Given Times Picayune Reporter Katy Reckdahl's propensity to usually fair and balanced writing, something sorely lacking in post-Katrina Times Picayune, I was suprised at the slightly disingenuous tone of her recent article on the closure of the homeless encampment at the intersection of Canal St. and Claiborne. Perhaps though, Katy didn't see the recent City Business article that documented how the NOPD is staging entrapments of homeless folks in the downtown area. This was obviously used as a tactic to intimidate and frighten the  homeless from the area.

Here in New Orleans, the politics of class was never more evident than post Katrina efforts to rebuild our city.

And I'm not talking about class as in "classy". I'm talking about the upper, middle and not very often mentioned, lower class in this country.

In New Orleans, there has been a concerted effort to rebuild, and exclude, the lower class, the working poor, and those teetering on the edge of poverty, in our city.

City, state and federal leaders have been blunt in what they hope will be a "new" New Orleans.

John Edwards, in defiance of the "agenda", has visited twice to the lower ninth ward here, hammer in hand, to pound some nails, and make a point.