ABSTRACT
At midnight on New Year's Eve, four families stood in front of their houses on Jourdan Avenue in the deepest part of the now infamous Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. The fog was everywhere as it collected from the Mississippi River only blocks away and from the Industrial Canal a mere few feet away from what was left of a limping and failed levee. With them were ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) organizers and leaders who had worked to see this night come after four months of fighting all comers since the storms. After Katrina, the entire area had increasingly been written off, seeming to go down for the count time after time, yet now it was spiritedly bouncing back.
