Erander Guss-Lee, a security guard, stood outside an auditorium in New Orleans one night this week, hearing fragments of a documentary about Hurricane Katrina that was being screened: Clips of news anchors in the days after the storm, straining to describe the destruction and human suffering. Tearful recollections. Saxophones sounding mournful but defiant notes.
Ms. Guss-Lee just wanted to go home. She was proud of her city — no question. But she was not eager to relive Katrina and all the misery that followed.
“We’re still here,” she said. “Believe that.”
New Orleans had survived, which was not necessarily a given in those early days and weeks after the devastating storm. The city looked as if it had been annexed by the Gulf of Mexico, thousands of people were languishing in a damaged Superdome that had become “a shelter of last resort,” and a sluggish and chaotic federal response stoked fears that they had been forgotten.
But as the city marks the 20th anniversary of Katrina this week, mere survival, for many residents, does not feel like enough.
After the flood and the trauma, New Orleans was flush with financial resources, big ideas and hope that some of its worst and most pernicious problems might have washed away for good. The city might not only stagger back to life, but get better governance, better flood protection, better schools, better police. Two decades later, much of that hope has gone unrealized.