markonj@washpost.com


Staff researcher Eddy Palanzo contributed to this report.


Gloria Suazo, 47, watches her nephew at an apartment she shares with a co-worker in Metairie, La. They run a taco stand in the Lower Ninth Ward. Suazo came to the city about a year before Katrina.


But Stevens said many blacks


have rejected the idea, feeling that Latinos want to piggyback on the gains blacks have made af- ter hundreds of years of discrimi- nation. “Who has fought all of the civil rights, human rights battles since Day One? It’s been us,” said one angry caller, Edward Parker, 66. At the tire repair shop, Wil-


liams said he understands the animosity. But he doesn’t blame Latinos for going after jobs when others sat back and waited to see what would happen, he said. “They even work holidays. When you know an American wanna work on Christmas?” Wil- liams said. “I ain’t gonna work on Christmas.”


Williams doesn’t talk much to


the two Honduran women who work the taco truck. They don’t speak much English, and he speaks zero Spanish. He doesn’t know that Gloria Suazo, 47, ar- rived in New Orleans about a year before Katrina. Or that Pati Flores, 22, spent a month walking and a riding a bus to get from Honduras to New Orleans two years ago. Flores met her hus- band working at the taco truck and now is three months preg- nant. They don’t know that Williams is still trying to get back on his feet after the storm, recently moving with his wife into an apartment nearly an hour away by bus. He doesn’t have a car. His work boots are full of holes. “I’ve tightened my belt so much it’s falling apart,” Williams is fond of saying. Yet there is symbiosis. The taco truck pays Williams’s business $130 per week for the covered space, electricity, water and use of his bathroom. When he orders a quesadilla for lunch, they give it to him for free.


And when a car pulls into the parking lot, all three look to see whose customer it might be. muiy@washpost.com


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