{"id":5832,"date":"2006-09-15T19:14:16","date_gmt":"2006-09-15T19:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/rebuilding-new-orleans.html"},"modified":"2006-09-15T19:14:16","modified_gmt":"2006-09-15T19:14:16","slug":"rebuilding-new-orleans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/rebuilding-new-orleans.html","title":{"rendered":"Rebuilding New Orleans"},"content":{"rendered":"

…the Vietnamese angle:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

A drive through eastern New Orleans can be thoroughly depressing. Abandoned businesses with shattered signs and homes with punched-out windows line silent streets. <\/p>\n

It can be difficult for outsiders to get their bearings in this part of the city because there has been no concerted effort to replace many of the street signs that Hurricane Katrina ripped away. <\/p>\n

All that changes, though, in the neighborhood surrounding Mary Queen of Vietnam Catholic Church. Cars line the streets, homes are occupied, and 3,000 people show up for Mass on Sundays. <\/p>\n

"I would say that we’re about 65 percent returned," said the Rev. Vien The Nguyen, the church’s pastor and the de facto leader of the city’s heavily Catholic Vietnamese community. <\/p>\n

"We do have a plan," he said. "Our plan is to return, reclaim, rebuild." <\/p>\n

And, like people in other recovering neighborhoods, the residents of the area known as Village de l’Est aren’t waiting for any government group to produce a plan of action. <\/p>\n

"We are libertarians in a sense," Nguyen, 42, said. "Our request for the government is to get out of the way. If you offer us help, we appreciate that, but don’t impede us." <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Via Eve<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…the Vietnamese angle: A drive through eastern New Orleans can be thoroughly depressing. Abandoned businesses with shattered signs and homes with punched-out windows line silent streets. It can be difficult for outsiders to get their bearings in this part of the city because there has been no concerted effort to replace many of the street…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nRebuilding New Orleans - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/rebuilding-new-orleans.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Rebuilding New Orleans - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"…the Vietnamese angle: A drive through eastern New Orleans can be thoroughly depressing. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}