The city of New Orleans marked the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina with dozens of events across the city. While some spent the day grieving for lost loved ones, others are demanding the return of basic services like schools, hospitals and in some places electricity and running water, and the ability to return. Christian Roselund is in New Orleans.

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By Christian Roselund

One year later, the city of New Orleans is largely in ruins. Not only are whole neighborhoods empty of the sounds of life, but in many places public services such as hospitals, schools, and even grocery stores have not been restored. Parts of the lower 9th ward are still without electricity and running water, which makes it so that residents cannot receive FEMA trailers. Patricia Jones of the Neighborhood Empowerment Network says this is keeping many from returning.

By Christian Roselund

New Orleans plans to fix its broken criminal justice system. Christian Roselund reports.

The team of city and state officials who gathered today in New Orleans spoke mostly about plans to rebuild infrastructure such as courts and jails damaged in hurricane Katrina and providing better coordination between various elements of the criminal justice system. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin:

[Mayor Ray Nagin]: “Courtrooms, prisons and other facilities in the criminal justice system were destroyed or heavily damaged. All of which severely limited , if not totally prevented, the ability to administer criminal justice in the city of New Orleans.”

By Doug Cunningham

New Orleans Worker Resource Center--created by the Laborers union and SEIU--is offering Katrina victims job training an placement in New Orleans. The Laborers will train workers in construction, demolition and mold remediation.

By Christian Roselund

The first post-Katrina election in New Orleans results in a runoff election in May to elect a city government.Incumbent Mayor Ray Nagin finished first yesterday with a comfortable nine-point lead on Mitch Landrieu, but far short of the fifty percent needed to win the race outright. Nagin reacted to his success with
humor.

[Ray Nagin]: "I stand here before you a humble man, someone who never
thought that I would have this kind of support, after some of the
crazy things I've said."

New Orleans Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman won re-election easily,
despite a scandal over his failure to evacuate New Orleans' parish

A new Louisiana law will protect the voting rights of displaced New Orleans residents. Christian Roselund has the story.

By Christian Roselund

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco is expected to sign into law SB 22 and HB 12. The two bills will allow more voters to vote absentee and also set up satellite voting centers in ten parishes. Lawmakers say the intent of these bills is to allow those displaced to continue to vote in local elections where they lived before the storm. In New Orleans alone there three hundred thousand fewer people living in the city than before Katrina. HB 12 had initially been defeated, triggering a walkout by the Louisiana Black Caucus. But an amended version of the bill passed on Wednesday. Gov. Kathleen Blanco told local press this week that she couldn't say the effort to keep the displaced from voting was not racially motivated. Joe Cook, Executive Director of ACLU Louisiana, explains the importance of these measures.

By Christian Roselund

In a last minute legal battle to stop bulldozing of flood damaged properties in the lower ninth ward, lawyers from the Grassroots Legal Network and the Loyola Law Clinic won a temporary victory against a city administration which they was attempting to rush the process of home demolitions at a time when few residents were around to question what is happening. City inspectors have declared up to five thousand homes unsafe to enter in New Orleans, most of those in the city's lower ninth ward. Two thousand five hundred were scheduled to be destroyed after Christmas. Steve Bradbury of ACORN, a plaintiff in the case, says that while many of these homes are damaged beyond repair displaced homeowners are not being adequately informed.

By Jesse Russell

7,500 New Orleans public school employees will be fired on January 31 and cut off from catastrophic coverage that was originally supposed to run out in June. The New Orleans Public School system was originally offering furloughed workers health insurance to assist the employees, but when 102 of the 117 schools in the system were put in a so-called "recovery district" controlled by the state, the district no longer had the finances available to do so. Many of the employees will find jobs within the state controlled schools.

By Doug Cunningham

While the most economically disadvantaged parts of new Orleans are still piled high with trash and are not yet getting adequate rebuilding action, progress is being made in housing workers who are doing the rebuilding. Bert Santos of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades is working to rebuild New Orleans.

[Bert Santos 1] : "With the work at the shipyards down here - Avondale and we also have an industrial contractor with a connection so he's actually got places for them to stay. So a lot of these people that we had nowhere to put 'em, now we're able to put them to work and house them - both the out of towners and the local people down here."

By Jesse Russell

The Bush administration has chosen to reinstate the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage law. The federal law requires companies awarded federal contracts pay the prevailing wage in a region, Bush had suspended the law in the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The administration had been assaulted for the decision by community groups and labor unions. Bill Samuels is legislative director for the AFL-CIO.

[Samuels]: The reaction was overwhelmingly bipartisan, there was republicans in the House as well as just about every democrat in the Congress who strongly opposed the President's move.