Jordan
Flaherty writes: It’s bittersweet being back in New Orleans. Although the architecture is the same, and it’s
a relief to walk the streets and reunite with old friends, already this is a
very different city from the one I love. It’s a city where some areas are quickly rebuilding and other parts are
being left far behind. A city where
people who have lived here for generations are now unwelcome in a hundred
different ways.
White New Orleans is steadily
coming back, and Black New Orleans is moving out. A grassroots organizer with New Orleans
Network tells me she has been speaking to people in every moving truck she
sees. She reports that in every case, “they’re
Black, they are renters, they’re moving out of New Orleans, and they say they
would stay, if they had a choice.”
The Washington Post reports that although both the overwhelmingly White
Lakeview neighborhood and Black Ninth Ward neighborhood were devastated by
flooding, “It now appears that long-standing neighborhood differences in income
and opportunity...are shaping the stalled repopulation of this mostly empty
city.”
While Lower Ninth Ward residents
are still being kept from returning to their homes, “Lakeview, where 66 per cent
of children go to private school and 49 per cent of residents have a college
degree, was pumped dry within three weeks of the storm. Memphis Street (in
Lakeview) smells now of bleach, which kills mold, and resounds to the thwack of
crowbars and the whine of chain saws. Insurance adjusters have begun making rounds.”
A similar story is unfolding in
South Florida, where the Miami Workers Center reports, “Close to 24 hours after
Wilma struck, power returned to Miami's affluent and tourist districts such as
South Beach, Downtown and the Brickell Financial District. In the past
week, power has returned to most suburban communities. But power has been
slowest returning to black, latino, and immigrant poor urban
neighborhoods. Many of the 400,000 still in the dark have been told not
to expect power until as late as November 22nd.”
Miami Workers center volunteer
Terry Marshall reports, “this experience is showing...that it’s not a question
of where the hurricane hits. It’s a question of where the resources are missed.”
New Orleans was, as more than one
former resident has said, the African
city in North America. It is a city
steeped in a culture that is specifically African American - from Jazz to blues
to bounce. It is the number one African
American tourist destination in the US. The Bayou Classic and Essence Festival, two vital Black community
events, bring tens of thousands of Black tourists to the city every year. Walking around town, its hard to imagine
these tourists coming back to the new New Orleans - a city was once 70 per cent
Black and now feels unwelcome and hostile - or at least uncaring - to its own
past.
Last Wednesday alone, 335
evictions were filed in New Orleans courts - the amount normally filed in a
month. There have been countless reports
of landlords throwing tenant’s property out on the street without any
notice. New Orleans human rights lawyer
Bill Quigley reports that “Fully armed National Guard troops refuse to allow
over ten thousand people to even physically visit their property in the Lower
Ninth Ward neighborhood. Despite the fact that people cannot come back,
tens of thousands of people face eviction from their homes. A local judge
told me that their court expects to process a thousand evictions a day for
weeks. Renters still in shelters or temporary homes across the country
will never see the court notice taped to the door of their home. Because
they will not show up for the eviction hearing that they do not know about,
their possessions will be tossed out in the street. In the street their possessions will sit
alongside an estimated 3 million truck loads of downed trees, piles of mud,
fiberglass insulation, crushed sheetrock, abandoned cars, spoiled mattresses,
wet rugs, and horrifyingly smelly refrigerators full of food from August.”
A recent poll from Gallup reports
that, even adjusting for differences in income, White and Black New Orleanians
have had deeply different experiences of this disaster. Blacks were more likely to fear for their
lives (63 per cent vs. 39 per cent), to have been separated from family members
for at least a day (55 per cent vs. 45 per cent), gone without food for at
least a day (53 per cent vs. 24 per cent) and spent at least one night in an
emergency shelter (34 per cent vs. 13 per cent).
The New York Times and other papers have reprinted former FEMA director
Michael Brown’s emails from the time when our city was being flooded - stunning
evidence of how little the agency cared about what was happening in New
Orleans. “If you'll look at my lovely FEMA attire you'll really vomit. I am a
fashion god,” reads a typical email from the day after the hurricane hit. Other
emails showed Brown and his staffers to be more concerned with his dinner
reservations in Baton Rouge and a dog sitter for his house than with anything
happening in New Orleans.
The demographics of New Orleans
have changed in gender as well as race. The thousands of contractors and laborers that have arrived from across
the country - in addition to National Guard, police agencies, security guards,
and other workers - are overwhelmingly
male. Because most schools are closed,
there are few kids below 17 or their families. Women I know who have returned report feeling uncomfortable and unsafe.
A large Latino immigrant
population has come to work in the city’s reconstruction. These workers have been demonized by everyone
from Mayor Nagin to local talk radio. Grassroots
medical volunteers report that some of the workers are forbidden by their
employers from talking to anyone or even leaving their rooms at night. They are working in hazardous conditions, for
low pay and little safety protection - already many have become ill, and they
have no access to medical care, and face a hostile city.
There are still thousands of New
Orleans residents who have not been convicted of any crime trapped in maximum
security prisons and “no one in a position of power finds this pressing,” says
Ursula Price, a staff researcher with A Fighting Chance, an indigent defense
group. She estimates at least 2000
prisoners from Orleans Parish Prison remain in Angola, the notorious former
slave plantation in rural Louisiana. These are people who were picked up for “misdemeanor offenses such as
public drunkenness, traffic violations, soliciting a prostitute,” Price
says. If convicted, at most they would
have served less time than they have been in for. But, in Orleans Parish and Jefferson Parish,
courts have been closed for most of this time, and public defenders have been
laid off. “The system is not working
with us,” Price tells me. “I don't
understand why prosecutors are in there arguing against release of someone on a
misdemeanor charge. We have women who
have had miscarriages, mental heath problems, physical health problems, and no
one in power seems to care.” The total
population of Orleans Parish Prison at the time of hurricane Katrina was at
least 7,000 people. In a city of just
500,000, that's a significant population.
The people of New Orleans are not
just physically displaced, but also disenfranchised from their city in other
ways. According to the Wall Street Journal, when FEMA officials
were asked by Louisiana state officials for access to the FEMA database so that
they could inform New Orleans evacuees about their right to vote in upcoming
municipal elections, the response was a terse email - “(FEMA) will not let you
have a copy of the FEMA applicant list. Sorry!!!” What better way to let people know that the
city is not theirs than to have an election to which they are not invited?
Many in New Orleans are struggling
with an even more basic and vital concern - the recovery of their loved
ones. Less than a quarter of the bodies
so far reported discovered in New Orleans have been turned over to
families. The rest are at the New
Orleans coroners, currently relocated to St. Gabriel’s Parish. “Officials in coroner's offices in several
parishes reported that they sought to keep their victims from going to St.
Gabriel,” reports today's Times-Picayune, which describes one families long
ordeal in recovering their mother’s body. Just one more area where people
of New Orleans are left behind.
While this tragedy multiplies,
while evictions mount and exploitation increases, the former residents of New
Orleans have their choice of a dizzying array of forums, hearings, panels,
tribunals, town halls, committees, subcommittees, commissions, meetings,
marches and demonstrations, most of which are seeking the input of the people
of New Orleans.
In the space of two days last
week, I went to a public meeting with a representative from the UN High
Commission on extreme poverty. I went to
a meeting of the housing subcommittee of the urban planning committee of the
mayors blue ribbon commission on rebuilding New Orleans. I joined a rally at the State Capitol
featuring Jesse Jackson, Reverend Al Sharpton, and various Government
officials. At each event I saw hundreds
of poor folks from New Orleans. I also
met representatives of a community group for East New Orleans residents
displaced to Baton Rouge - they report that 500 people come to their weekly
meetings.
This Monday, I will march across
the bridge from New Orleans to Gretna, to join in protests called by a wide
array of national organizations against a crime Cynthia McKinney has said “might
become the worst American civil rights episode of the 21st Century,” the
blockade by Gretna police of the only exit out of New Orleans for thousands of
evacuees. I also plan to join the
People's Assembly initiated by the People's Hurricane Fund on December 8-10.
There are many outlets for action,
as well as plenty of anger and energy, but also a deep skepticism. The people of New Orleans have a justified
distrust of the people and institutions who have arrived with promises and
resources. Hundreds of well-meaning
volunteers have come in to town, and many have done vital work, but in some
cases this has increased tensions. “Some
people have come here with this attitude, ‘we’re bringing organizing to New
Orleans.’ They don’t seem interested in what was here before,” reports one
community organizer.
These divisions are not only
concentrated on the grassroots - disagreements within the mayor’s commission on
rebuilding New Orleans have become increasingly public, with some
representatives complaining to the New York Times of not being invited to
private breakfasts between the mayor and other commission members.
“The truth is,” said one longtime
activist, “people have a lot of anger and grief, and they don't where to direct
it.” We are all tired, frustrated and
sad, but the struggle for justice continues.
Jordan
Flaherty is a union organizer and an editor of Left Turn Magazine. This
is his tenth article from New Orleans. You can contact Jordan at NewOrleans[at]leftturn.org.
Other
Resources for information and action:
Directory of grassroots New
Orleans organizations focused on relief, recovery, social justice and cultural
preservation:
http://www.leftturn.org/Articles/Viewer.aspx?id=689&type=W
More info on the March to Gretna
this Monday: http://www.upfordemocracy.org/
More articles by Jordan Flaherty
on New Orleans:
http://www.leftturn.org/articles/SpecialCollections/katrina.aspx
Catherine Jones’ Blog from New
Orleans is at: http://floodlines.blogspot.com/
Abram Himmelstein’s Blog from New
Orleans is at: http://blogs.chron.com/exile/
United Houma Nation - http://www.unitedhoumanation.org
Saving Our Selves coalition - http://www.sosafterkatrina.org
Miami Workers Center - http://www.theworkerscenter.org/
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