G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
New Orleans Two Years Later: The "Progress" of the System... the Anger of
the People... and the Need for Resistance
By Sunsara Taylor
Created Sep 4 2007 - 12:22pm
On the two year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, George Bush stood in the
middle of the still devastated Ninth Ward of New Orleans, and crowed, "This
town is better today than it was yesterday, and its going to be better
tomorrow than it is today."
This is not because Bush failed to notice the boarded up homes, the
overgrown empty lots, or the fact that most of the residents have not and
will never return. It is not government neglect or mismanagement of funds.
Speaking for a system that was built on slavery and genocide, that has white
supremacy built into its structures, laws and culture, George Bush looked at
all this and saw progress.
Survivors: "They was trying to wipe us out."
Beginning the evening of August 29 and continuing for four more days the
International Tribunal on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita included sessions on
the abuse of prisoners, police brutality, lack of evacuation plans and
neglect of the levees, environmental racism, labor and migrant rights,
schools, gentrification, and displacement and other outrages.
Nkechi Taifa opened the indictment against the U.S. Government for Crimes
Against Humanity by invoking the memory of Mamie Till whose son Emmett was
brutally lynched by white men in Mississippi in 1955. Mamie Till
courageously insisted that the casket of her 14-year-old son, Emmett, be
opened up for the world to see. She displayed his battered and water-soaked
body publicly, shocking the conscience of the world.
Two years after Katrina and Rita, Nkechi insisted that the barbarity and
criminality of what was--and is continuing to be done--to Black people and
others in and around New Orleans still needs to be opened up for the whole
world to see.
For two and a half days over Katrina's anniversary, I visited New Orleans.
Through the Tribunal, at protests, in Cooper projects, and in the Lower
Ninth Ward, I heard bitter stories...
Of prisoners hurling fists, broom sticks and wheelchairs against the walls
of their confinement amidst rising flood waters till they collapse in
exhaustion. Guards long since gone. Lights out. Water, thick and putrid with
sewage, rising to their necks in the pitch black.
That still haunt...
Children swept out of the arms of parents. Elderly folks stranded in
wheelchairs for days as maggots and waterbugs, soaked out of the building
foundations, crawl all around and over them.
That flow from--and were enforced by--a system...
"You know what hurt me?" asked an older woman from Cooper Projects, as two
years later tears pile out of both eyes, "When we was going through all that
water, that filth, that oil, all that to get over to that bridge... I see
nothing but FEMA cars... police lights... big Army helicopters... sitting in
that spot. Those people sitting there not trying to help us. They was
looking at us die. Come on now! That hurts. That hurts... I will die saying
they was trying to wipe us out."
Protest and Anger
On August 29, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of residents and activists from
around the country held commemorative events and protests around the city.
Robert Green held a public memorial in the Ninth Ward where his home had
been swept off the ground in twenty feet of raging floodwater. His mother
died there, and his granddaughter had slipped off the roof and disappeared
into the water two years before. After being abandoned to die in the storm,
the authorities refused to retrieve his mother's body from the rooftop where
she was clearly visible from a distance and weeks later Green had to go in
and do it himself.
Later that day, up to a thousand residents, volunteers, and activists
gathered at the levee wall where it had broken and marched through the Ninth
Ward. Most of its residents have not returned because of obstacles thrown up
by city, state and federal government. People marched through pouring rain
to Congo Square some five miles into town.
Throughout the afternoon a Day of Presence, organized by Susan Taylor,
editor of Essence magazine, brought together Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, poet
Jessica Care Moore, and other Black leaders and artists in front of the
Convention Center where tens of thousands had been stranded without food or
water for days during the storm. This, however, is downtown. Everything is
cleaned up here. A "David Duke for Governor" (a notorious Klan
white-supremacist) bumper sticker taunted those who gathered.
For five days, the International Tribunal on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
pried open the crimes of the government before, during, and after Katrina
with first-hand testimony from prisoners, witnesses of summary executions,
victims of severe police brutality, folks still dispersed and living in
trailers, people locked out of public housing and activists and experts from
the ACLU, National Conference of Black Lawyers, Center for Constitutional
Rights, NAACP, National Lawyers Guild, Louisiana Justice Institute, People's
Hurricane Relief Fund and Malcolm X Grassroots Committee.
I spoke with Phyllis Montana LeBlanc, famous for her honest and angry
testimony about surviving the storm in Spike Lee's documentary, When the
Levees Broke. She told me that she's met people who were ready to kill
themselves before they heard her testimony in the film. Hearing her speak
the truth gave them the strength to keep struggling.
Housing and the Right to Return
One very sharp concentration of the system's plans to "rebuild" New Orleans
is the forced displacement of people, a refusal to rebuild privately owned
housing, and the shuttering of public housing. Large housing projects in New
Orleans, like St. Bernard, Lafitte, and C.J. Peete are completely shut down
while several others, including Iberville and B.W. Cooper are mostly fenced
off and unoccupied. These projects could house more than 5,000 families, and
they comprise some of the least damaged housing in New Orleans post Katrina.
The government used Hurricane Katrina to empty the projects and keep the
people who lived there, most of them poor Black people, from returning to
the city. One of these projects is going to be replaced by a golf course!
On August 31, residents of public housing, public housing advocates and
others protested at the office of the executive director of the Housing
Authority of New Orleans (HANO), demanding an end to the destruction of
public housing and the right of all New Orleans residents to return. In
response, the HANO office closed for the day, police and National Guardsmen
cordoned off the building, entered it and surrounded the Director's office
for several hours until protesters marched out of the building.
An encampment of homeless folks has sprung up across the street from Mayer
Nagin's office downtown demanding that housing be opened up to those who
need it. Activists there told me that Mayor Nagin at one point offered to
open up housing to the protesters, but they refused, choosing to continue
sleeping in the park with others until housing is provided for everyone.
Two years after Katrina, the crimes against the people continue.
New Orleans population is less than two-thirds of what was before Katrina,
yet estimates say there are now three times as many homeless people. While
New Orleans moves to permanently shut down its four largest housing
projects, nearby St. Bernard Parish passed a "whites only" law in the form
of requiring that anyone who moves there must have a blood relative already
living in the Parish, which is 93% white (the law is being challenged in
court).
33,000 people are estimated to be still living in FEMA trailers, many of
which are infested with dangerous levels of formaldehyde. A man who lives in
a FEMA park with about 23 trailers housing 75 people told me that, of the
adults, there is one woman who works...26 miles away at a Wendy's. The only
town nearby is almost entirely white and the 1,500 or so people who live
there don't want the evacuees around. "My thirteen-year-old, he finished
second in his class. But on awards day, they didn't give him anything," the
man explains with pain in his voice. "He was very disappointed, you know? I
know what it is. A thirteen year old don't understand that."
This is Intolerable...the Spirit of the People Must Break Through
One thing that makes every resident of New Orleans I meet smile is the
volunteers who have come through to rebuild. Over 14,000 volunteers,
including students from over 200 colleges, have been part of rebuilding just
with the Common Ground effort. They helped residents clear debris from their
homes and yards in the Ninth Ward, they set up volunteer clinics and risked
arrest to clean out and reopen schools--including the one Bush had the
audacity to pose for a photo-op in.
Most of the volunteers have come not only from long distances, but also from
very different walks of life. The ones I spoke with have been changed by the
survivors they've met and from their close-up look at how this system treats
those at the bottom. One told me, "When I was back in California there were
a lot of things I worried about that really now... this experience kind of
gives me an appreciation for how little some of that matters."
But despite the wonderful spirit of these volunteers, and despite the
burning, fierce desire of the people of New Orleans to survive and rebuild,
the system stands in the way at every turn. The system is shuttering housing
when people need housing, moving jobs when people need work, creating a
viciously two-tiered educational system when people need schools...
Everywhere you turn, the system is the problem not the solution.
There is a great challenge to everyone to step forward in political
resistance, and to not let what is happening in New Orleans go down like
this.
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
the People... and the Need for Resistance
By Sunsara Taylor
Created Sep 4 2007 - 12:22pm
On the two year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, George Bush stood in the
middle of the still devastated Ninth Ward of New Orleans, and crowed, "This
town is better today than it was yesterday, and its going to be better
tomorrow than it is today."
This is not because Bush failed to notice the boarded up homes, the
overgrown empty lots, or the fact that most of the residents have not and
will never return. It is not government neglect or mismanagement of funds.
Speaking for a system that was built on slavery and genocide, that has white
supremacy built into its structures, laws and culture, George Bush looked at
all this and saw progress.
Survivors: "They was trying to wipe us out."
Beginning the evening of August 29 and continuing for four more days the
International Tribunal on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita included sessions on
the abuse of prisoners, police brutality, lack of evacuation plans and
neglect of the levees, environmental racism, labor and migrant rights,
schools, gentrification, and displacement and other outrages.
Nkechi Taifa opened the indictment against the U.S. Government for Crimes
Against Humanity by invoking the memory of Mamie Till whose son Emmett was
brutally lynched by white men in Mississippi in 1955. Mamie Till
courageously insisted that the casket of her 14-year-old son, Emmett, be
opened up for the world to see. She displayed his battered and water-soaked
body publicly, shocking the conscience of the world.
Two years after Katrina and Rita, Nkechi insisted that the barbarity and
criminality of what was--and is continuing to be done--to Black people and
others in and around New Orleans still needs to be opened up for the whole
world to see.
For two and a half days over Katrina's anniversary, I visited New Orleans.
Through the Tribunal, at protests, in Cooper projects, and in the Lower
Ninth Ward, I heard bitter stories...
Of prisoners hurling fists, broom sticks and wheelchairs against the walls
of their confinement amidst rising flood waters till they collapse in
exhaustion. Guards long since gone. Lights out. Water, thick and putrid with
sewage, rising to their necks in the pitch black.
That still haunt...
Children swept out of the arms of parents. Elderly folks stranded in
wheelchairs for days as maggots and waterbugs, soaked out of the building
foundations, crawl all around and over them.
That flow from--and were enforced by--a system...
"You know what hurt me?" asked an older woman from Cooper Projects, as two
years later tears pile out of both eyes, "When we was going through all that
water, that filth, that oil, all that to get over to that bridge... I see
nothing but FEMA cars... police lights... big Army helicopters... sitting in
that spot. Those people sitting there not trying to help us. They was
looking at us die. Come on now! That hurts. That hurts... I will die saying
they was trying to wipe us out."
Protest and Anger
On August 29, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of residents and activists from
around the country held commemorative events and protests around the city.
Robert Green held a public memorial in the Ninth Ward where his home had
been swept off the ground in twenty feet of raging floodwater. His mother
died there, and his granddaughter had slipped off the roof and disappeared
into the water two years before. After being abandoned to die in the storm,
the authorities refused to retrieve his mother's body from the rooftop where
she was clearly visible from a distance and weeks later Green had to go in
and do it himself.
Later that day, up to a thousand residents, volunteers, and activists
gathered at the levee wall where it had broken and marched through the Ninth
Ward. Most of its residents have not returned because of obstacles thrown up
by city, state and federal government. People marched through pouring rain
to Congo Square some five miles into town.
Throughout the afternoon a Day of Presence, organized by Susan Taylor,
editor of Essence magazine, brought together Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, poet
Jessica Care Moore, and other Black leaders and artists in front of the
Convention Center where tens of thousands had been stranded without food or
water for days during the storm. This, however, is downtown. Everything is
cleaned up here. A "David Duke for Governor" (a notorious Klan
white-supremacist) bumper sticker taunted those who gathered.
For five days, the International Tribunal on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
pried open the crimes of the government before, during, and after Katrina
with first-hand testimony from prisoners, witnesses of summary executions,
victims of severe police brutality, folks still dispersed and living in
trailers, people locked out of public housing and activists and experts from
the ACLU, National Conference of Black Lawyers, Center for Constitutional
Rights, NAACP, National Lawyers Guild, Louisiana Justice Institute, People's
Hurricane Relief Fund and Malcolm X Grassroots Committee.
I spoke with Phyllis Montana LeBlanc, famous for her honest and angry
testimony about surviving the storm in Spike Lee's documentary, When the
Levees Broke. She told me that she's met people who were ready to kill
themselves before they heard her testimony in the film. Hearing her speak
the truth gave them the strength to keep struggling.
Housing and the Right to Return
One very sharp concentration of the system's plans to "rebuild" New Orleans
is the forced displacement of people, a refusal to rebuild privately owned
housing, and the shuttering of public housing. Large housing projects in New
Orleans, like St. Bernard, Lafitte, and C.J. Peete are completely shut down
while several others, including Iberville and B.W. Cooper are mostly fenced
off and unoccupied. These projects could house more than 5,000 families, and
they comprise some of the least damaged housing in New Orleans post Katrina.
The government used Hurricane Katrina to empty the projects and keep the
people who lived there, most of them poor Black people, from returning to
the city. One of these projects is going to be replaced by a golf course!
On August 31, residents of public housing, public housing advocates and
others protested at the office of the executive director of the Housing
Authority of New Orleans (HANO), demanding an end to the destruction of
public housing and the right of all New Orleans residents to return. In
response, the HANO office closed for the day, police and National Guardsmen
cordoned off the building, entered it and surrounded the Director's office
for several hours until protesters marched out of the building.
An encampment of homeless folks has sprung up across the street from Mayer
Nagin's office downtown demanding that housing be opened up to those who
need it. Activists there told me that Mayor Nagin at one point offered to
open up housing to the protesters, but they refused, choosing to continue
sleeping in the park with others until housing is provided for everyone.
Two years after Katrina, the crimes against the people continue.
New Orleans population is less than two-thirds of what was before Katrina,
yet estimates say there are now three times as many homeless people. While
New Orleans moves to permanently shut down its four largest housing
projects, nearby St. Bernard Parish passed a "whites only" law in the form
of requiring that anyone who moves there must have a blood relative already
living in the Parish, which is 93% white (the law is being challenged in
court).
33,000 people are estimated to be still living in FEMA trailers, many of
which are infested with dangerous levels of formaldehyde. A man who lives in
a FEMA park with about 23 trailers housing 75 people told me that, of the
adults, there is one woman who works...26 miles away at a Wendy's. The only
town nearby is almost entirely white and the 1,500 or so people who live
there don't want the evacuees around. "My thirteen-year-old, he finished
second in his class. But on awards day, they didn't give him anything," the
man explains with pain in his voice. "He was very disappointed, you know? I
know what it is. A thirteen year old don't understand that."
This is Intolerable...the Spirit of the People Must Break Through
One thing that makes every resident of New Orleans I meet smile is the
volunteers who have come through to rebuild. Over 14,000 volunteers,
including students from over 200 colleges, have been part of rebuilding just
with the Common Ground effort. They helped residents clear debris from their
homes and yards in the Ninth Ward, they set up volunteer clinics and risked
arrest to clean out and reopen schools--including the one Bush had the
audacity to pose for a photo-op in.
Most of the volunteers have come not only from long distances, but also from
very different walks of life. The ones I spoke with have been changed by the
survivors they've met and from their close-up look at how this system treats
those at the bottom. One told me, "When I was back in California there were
a lot of things I worried about that really now... this experience kind of
gives me an appreciation for how little some of that matters."
But despite the wonderful spirit of these volunteers, and despite the
burning, fierce desire of the people of New Orleans to survive and rebuild,
the system stands in the way at every turn. The system is shuttering housing
when people need housing, moving jobs when people need work, creating a
viciously two-tiered educational system when people need schools...
Everywhere you turn, the system is the problem not the solution.
There is a great challenge to everyone to step forward in political
resistance, and to not let what is happening in New Orleans go down like
this.
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson