Give New Orleans a N.Y. week In Oct., unite 2 great cities in fund-raiser By PETE HAMILL Published New York Daily News 6 September 2005 New York has an absolute duty to help rebuild New Orleans, block by ruined block. We are the richest city in the richest country on the planet. Yes, we have our own poor, too, but they are not dying in drowned attics. They are not being ripped from their neighborhoods to be scattered across nine other states, wearing only the clothes on their backs. The uprooted people of New Orleans are our people, too. More than ever now, when, like Blanche DuBois, they must depend on the kindness of strangers. In this crisis, New York must step up. With our enormous ability to raise money. With our intelligence, our talents, our spirit of tolerance - which we share with New Orleans. We must remind the world of the immense gifts that New Orleans has given all of us. Mayor Bloomberg must take the lead, organizing what might be called NewOrleansAid, an immense campaign to raise millions and assemble the city's greatest talents in the task of rebuilding. Bloomberg could ask Colin Powell, that child of the Bronx, to head it. He could promise every dollar would go to human beings in New Orleans. He could guarantee anyone caught stealing such moneys would have his hands chopped off. I would like to see a gigantic week in late October dedicated to celebrating New Orleans and thank that city for all its astonishing gifts. The greatest New Orleans gift of all was music. Along with the children of Mississippi slaves, they gave us - and the world - the blues. They gave us jazz. I can't imagine being America without that music. On the first weekend after baseball is finished, I'd like to see Shea Stadium loud with the music of America. The Saturday could be all jazz and blues. The morning could begin with an assembly at the grave of Louis Armstrong in Flushing Cemetery, where he was buried in 1971 after living among us for decades. He was a child of New Orleans, but he died as a New Yorker. With his trumpet, Louis Armstrong, born on the Fourth of July, 1900, told a story filled with anguish and joy, but never despair. From Shea, all his musical children could hit notes that would be heard at his gravesite and certainly at 34-56 107th St. in Corona, where Armstrong lived, and where he died in 1971. In both places, today's living New Orleans musicians - displaced people from Tipitina's and Preservation Hall and the corners of Jackson Square - could assemble, before heading to Shea. New York impresarios could hire them for the weeks to come, so they can make a living until New Orleans comes back to vivid life. They could tell their new stories of anguish and joy. The jazz show, of course, should be organized by Wynton Marsalis, born in New Orleans, now the distinguished artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. The master of ceremonies should be Clint Eastwood, who has repeatedly promoted the music that enriched his youth. The goal should be simple: the greatest show of jazz ever held anywhere, with 70,000 fans roaring about life its own-damned self. Sunday should be devoted to that off-shoot of the blues: rock 'n' roll. Start with Little Richard, whom I first saw in 1953 when I was a young dope in the Navy, based in Pensacola. He was brought by black sailors to a club in New Orleans. End it with Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones and U2, those Brits and Irishmen whose lives would not have been the same if New Orleans had not sent out the blues. Bring Fats Domino out of his storm-induced exile from New Orleans, and if he can't perform, give him a great seat and thank him for his life's work. Go find those people from New Orleans who drove through the night while the fires were still burning at Ground Zero. They were not summoned. They came on their own (along with people from Gulfport and Biloxi and Mobile). On Greenwich St., they set up a soup kitchen for the cops and firemen and rescue workers, for the hardhats and the reporters, and eased us all with gumbo and laughter. Track them down. We owe them. And put them in the same row with Fats Domino. That isn't all. In the nights leading to Shea Stadium, there could be smaller concerts, too, at Lincoln Center, the Apollo, Carnegie Hall, BAM and other venues. All proceeds going to NewOrleansAid. Woody Allen could assemble a Dixieland Band. Yo-Yo Ma could dig into the blues. Arturo Sandoval and Paquito D'Rivera could remind us that Latin jazz came from those night boats that sailed in both directions from New Orleans to Havana before there was a Miami. Tony Bennett could show the way black music was also the music of white men, that is to say, American music. The greatest singers could evoke Bessie Smith. And there could be even more. Every night of NewOrleansAid Week, at Barnes & Noble, Borders or the city's great independent booksellers, there could be readings of writers shaped by New Orleans. These could include the living: Robert Stone, Elmore Leonard (born in New Orleans), Lucian Truscott, James Lee Burke, Anne Rice, Ellen Gilchrist, Sheila Bosworth and others. There could be a shared reading of William Faulkner's great novella "Old Man," about the rampaging 1927 Mississippi flood. Others could read from Sherwood Anderson or Zora Neale Thurston, Lafcadio Hearn or Mark Twain. One event could celebrate Walker Percy. Another, Truman Capote. And, of course, in every way possible, we must evoke the spirit of Tennessee Williams. On Ninth Ave. that weekend we could organize a New Orleans block party. NewOrleansAid could organize all those amazing New Orleans chefs and cooks who have been displaced in the drowned city. Our own restaurants could help them prepare the food. Bring it all on: jambalaya, crawfish, beignets, chicory coffee, muffalettas, lagniappes, and everywhere, red beans and rice. Bloomberg could also ask New Orleans for one final gift. Next spring, the city could loan us Mardi Gras. They could bring us all the floats that survived. They could bring the bands, the hedonistic laughter. They could bring the message that all sins must be forgiven, except cruelty. That is a New York message, too. They could assemble around Union Square and the Flatiron District and then parade south. At some point, they would pass St. Paul's Chapel, where they can glimpse the void left by Sept. 11. But they would move on to the Battery and the park and end the night there, sending out sounds of defiance and joy. Some of them could gaze out at the great harbor where 19th century ships once came all the way from New Orleans, bearing other gifts, and receiving some, too, starting with the gift of freedom. Some would live firmly in the present, with only one desire: "Laissez le bon temps rouler" - let the good times roll. Again. Some of them might even choose, as Louis Armstrong did, to die as New Yorkers. We have to give all of them a hand into the future.