“I sure need something to come through,” he said. “I used to get a lot of work done.”

Greenleaf, a day laborer , stood in the blazing sun in the parking lot of the Lowe’s store in Elysian Fields on Friday, hoping a passing car will stop and ask him to work.

On a busy day, more than 150 day laborers – or “subcontractors” – like Greenleaf gather in home-store parking lots and on street corners around New Orleans, waving at moving cars. The gatherings developed after Hurricane Katrina, when a steep increase in building created work for hundreds of day laborers.

The scene is played out across the city, not just at Lowe’s, but at places like the Home Depot on Carrollton Avenue, where on Friday a couple of dozen men lined the fences outside the store parking lot.

At each corner and lot, construction bosses and private homeowners cross paths with the day laborers, who stand out with their tanned skin, paint-stained clothes and baseball caps. Loud hums from cars, buses and trucks combine with the faint smell of gasoline and alcohol. With every car comes the possibility of a meal, with every driver the possibility of a day’s work.

Greenleaf said he sleeps less than blocks away from where he waits for work. He makes his bed under the I-10 overpass near the Elysian Fields exit. He said he drove commercial trucks for 30 years, until 2006. Greenleaf, who is originally from Bayou Lafourche, in Lafourche, La., said he stopped driving trucks after his license expired.

Shortly after Katrina hit, he turned to the street corners for day work, averaging about $100 a day. The work is usually manual labor, digging, painting, and landscaping. Prices vary: Painting a medium sized room is usually $75, digging, $100 to $200, and plumbing, $200 to $300.

Sometimes, drivers have other requests. “I don’t turn nothing down,” said Greenleaf, who said he has, at times, been offered money for sex.

At Lowe’s, every hour or so cars pull up to the corner. A hand motion by the driver denotes how many workers are needed. At one point on Friday, despite the hand signal – three fingers for three workers – at least seven workers run up to each stopped car begging for work. Chaos quickly ensued, but eventually the driver made his choice and speed off.

Greenleaf said the majority of people who hire him and others are kind, often providing workers food and water. “The majority treat you well,” he said.

However, some employers take advantage of workers by refusing to pay them after the work. To address these concerns, outreach workers visit the day laborers’ sites. Six days a week at 8 a.m., Jacinta Gonzalez picks up fellow outreach worker Dennis Soriano. The two work for the New Orleans Worker’s Center for Racial Justice in a department known as the “Congress of Day Laborers.” Gonzalez and Soriano work on educating laborers about their rights and organizing them into grassroots movements. “The members decide what they want to work on,” Soriano said. Education can mean training in people’s homes as well as workshops on worker’s rights.

Getting legislation passed that will make it illegal to withhold payment from laborers is currently his organization’s primary goal, Soriano said.

Meanwhile at Lowe’s, some of the workers find rest in the cool shadows under trees, solemnly looking at the ground. Others laugh the wait away, smiling at passing cars. If they don’t find work, most will not eat. Sometimes they will find places giving away food, such as churches. Other times, they must nap the hunger away.

Work used to be steady, Greenleaf said. But these days, people seemed to have stopped building and renovating their homes as much.

“I used to be on this lot for less than5 minutes before I found work,” Greenleaf said.

And so, he waits.

At the time of his interview, he had been outside for almost three hours without work.

“The city has let people down,”  she said. “They told us to come back. But what have they done?”

On Thursday night, William attended a city-sponsored event aimed at improving New Orleans East’s image as a dilapidated and largely abandoned neighborhood. Dubbed the “State of New Orleans East,” the two-and-half-hour presentation at City Cathedral attracted more than 1,400 people and carried a message that New Orleans East residents want to rebuild.

Fourteen panelists representing several key industries in New Orleans East outlined detailed plans to help bring people, businesses and investors into the area. CNN reporter Tom Foreman moderated the event.

Audience members heard about strategies to reopen the area’s hospital, attract investors, fight crime, improve schools, reconnect  utilities and construct a new shopping center.

“This message is a national message: New Orleans East is thriving and doing well,” said Shermin Copelin, president of the New Orleans East Business Association (NOEBA) and a key organizer of the event.

Methodist Hospital, which was severely damaged during Hurricane Katrina, is set to  reopen by December 2011 at the earliest, and early 2012 at the latest, said Fred Young, president of Methodist Health System Foundation. He said the reopened hospital would employee 415 new staff members, who will make an average of $50,000 annually. While some whispers in the audience could be heard criticizing the project’s timeline, Young’s announcements were met with loud applause.

Melanie Hall, director of communication for Energy New Orleans, said power lines will be added to surrounding areas not currently fully serviced.

The city also plans to develop a recycling station in the area, said D’Juan Hernandez, a representative from Sun Energy Group. “We think we can bring recycling back to New Orleans.”

Alicia Plummer, vice president of NOEBA, summed up city officials’ messages. “East New Orleans is ready and open for business.”

The night’s agenda also included plans to decrease crime. “I’m not going to rest until we get our murder rates down to near zero,” said Leon Cannizzaro, Orleans Parish district attorney. Cannizzaro said he and his staff plan to work closely with the community to investigate crimes in the area as well as work on rehabilitating nonviolent offenders and juvenile offenders.

Officials also hope to work on maintaining local schools, said Woody Koppel, president from the Orleans Parish School Board.

A deal to build a shopping center on  the site of Lake Forest Plaza is also in the works. Cesar Burgos, a  lawyer  who serves on the mayor’s “Bring New Orleans Back” commission, said he hopes to replace the plaza with an outlet mall. The audience responded to his plan with shouts of “Yes!”

Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis summarized public sentiment at Thursday’s meeting saying, “We don’t want what we had in the past. We want better!”

Despite the optimism of city officials, residents admitted some skepticism after the meeting, Evelyn Bickham said, “We’re hoping – that’s all we can do is hope” that officials will fulfill their promises.

“Shreveport was bad,” said Ali Shabazz, a New Orleans resident. “They weren’t ready for us. We have been to the Katrina hell in the dome, and we’ve been to the hell outside of shelters.”

At a New Orleans City Council meeting Tuesday, officials unveiled a plan designed to get residents out of harm’s way and into better shelters. Representatives from emergency services  offices outlined a comprehensive hurricane evacuation proposal, the City Assisted Evacuation Plan. 

Councilman Arnie Fielkow and Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis conducted the meeting with Kristy Nicholas, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Social Services; Jerry Sneed, director of the city’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness; and Kernels Cliff Oliver and Patrick Santos, coastguards.  

The meeting was a collective effort by officials to get residents’ input for this year’s hurricane plans. Residents such as Shabazz complained that last year shelters lacked adequate food, space and security. 

“The state has a lesson learned from Gustav,” Sneed said. “We have pulled together as a city to make sure problems are addressed.”

At the meeting, officials introduced a new system that will allow residents to register for evacuation and financial assistance online. Officials also released several concrete details, including Mayor Ray Nagin’s plan to call a mandatory city evacuation 60 hours before any category three or higher hurricane. According to the city, it is ready to shuttle more than 29,000 people to various states including Texas and Georgia.

Seventeen bus pick-up points will be set up in and around New Orleans to help residents leave the city, Sneed said.  The city also announced that it will use school buses as back-up transportation if chartered buses don’t arrive in time.

Sneed said that residents who need special assistance leaving the city should register with the city. Those who registered for special help last year remain in the system.

Oliver outlined how residents in need would receive Emergency Disaster Food Stamps. Applications for the stamps will be available online at the Louisiana Department of Social Services’ Web site, dss.state.la.us.

The city also introduced a new way for residents to trace their loved ones. Before boarding buses, people will fill out registration forms ensuring that a paper trail of individual destinations exists. “We want to make sure it goes orderly,” Oliver said. 

In response to horror stories of last year’s shelter conditions, Joshua Gill, a director from the department of social services, said residents will be guaranteed specific conditions such as: 30 feet of sleeping space, three meals a day and resources to communicate with their families. 

Kernel Oliver said a five-year shelter improvement plan is also in the works to ensure the efficient use of existing shelters, the creation of new shelters and the renovation of existing facilities.

“We want to make sure people can have the comfortable and sanitary conditions that they deserved,”  Willard-Lewis said.

Four years after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the Lower Ninth Ward, where she lived, and two years after her 19-year-old brother was fatally shot, Smothers readied herself to file into New Hope Baptist Church in New Orleans. She had finally fulfilled her brother’s last wish: She was graduating as valedictorian; she was not a victim.

“It made me want success even more, seeing everything we worked for go down the drain,” she said. “We didn’t quit. We didn’t give up. We didn’t drop out after the storm, after everything we lost.”

With diplomas in hand, the Class of 2009, the Katrina Class, celebrated the end of four turbulent years.

Their stories, of high school freshmen thrust into Hurricane Katrina, are riddled with frequent transfers, periods out of school and long journeys home.

On Friday afternoon, loud choruses of happy laughter filled New Hope Baptist as nearly 400 family members and friends of George Washington Carver High School’s graduating class packed the small church’s pews and aisles. Students, in hunter green caps and gowns, happily strolled across a makeshift stage in front of the pulpit.

Latecomers, who in a rush double-parked their cars, were shunted into the balcony, babies and balloons in hand. Many leaned over the railing to get a view of the seniors.

Smothers, 17, had fled New Orleans the Saturday before Katrina, just two weeks after her first day at New Technology High School. Four months later, she returned to Louisiana from school in Texas, attending in succession Old Perry Walker High School, Sarah T. Reed High School, and finally Carver.

“We lost everything, but I wouldn’t let that bring me down,” Smothers said. “To see on the news, how my neighborhood and houses were gone. It was emotional but instead of me crying and being bad and fighting in school I turned it around to being a good thing.”

Councilwoman Cynthia Willard-Lewis, George Washington Carver’s commencement speaker, summed up the students’ experience.

“This is the first graduating class that has withstood the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, that survived mandatory evacuations for Hurricane Gustav, that excelled despite the fact that they had to study in toxic FEMA trailers that got moved from one city to another city, that lost their friends, that lost their loved ones. But they never lost their desire to succeed and to achieve.”

Brodrick Antoine, Smother’s classmate at Carver, spent a week after the storm with his mother, younger sister and older brother living in their Chevy Suburban outside New Orleans. “We were stuffed up in there-packed in.”

After a week of homelessness, they tried to return to their Gentilly home. They made it as far as one of the bridges into the city. “We sat on the bridge for a minute, and the water was rising up so we went back. It was like at the bumper of a car, and after awhile the water was over the hood,” he said.

Reality set in after four hours on the bridge.

“Life is very short,” he said.

His family settled in Ohio, where he attended school for four months. He returned to Carver High to start his sophomore year.

For Smothers, adjustment to school in Texas came quickly. Within weeks, she rose to the top of her class.

Others did not make out so well.

Nicolas Bijou, 18, vividly remembers fighting his way through school in Houston. One afternoon, a group of students from New Orleans confronted a group of Texas students after a white student called a black student from New Orleans “the N-word.”

“Conflict, I would say, arose just because we were there,” he said.

Soon after, he moved to Slidell, La., where he enrolled in school. Eventually, he made it back to St. Augustine High School in New Orleans, an all-male predominately black high school, for his junior year. His Katrina lessons remain with him.

“It’s a ‘been there, done that’ type of thing,” he said. “It’s like if you can overcome Katrina, the worst natural disaster to happen on American soil, if you can overcome such a big obstacle, there’s no telling how many milestones or obstacles you can surpass.”

Most students found that friends drew them back.

“We always kept in touch from state to state,” Smothers said. “We all came back together.”

“These kids cried every day begging their parents to bring them back,” said Paula Lincoln, an administrator at South Plaquemines High School. “Their parents lived in FEMA trailers so these kids could come back to school. We wouldn’t have had a high school if it wasn’t for this class.”

Lakein Andry of Buras found her way back from Nacogdoches, Texas. She left two days before the storm.

On the trip to Texas, Andry, 17, sat in the passenger side of her mother’s 1999 blue Chevy Cavalier watching people frantically call loved ones. The 24-hour drive to Texas – it usually takes seven – passed slowly.

“The ride was horrible,” said Andry. “I thought I was in a dream and I really wanted to be in a dream but it wasn’t.”

Then a freshman at Buras High School, she learned the storm was coming at her school’s jamboree, an exhibition football game against the school’s traditional rival.

“It makes me feel really sad that Katrina took a lot of my friends and family away, but it’s getting better now,” said Andry, who attended three schools before landing at South Plaquemines. “I have new friends.”

Some of her new friends now were students who sat in the bleachers across the field from her at the jamboree.

South Plaquemines has become home to students from three schools: Buras High School, Port Sulphur High school and Boothville-Venice High School. After Katrina, South Plaquemines opened as a consolidated school offering area students a chance to return home.

At first, it operated as three schools in one, said Lincoln. Eventually, the ice broke. “They worked that out themselves – this class,” Lincoln said. “They just got to know each other. They bonded and became one class. They set a precedent that is one school.”

Last Friday, just before entering New Hope Baptist Church, Smothers reflected on her late brother’s dreams for her.

“My brother always told me that he wanted to see me graduate at the top of my class,” she said. But in 2007, a gunman killed Dorrel Williams.

“I’m turning it into something good. Instead of me crying, I’m going to smile,” she said.

Smothers now has her own dreams to fulfill. Next year, she will be a freshman at Southern University majoring in criminal justice. She hopes to become a lawyer.

Attempting to hold back tears, Smothers entered the church through a space created by Carver supporters who cheered on her class.

“We made it,” she said just moments before the processional. “That’s what makes us so different.”

When I didn’t arrive at my apartment by midnight – I was scheduled to be in by 10 p.m. – my roommate Facebook messaged me, “Are you OK?” I was, just delayed two hours in Atlanta where I sat on a dirty carpet reminiscing about old friends and a new phase in my life.

But then it happened – I started coughing. It came suddenly, perhaps a consequence of new surroundings. Regardless of what triggered it, the cough, it hasn’t stopped since.

When I boarded the plane I thought for sure I’d be over my newfound sickness. I went to sleep, leaning on the plane window hoping the terrible itch in my throat would go away. It didn’t. I woke myself up coughing and watched our plane land in New Orleans through watery eyes. I’ve never had allergies.

I tried to hide it the first day, silently holding in my coughs as muffled sounds. It’ll go away, I thought.  Instead, the coughs – which come about every 10 minutes – have spread to other participants. My hidden muffles of the first day have turned into a chorus of coughs as other participants have developed “my allergies.” Hopefully my fellow participants won’t hold it against me. Hopefully, I won’t be remembered as the girl who spread her cough but rather as the one who eagerly worked through it, making special stops at Rite Aid to purchase a bottle big enough for everyone to share.

Crowds gather for the Royal Street Stroll, known for its antiques, fine art and live jazz, on May 19. The stroll, part of the New Orleans Wine & Food Experience, is also celebrated with the 60th anniversary of the Hotel Monteleone. (Kenneth Hawkins/NYT Institute)

Despite tough economic times and brief periods of rain, hundreds of people strolled in and out of various  businesses Thursday evening cradling half-filled wine glasses on what many called a typical day in New Orleans.

The ninth annual Royal Street Stroll, a major event of the weeklong New Orleans Wine and Food Experience, brought together locals  and out-of-towners to celebrate two New Orleans traditions: good food and good music. Proceeds from the event will go to several charities: Last year, the event raised  more than $125,000 for local organizations.

“I think it’s very therapeutic for the people that live here – for us to be able to come out and just come together and not have to worry about the everyday things,” said Tara Ridgdell, a registered nurse from New Orleans who has attended the event  since 2003.

Participants, holding event programs printed on small paper fans, lined the streets taking pictures and discussing their favorite wines. Shouts of street addresses meshed with the sounds of jazz bands as visitors discussed their next destinations.

“It’s just a very laid-back casual atmosphere,” said Ridgdell. “Everybody just hangs out – good music, good food, good wine.” While job cuts prevented some of her friends from attending, Ridgdell said most people she knew chose to attend the event. Tickets cost $75 in advance and $90 on site.

Adorned in the traditional gold, green and purple Mardi Gras colors, the Krewe of Cork, a performance group that also takes part in Mardi Gras, paraded from the 200 block of the historic street and ended up seven blocks away. “I’ve never been part of a parade. This is amazing,” said New Orleans Saints player Pierre Thomas, 24, who acted as a grand marshal of the Krewe of Cork’s show, along with Saints player Zach Strief.

“New Orleans – I’ll tell you it’s like a family out here,” Thomas said. “Everybody comes together, everybody’s friendly. They love to sit out here and drink, have fun, party down the street and just celebrate whatever it is, whatever the cause could be – just having a good day and maybe celebrate a rainy day. It really doesn’t matter.”

More than 60 local businesses along Royal Street hosted different vendors whose distributors welcomed participants with open wine bottles from behind tables set up inside stores.

From inside Toulouse Royale Gifts souvenir shop, Darlene Dalferes filled the spectators’ glasses with Chalk Hill Estate Vineyard and Winery chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon. “I think it will definitely do us justice by having our wines exposed here,” said Daleferes, a representative from Republic National Distributing Company. She added that people seem to love the wines. “Hopefully they will go and buy them in a restaurant or in the grocery store.”

Carlos Valdatta, manager of Rumors arts store, said sales were slow but he hoped the exposure would pay off. “It did bring a lot of people in,” he said.  “It’s generally a good event for this area that all the merchants should participate in because it brings a lot of people that normally wouldn’t always come down this area. Even if they buy a little bit, they’ll still get a better feel for the general area and possibly remember where the store is.”

It rained briefly but most participants ducked into local stores to wait it out.

Anh and Peter Thomas, who traveled from Jacksonville, Fla., for the long weekend, took shelter under a balcony eating spicy shrimp cocktails from Antoine’s Restaurant. “We are here to have fun. The rain is fine,” said Peter Thomas.

Anh Thomas  said: “It’s really nice just looking at the architecture in the French Quarter. It is really very interesting, very neat. Just looking at all the people and watching them is good.” The event has become a tradition for Ann Maloney, an arts and entertainment editor at the Times-Picayune, and Jeri Thibault, a project manager for Wachovia. The two said they have known each other since second grade. Both lived in New Orleans until Thibault moved to Alameda, Calif., some20 years ago for work, but that has not stopped her visits. Maloney had attended the event five times while Thibault has managed three trips.

Maloney summed up what the event means to her. “Really, it’s just enjoying the music and the weather and the beautiful scenery in the French Quarter, and just sipping wine and finding different wines that you’ve never had before.”

 The plan had  been rejected by the St. Bernard Parish Planning Committee. It is  at the heart of a  debate between parish residents and developers.

During the meeting, Councilman Wayne J. Landry, without going into detail, announced that the appeal would not be heard. In an interview after the meeting, Landry said he received the paperwork late Monday night, giving the council inadequate time to review it. With this rejection, Landry said, the developers have two options: give up or return to the planning committee, which had already denied developers access to the tracts of land needed to begin construction.

John Relman, an attorney representing the Dallas-based developers, Provident Realty Advisors, said he was confused about the decision. “There was no clear articulation for the denial,” Relman said. “We still don’t know why we were denied.”  Relman did not say how the developers plan to move forward.

Relman attempted to make a lengthy presentation to the council, but Landry cut him short, citing a two-minute speaking limit for public comments. 

Developers argue that the complex will provide struggling New Orleans residents with an affordable place to live, while neighbors say it will lead to an increase in crime and a decrease in surrounding property values. The 72-unit complexes would reserve 50 percent of their space for tenants who make about $35,000 or less annually, and 20 percent for those who make less than $20,000 per year.

“The first and foremost concern is for our own safety and welfare,” said Dana Arcement, a licensed real estate broker and parish resident. “We, as a community, are not in favor of those types of developments here. We pride ourselves in single-family home ownership and we do not want these developments to be built here because all they do is perpetuate drugs and crimes. ”

Several residents spoke up during the tense meeting to voice their disapproval of the project.

“We have been ambushed by Katrina and we don’t want to be ambushed again,” said Polly Boudreaux, president of the Lexington Place Civic Corporation, a housing association. “We have made great strides. We struggled to build our neighborhood back to pre-Katrina. We don’t need more drugs and more crime.”

The Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, which supports the plan, did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

After the meeting, some residents questioned the developers’ motives.  “They have nothing else to look out for but their own self interest, their own enrichment on this,” Arcement said. “They do not care about the citizens of this parish.”

Doug Reed, who said he owns several apartment complexes in the area, pointed to his inability to find tenants.  He says the proposed units would add more housing  to a neighborhood that is still struggling to fill empty buildings. “You have to look at the need,” he said.

Residents say that pre-Katrina, the parish suffered from the types of crime that the mixed income housing complex would bring back.

“We’ve been through it,” Arcement said. “Katrina wiped all that out. We’re looking for a clean slate here. We are looking for a new beginning. We are not a dumping ground, either, for low-income developments to be built here. We just do not want it.”

Reed denied, as The Times-Picayune reported on Tuesday, that race issues are fueling the tensions. “We aren’t talking about race issues here. We are talking about dense rentals,” he said. “We know there is a need for that but we just don’t like this plan. It’s not about ‘not in my back yard’ it’s about ‘do it in a better setting that managed is properly.’”

“We have white trash in this parish, white criminals in this parish,” Arcement said. “We don’t want them living here to protect the best interests of all our residents.”

Staff members from the New York Times Co. presented five specialties offered at this year’s newsroom: video journalism, Web production, copy editing, page design and wire editing.

While several presenters spoke about the different opportunities available over the next two weeks, the underlying message of the specialties workshop was the same: Good reporting, clear writing and news judgment will set any good journalist apart from the rest. Simone Oliver, a fashion and Styles Web producer, and Justen Fox, a technical producer, offered clear insight: the industry now values individuals who have technical skills and news judgment.

 ”The job market was always competitive, but it’s especially competitive now,” Oliver said. “You have to become the person who wears many hats.”