Seung Hong, 29, is the communications director of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, a nonprofit government watchdog and reform organization. He grew up in New Orleans and made his first hurricane evacuation to Northern Louisiana as Hurricane Katrina approached. He and two of his siblings have since returned to his mother’s house in the suburb of Metairie. While the house suffered minimal damage, his mother’s beauty shop was destroyed and his stepfather’s insurance company has had to address the needs of its many small business owners.

Currently, Hong is working on issues of reconstruction affecting people of color and the working class, and plans to set up a fund for reconstruction work.

It’s been more than two months since Hurricane Katrina hit. Now comes the hard part: reconstruction. I’ve spent the last several weeks scrambling to organize around rebuilding the city. It is an ambitious endeavor. I’ve been working with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Service Employees International Union 21 and the emergent Community Labor United (CLU), who have taken the lead in trying to set a reconstruction agenda that embraces justice for New Orleans’ citizens who want to return home.

Some of us see tremendous opportunity in the midst of all this tragedy to fix the things that were broken before Katrina. Maybe we can finally improve our systems for public education, housing, criminal justice and economic development. Maybe we can finally do something about the racism and poverty that has haunted the city for hundreds of years. Or maybe not. There are other forceful and influential people who have a different vision for rebuilding New Orleans.

The rich and powerful have already claimed their seats at the table. That table expects to see upwards of $200 billion come across as federal funds pour into the local reconstruction. That kind of money is blood in an ocean full of sharks. Contractors, hotels, the corporate elite and the city’s old magnolia aristocracy have already been meeting with Mayor Ray Nagin to sell their vision on New Orleans.

James Reiss, who served in Nagin’s administration and was a top campaign contributor, has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal that the deal being offered to the mayor by the elite includes the elimination of poor people from the city. Congressman Richard Baker of Baton Rouge was also heard telling lobbyists, “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.”

House Speaker Dennis Hastert has publicly advocated bulldozing most of the city and said that it makes no sense to rebuild most of New Orleans. Alphonso Jackson, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, has cast doubt upon plans to rebuild the poorest and blackest neighborhoods in the city and has said that New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again.

But some do hope to rebuild and recognize that the culture and history of New Orleans is at stake. The birthplace of jazz, the home of Cajun and Creole culture — all of this becomes a historical footnote if people of color do not return to it.