Mercatus Center at George Mason University Recognizes the Heroes of New Orleans: The Entrepreneurs
Aug 22, 2008
PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX
DENVER and MINNEAPOLIS, Experts available for interviews at Democratic and Republican conventions
Both of the upcoming national political conventions will kick-off with events honoring the heroes of the storm -- people and groups who have played an integral part of the rebuilding process in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.
"This is an important time for politicians to pay attention to and learn valuable lessons about what works in recovery from the people who have been leading the recovery effort," says Daniel Rothschild director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University's Gulf Coast Recovery Project. A Washington Post editorial last week "Remember New Orleans" cites a recent study that says after three years of rebuilding that while New Orleanians are "optimistic about their future, they feel forgotten now" and that majority feel that Congress and the president don't see rebuilding the city as a priority.
"Their pessimism is not surprising," says Rothschild who leads the projects field research efforts, "For three years New Orleanians' recovery efforts have been stymied by government policies that send mixed messages and impede local innovation and solutions."
Local Knowledge: Is the Gulf Coast Open for Business?, just released by Mercatus identifies the important ways that entrepreneurs in the Gulf Coast have been rebuilding their communities and the challenges that they have faced along the way.
"The storm put what we already knew into a sharper focus--entrepreneurs are critical to rebuilding a strong community and a catalyst to revitalizing New Orleans," says Tim Williamson, one of the six entrepreneurs highlighted in case studies in Local Knowledge. "New Orleans has become a laboratory. In three years we have seen real work and real data and we are creating scalable solutions to problems that are around the country and around the world." Williamson is president of The Idea Village, an independent non-profit in New Orleans that works with entrepreneurs who have been rebuilding their businesses and communities.
"The most successful rebuilding efforts in the Gulf Coast are the ones that have come from the bottom up," says Rothschild, "The challenge for our next leaders will be to craft policies that acknowledge the fact that top down solutions do not work and that local knowledge is critical to rebuilding the Gulf Coast."
Rothschild and Williamson will attend both the Democratic and Republican conventions to remind policy makers that there is still a great deal of work to be done in New Orleans and throughout the Gulf Coast and that policy makers can learn what works in recovery by following the lead of the entrepreneurs.
About the Gulf Coast Recovery Project at George Mason University
The Mercatus Center at George Mason University is conducting a five-year field research project to follow the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast in the wake of the terrible destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina. We are focusing our efforts in Orleans and St. Bernard Parishes, Louisiana and Harrison and Hancock Counties, Mississippi to examine what works and what does not. We are interested in how different social, legal, political, and economic institutions engender different types of response, and how they may have affected different communities, before, during, and after the hurricane.
About Local Knowledge: Is the Gulf Coast Open for Business?
Local Knowledge: Is the Gulf Coast Open for Business? is the first of three annual publications focusing on the role of one sector of society in the rebuilding, with future publications examining lessons learned about the roles of the non-profit and public sectors. Local Knowledge is available online at http://www.mercatus.org/LocalKnowledge.
SOURCE Mercatus Center at George Mason University http://www.mercatus.org