Albert Ruesga Addresses the Funders and Donors at the Katrina@5 Conference

These remarks were made by GNOF President Albert Ruesga during last month’s Katrina@5, a conference hosted by the Association of Small Foundations. Members of the philanthropic community gathered to discuss the role philanthropy played in Gulf Coast recovery efforts. The Greater New Orleans Foundation was a sponsor of Katrina@5 and all GNOF program officers were program participants during the three-day conference.

Trumpeter Mario Abney welcoming guests at the GNOF reception.

Good afternoon and welcome friends to the City of Mystery, the Paris of the South, the Venice of the Gulf; The City That Care Forgot, The Birthplace of Jazz.

We just like to call it home.

My name is Albert Ruesga and I’m president & CEO of the Greater New Orleans Foundation.  We are the community foundation serving the 13-parish region that constitutes metropolitan New Orleans.

We’re so pleased and honored to have been one of the Katrina@5 partners.

For several years now we’ve been reinventing ourselves as an institution, adding to our role as philanthropic advisor to become more and more, we hope, a significant force for change in our region.

We have major programs in housing, the environment, community development, civic engagement, children and youth, and other areas.

We’re developing our work in what some call a social justice framework, looking at what we do through the lenses of race, gender, and other important social categories.  We do this because we believe it makes our work more effective.

I think it’s good for us to call to mind what it was that brought us together here in this remarkable place.

On August 23^rd of 2005, the world paid little attention to news of Tropical Depression Twelve which had formed over the southeastern Bahamas.  The next morning, it was upgraded to tropical storm status and dubbed “Katrina,” a name of Greek origin which ironically means “pure” or “purity.”

Just three days later, on the morning of August 27^th, the National Hurricane Center issued a hurricane watch for southeastern Louisiana, including New Orleans. The storm strengthened quickly after it entered the Gulf, attaining Category 5 status on the morning of August 28^th with maximum sustained winds of 175 mph.

It was a super monster killer bearing down on the people of New Orleans.

Residents were ordered to evacuate the city.  Many-some among them who had experienced big hurricanes before and survived-decided to stay and wait out the passage of the storm.  Some wanted to leave but couldn’t.  Those who left and those who stayed, waited and watched.

New Orleanians who were carefully tracking Katrina on television or listening to their radios told me they breathed a sigh of relief on August 29^th when it became clear the storm would not score a direct hit on New Orleans but would rather bypass the city and make landfall further east.  It had unfortunately devastated Louisiana’s southeastern parishes and was now devastating a large area to the northeast, but it had spared the City of New Orleans.

Then the levees broke.

There were 53 levee breaches in the federally built levee system protecting New Orleans, putting 80 percent of the city under water.  The floods devastated tens of thousands of homes and other structures. We lost two thousand souls to the storm. The water covered whole neighborhoods in some areas, with nothing breaking the surface to indicate that life had once stirred underneath.

What has shaped the City of New Orleans since the time of Katrina has been the heroism of countless people-of every class and color-who have used all the means at their disposal to save their neighbors from the floods.  There were some who lost everything and, seeing that the government could not or would not live up to its most basic responsibilities, took it upon themselves to rebuild their neighborhoods and their lives as best they could.

I’m ashamed to admit that during the time of Katrina, New Orleans became for me a kind of screen onto which I projected my own prejudices about the South, my caricatures of powerless victims and heartless government officials, my self-righteousness about matters of race.

I was grateful when New Orleans finally became for me a mirror rather a screen, when I could understand my own complicity in the events that were unfolding on my TV screen many miles away in Washington, DC.

I hope that while we’re here, we’ll allow ourselves to live in the moment of this “impossible but inevitable city,” as one commentator called it; that we’ll learn from one another in the spirit of love and mutual respect.

I hope each of us will sense the new spirit of anticipation and optimism that permeates so many quarters of this city.  I pray we’ll catch the hints of what this great city is whispering to us, and see what it’s trying to show us, whether through the windows of our tour busses or through the bottoms of our martini glasses.

So a very, very warm welcome to all, and thank you so, so much for opening your hearts to us.

ASF members enjoyed the view from the balcony of the Pontalba Apartments at a reception hosted by the Greater New Orleans Foundation.