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Overwhelmingly, anger turned on government officials.

"All I want to say to Mayor Ray Nagin is thank you for helping us," Yolanda McZeal, 43, said calmly, sarcastically and bitterly. "Governor Blanco, thank you for helping us. President Bush, thank you for helping us."

For a few minutes, the crowd chanted, "No more Nagin."

For Carey, the young mother walking away from the center, the disaster was divine retribution for the city's legendary corruption and crime. "The city is corrupt ... God is punishing New Orleans for all the (expletive) they're doing, killing each other."

But she had even less warmth for the police, whom, she said, she barely saw.

"The thugs and the criminals are the heroes. They're the ones that were saving us," she said. Stolen speedboats took her from her flooded neighborhood; stolen moving trucks brought her to the convention center. "The police were nowhere."

While many in the crowd spoke of their love for the city, Carey was having none of that.

"I have to pick up and start somewhere else," she said. Would she consider coming back? "Hell no."

http://www.louisianaweekly.com/weekly/news/articlegate.pl?20050903b