The Big Uneasy: Anger Over New Orleans' Building Moratorium

"Sending messages tinged with confusion, frustration, anger and a dark sense of humor, hundreds of displaced New Orleans residents who trekked to City Hall Saturday for a public meeting on the city's rebuilding stuck to a common theme: No one can tell them where they can or cannot live."

"The high anxiety evident among the crowd of 500-plus that jammed the council chambers appeared to be a product of a controversial recommendation handed down this week by Mayor Ray Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back Commission, which said some flood-ravaged neighborhoods may have to prove their viability before rebuilding is allowed."

"'If the situation continues to erode, we are going to incite people to do what this city never did,' [one resident] said, noting that New Orleans was one of the few large American cities that did not experience rioting following Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968."