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Posted Aug. 13, 2007 –New Orleans’ lower Ninth Ward is longing for the folks who called it home to return.  This weekend, I toured the desolate neighborhood and witnessed firsthand the lack of progress two long years after the storm.

The Links, Incorporated, an international organization of African American women, of which I’m a member, came to see the only health-care facility up and operating in the community.  The Lower Ninth Ward Health Clinic is housed in one of the few residences that have been renovated.

The clinic is the brainchild of two nurses, Alice Craft-Kerney, founder Program Director Patricia Berryhill, both of whom have deep roots in the community. The clinic is supported by donations to Common Ground, a non-profit foundation.     

Robin Barclay, a member of  the Links, donated more than a half-million dollars in hospital equipment to the facility.  “When I saw what these two women were doing, I just wanted to help; they’re running a class-act operation down here,” she told me.

This week will be a hot spot for visits to the clinic.  I ran into Hill staffers on Saturday who were prepping for a congressional delegation of 15, led by House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.)

The Dems are touring the Gulf Region for three days to assess the impact of legislation they passed in the 110th Congress.  They may be disappointed with what they find. 
 
The number of trailers is just an outward sign of how slow the progress has been.  Blue tarps cover damaged roofs that wind and water can still penetrate; the local’s call them “FEMA roofs.” 

 Trailers sit in front of homes with old water line marks, and doors and windows are missing or boarded up.  Most lots where homes once stood are vacant with grass more than two feet high. 

Shopping centers look like ghost towns and are a clear sign that life is far from normal for the families trying to rebuild their homes and live in such deplorable conditions.

Today will be the first day of school for some 600 students in the Ninth Ward when Rev. Martin Luther King Elementary opens.  The school has been refurbished following eight months of renovations.

 The stage wall in the cafeteria that doubles as an auditorium has a large black-and-white mural of King.  Doris Hicks , who has been principal at the school for 13 years, said she the school’s roof was all you could see after the storm.  “The only thing that wasn’t damaged at all was the picture of Martin Luther King,” she told me.

New Orleans city councilwoman Cynthia Willard Lewis (D), who represents the Ninth Ward, pleaded from the stage as King peered at her from the portrait on the wall,  “Please tell the story – the work had not been done yet.”