KSG Team Brings DC Savvy to Rebuilding

NEW ORLEANS—One was a lobbyist on Capitol Hill. Another once analyzed policy for the New York City Council. A third helped a candidate win a mayoral race in St. Paul, Minn.

All first-years at the Kennedy School of Government, they spent their spring break in a trailer parked on a lot off South Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans.

The rush of activity bore all the marks of a grassroots campaign. But these students were not promoting a politician. They wanted to help rebuild New Orleans, starting with one neighborhood called Broadmoor.

“Victory for us is the return of Broadmoor to normalcy, not to be elected,” said Jonathan S. Lachman, 27, the former lobbyist.

Using the tactics they learned on campaign trails or Capitol Hill, they worked along with roughly two dozen Kennedy School students and staff members to craft a plan to revive the neighborhood. But the outcome of their efforts may depend, ultimately, on the results of the upcoming mayoral election.

‘BROADMOOR LIVES’

Near the trailer, yard signs advertised the uphill campaign for this neighborhood’s survival. The optimistic words—“BROADMOOR LIVES”—were ironically staked in front of houses once flooded and in need of gutting. Broadmoor lies at the bottom of the bowl of New Orleans, and after Hurricane Katrina it took on seven feet of water in some parts.

Like New Orleans, Broadmoor’s population was 68 percent African American before the storm, and it suffered from the geographical segregation that had grown since the violent integration of public schools four decades ago. Broadmoor is a representative sliver of the Crescent City.

That’s why Doug C. Ahlers, a fellow at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, who led the volunteers, chose to place them in Broadmoor, rather than the better-known Lower Ninth Ward or the French Quarter.

“There’s the poor, there’s poverty, there’s drugs, there’s crime, an ailing public school, six to seven feet of water,” Ahlers said, ticking off from his mental list.

Broadmoor—like the rest of New Orleans—wants to be reborn. But first, it must submit a proposal to the Bring New Orleans Back Commission, a group of community experts and prominent ex-New Orleanians appointed by the mayor to shape the face of the rebuilt city.

The students hope that Broadmoor’s plan, which they helped draft over the course of the week, will provide a model for other areas in need of brainpower and guidance.

‘EACH ONE, REACH ONE’

The Broadmoor volunteers proposed the residents follow an “each one, reach one” model to find out how many residents plan to return to their homes—a statistic that the commission needs to determine the neighborhood’s viability.

Under the model, “block captains” would seek out local leaders, find out how many people they knew who planned to come back, and, most importantly, urge former residents to return.

“It’s essentially sort of using your base to talk to the undecided folks,” said Emma G. Greenman, a KSG student. “Howard Dean did that sort of ‘each one, reach one’ type of thing. I think it happens all over the country. That’s what a lot of really good local and state politicians do.”

Much of the need for the personal approach stems from the difficulty of the sale. New Orleanians living out of state have little reason to come back to destroyed homes in a city where jobs and vital infrastructure are lacking.

“So you go to your base, you mobilize them, you engage them, you train them,” Greenman said. “You’re going to the people who are there and you’re reaching out to the people who are having reservations about coming back. … A lot of it is just saying there’s 22 people on our block, and seven of them are back, and you can come back too.”

DECISIONS DEFERRED

But New Orleanians say they’re delaying decisions to rebuild or even to return until the mayor is chosen.

“Everything depends on the timing of the elections,” said Ahlers, who lives in the city and owns a restaurant there.

Residents will narrow down a list of more than 20 candidates on April 22, and the final vote will be May 20.

Incumbent Mayor C. Ray Nagin is defending his seat.

Many residents said that Hurricane Katrina changed any goodwill Nagin had won for efforts to kill corruption in the city. Nagin was conspicuously absent from the public eye right when New Orleanians needed reassurance after the storm.

And at a speech in January meant to commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr., Nagin called New Orleans a “chocolate” city. “This city will be a majority African-American city,” he said, according to The Times-Picayune, the city’s newspaper. “It’s the way God wants it to be.”

If Nagin isn’t reelected, some Broadmoor residents speculated, the Bring New Orleans Back Commission could be swept aside and the work of the volunteers voided since the commission is his brainchild.

A CAPTAIN IN TRAINING

Though their efforts are plagued by uncertainty, residents embraced the recommendations of the Harvard volunteers.

On Saturday morning, some 25 residents trickled into the trailer to learn how to be block captains from students nearly half their age. One 42-year-old, Frederica A. Anderson, had been recruited by a student.

Anderson has held off on finding a job until a time when the reconstruction is more complete, so block captain duties fit into her schedule.

Contractors have nearly completed wiring her green house. She and her 8-year-old son, Trenton, have been living in her yard, in a trailer provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. She hopes her home will be ready to live in by June 1, the approximate start of hurricane season.

“I want to see the city rebuild and come back,” she said. She pinned a blue button to her shirt—“BROADMOOR BLOCK CAPTAIN”—and sat still to listen to the students.

—Staff writer April H.N. Yee can be reached at aprilyee@fas.harvard.edu.