NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The view from Kinh Nguyen’s front door these days is nothing like the “abandoned cemetery” she saw upon returning to her New Orleans neighborhood two months after Hurricane Katrina.

Gone are the blue tarps and plywood boards that covered storm-damaged homes in Village de l’Est, a mostly Vietnamese-American neighborhood. Nguyen’s lawn, which turned dark brown after briny floodwaters killed her grass, is now a lush green. Streets once littered with storm debris are as clean and pothole-free as any in the city.

“They’re all back,” Nguyen, a 45-year-old mother of four, said of her neighbors. “Every home looks nicer, newer.”

Village de l’Est’s rebound has been a remarkable success story in this misery-stricken city. At the same time, for better or worse, the hurricane has brought profound political and cultural change to the community.

Amazing, simply amazing, the work that can be done, the stride that was taken, the initiative shown and the accomplishments these folks realized, in New Orleans of all places, a city that was inundated by Katrina, a city that for the most part, still sits in ruin, many sections a veritable ghost town…

But the Vietnamese community is clean, fresh, attractive and thriving, doesn’t that strike you as a wonderful picture of the Great American Success Story?? It does me and I tip my hat to those folks for their hard work and proud spirit…

Language and cultural barriers long kept Vietnamese-Americans on the sidelines of the city’s civic scene after they began flocking to New Orleans upon the fall of Saigon in 1975. Since Katrina, however, they have been emerging as a force in a city where politics is customarily viewed in black-and-white terms.

“In a short period of time, they’ve had a major impact in the community,” said Jefferson Parish Councilman John Young, who represents a New Orleans suburb with a significant Vietnamese population.

The Vietnamese can and do adapt to a new environment quite well, and in rapid fashion, they work in a fluid situation better than any group of people I have ever seen and I am guessing that they are going to become a force to be reckoned with in the New Orleans and Orleans parish government in the near future, and I have to say, I think that’s a wonderful emergence of community and dedication on their part…

An estimated 90 percent of the 25,000 Vietnamese-Americans who lived in southeastern Louisiana before Katrina had returned within two years of Katrina’s onslaught, according to community leaders. They were among the first to start rebuilding their homes and reopening their businesses, and their community is recovering much more rapidly than some other parts of New Orleans.

Like many of her neighbors, Kinh Nguyen didn’t wait for the government’s help to repair her home, a modest, ranch-style house. She moved her family back in in March 2006, about 18 months before she received a federal housing grant.

And now I have to ask the really big question, WHY in the HELL haven’t the CHOCOLATES in New Orleans done the same thing??

You’ll need to read the rest of this story to see for yourself what the Vietnamese people of New Orleans have done to help themselves and see how they did it, and in MY opinion, if they can do the job that they have done, with minimal federal help, without the BILLIONS that the CHOCOLATES believe that they are owed and entitled to, then anyone that WANTS TO can do the same thing, IF they have the initiative and motivation in them…

But the CHOCOLATES that inhabit New Orleans don’t have that drive and determination, the CHOCOLATES of New Orleans are professional welfare slugs, the CHOCOLATES of New Orleans wouldn’t throw a bucket of water if their house was on fire, but the CHOCOLATES of New Orleans will sit back and complain about how the federal government ignores them because they are CHOCOLATES, well, that’s not the truth of it, the feds have ignored New Orleans because of WHAT it is, corruption incarnate, and that corruption is not all because of New Orleans being a CHOCOLATE city, New Orleans was corrupt long before any CHOCOLATE came to power, but if they didn’t help the Vietnamese rebuild and the Vietnamese were able to rebuild on their own, bigger and better in many cases, WHY can’t the CHOCOLATES in New Orleans get off of their lazy CHOCOLATE asses and do the same??

Anyone?? Bueller??

And for damn sure, the CHOCOLATES can’t say it’s because the Vietnamese are rich, white and Republican, it’s because the CHOCOLATES aren’t going to do anything other than be CHOCOLATES, that’s all they know how to be…

Full Story Here:
Vietnamese Rebound in New Orleans

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