‘Everyone at the Top Is Getting Fat Off Our Misery’

See “New Orleans, Three Years Later” by Jordan Flaherty and Katrina video with Richard Dreyfus, below.

By Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog / August 28, 2008

I was looking at my calendar; the ‘things to do’. I note on August 29, my daughter-in-law turns 27 (happy thought). I remember 3 years ago on that date, Katrina struck New Orleans (not a happy thought). While we were watching the news of the hurricane, we got a phone call from one of our sons. His former wife (Katrina actually was her name which was spooky), her new husband and 2 of their friends (total of 4) were coming back from having gambled in our town (Laughlin, NV), and were killed instantly by a drunk driver. We called relatives; all were watching this storm – and suddenly our still-loved, Katrina (age 37) was dead.

While we were trying to get past that bit of news, my mother called. My cousin (Barry – age 51) decided life wasn’t all that great and like my other cousin (Jim), he decided to end his life with a gun – he died August 29, 2005; Katrina died August 29, 2005, and Gaby celebrated her 24th birthday August 29, 2005 – this was our personal ‘day’ at a time when the hurricane was taking other lives.

August 29 – 2008; John McCain will turn 72 years old. August 29, 1960 – OPEC was formed; ‘oil’, ‘oil’, ‘oil’ …

While I realize there are millions of other ‘events’ that one might take note of on 8/29 – sometime in history, this is one day for my family, that will certainly be always remembered as one that only the delight of our much-loved Gaby, celebrated another birthday.

Anyway, I found this article and thought it should be shared.

Locally, we have about 4 Katrina victims that relocated to our area after they simply couldn’t get any type of prompt assistance with their needs. All of them lost their homes; they had to eat, and while their spouses remained in the local area helping other family members, they decided to check out ‘our town’. We’ve heard each of their stories, and it’s made their plight more ‘real’ to us because they ultimately brought their families to join them and are happy to feel safe from future storms/hurricanes. We know they’re not all that excited about living in the desert because they miss the lush surroundings; the great fish they enjoyed – we don’t have much to offer in the way of water other than the Colorado River that runs through our town, but they claim they don’t worry about bad weather claiming their homes again.

New Orleans, Three Years Later
By Jordan Flaherty / August 28, 2008.

Despite sunny media reports about post-Katrina rebuilding, the facts on the ground reveal a stark portrait of a city transformed.

As headlines focus on party conventions and presidential running mates, the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina has been largely overlooked. Several organizations have released reports in the past week, however, offering a chance to to assess the impact of disastrous federal and state policy on the people of New Orleans. The reports examine the current state of the city; meanwhile, grassroots activists have plans to broadcast their message from the streets. For those people who have heard mostly uplifting stories about the city’s recovery, the facts on the ground may be shocking.

According to a study by PolicyLink, 81 percent of those who received the Federally-funded, State-administered Road Home grants had insufficient resources to cover their damages. The average Road Home applicant fell about $35,000 short of the money they need to rebuild their home, and African American households on average had an almost 35 percent higher shortfall than white households.

More than one in three residential addresses — over 70,000 — remain vacant or unoccupied, according to a report by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. While workers with Brad Pitt’s Make It Right project are working on overdrive to finish the first of their scores of planned houses in the notoriously devastated Lower Ninth Ward, the neighborhood overall ranks far behind other neighborhoods in recovery, with only 11 percent of its pre-Katrina number of households. The same report notes that since the devastation of the city, rents have raised by 46 percent citywide (much more in some neighborhoods), while many city services remain very limited — for example, only 21 percent of public transit buses are running.

Divided City

Its not just grassroots activists that speak of race and class divides in the city — a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 70 percent of the city feel we’re divided by class and/or race. The Kaiser survey found some unity among New Orleanians — we’re united in feeling forgotten by the rest of the U.S. Eight out of 10 said the federal government has not provided sufficient support. Nearly two-thirds think that the U.S. public has largely forgotten about the city.

The survey found large percentages saying that their own situation has deteriorated. Fifty-three percent of low- income residents report that their financial situation is worse today than pre-Katrina. The percentage of residents who say they have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness such as depression has tripled since 2006.

There is a continuing debate about how many people live in New Orleans, with no solid figures until the next complete census. But last year, the census bureau estimated a population of 239,000. Other analysts — and Mayor C. Ray Nagin — estimate the population to be nearly 100,000 higher. By any measurement, the growth in that number has stagnated, while at least 200,000 former residents (out of a former population of nearly 500,000) have been unable to return — even the higher estimates of city population include enough new transplants to the city that 200,000 is a safe estimate. The once nearly 70 percent African American city is now estimated to be less than 50 percent African American, a change reflected in the changing face of electoral politics statewide. While Republicans have been losing across the U.S., Christian Coalition candidate Bobby Jindal was easily elected Governor last year, and in the city, decades of Black-majority city council shifted to a white majority.

Blank Slate or Burial Ground

Much of the change in the city is led by a new strata of the city’s population — planners, architects, developers, and other “reformers.” Many of them self-identify as “YURPs” — Young, Urban Rebuilding Professionals — in their work with countless nonprofits, foundations, and businesses. Some have spoken of the city as a blank slate on which they can project and practice their ideas of reform, whether in health care, architecture, urban planning, or any of countless other areas, especially education. What this worldview leaves out, according to some advocates, is the people who lived here before, who are the most affected by these changes, and have the least say in how they are carried out. “It wasn’t a blank slate, it was a cemetery,” says poet and educator Kalamu Ya Salaam. “People were killed, and they’re building on top of their bones.”

The vast majority of New Orleans’ new professionals have come here with the best intentions, with a love for this city and a desire to help with the recovery. However, despite token attempts at “community feedback,” many activists criticize what they see as a paternalistic attitude among many of the new decision makers.

For example, our education system was in crisis pre-Katrina, and certainly needed revolutionary change. Change is what we have gotten — the current system is in many ways unrecognizable from the system of three years ago — but this revolution has been overwhelmingly led from outside, not by the parents, students and staff of the New Orleans school system.

Shortly after the post-Katrina evacuation of the city, the entire staff of the public school system was fired. Not long after that, school board officials chose to end recognition or negotiation with the teachers’ union — the largest union in the city, and arguably the biggest outlet of Black middle class political power in the city. Since then, the school landscape has changed remarkably — from staff to decision-making structure to facilities. According to Tulane professor Lance Hill, “New Orleans has experienced a profound change in who governs schools and a dramatic reduction of parent and local taxpayer control of schools.”

The school system used to consist of 128 schools, 124 of them controlled by the New Orleans School Board. Now according to Hill, 88 have opened for the fall, and “50 of them are charter schools (privatized management) governed by self-appointed, self-perpetuating boards; 33 are run by the State Department of Education through the Recovery School District; and only five are governed by the elected school board.”

“There are now 42 separate school systems operating in New Orleans,” Hill continues, with their own “school policies, including teacher requirements, curriculum, discipline policies, enrollment limits, and social promotions. Publicly accountable schools in which parents have methods for publicly redressing grievances are limited to only five schools (5.6 percent of the total).”

Several recent articles have expressed fawning admiration for the new school system, including extended pieces in the New York Times and the New Orleans Times-Picayune. For school reformers, who came to New Orleans with a desire to try out the changes they had imagined, this represents a dream come true. They have media support, federal, state and city officials on their side, a massive influx of cheap (and young, idealistic) labor, through programs like Teach for America (who supplied 112 teachers last year, has committed 250 this year, and a projected 500 next year) and tens of millions of dollars in funding through sources such as the Gates and Walton foundations.

There is no doubt that some students receive an excellent education in the new New Orleans school districts, but critics are concerned that the students that are being left behind, are those that need the most help — those without someone to advocate for them, to research and apply for the best schools. According to Kalamu Ya Salaam, who is director of a school program called Students at the Center, the new systems represent “an experimentation with privatization, and everything that implies.”

Although the new charter schools have been able to choose from the best facilities and have used methods such as state standardized tests to pick only select students (including 40 percent fewer special education students), there are still serious questions over the extent to their much-heralded success. G.W. Carver School, the subject of a fawning Times piece last Spring, received an 88 percent failure rate for English and an 86 percent failure rate for Math.

Anniversary and Commemoration

August 29th, the anniversary of the devastation of the city, falls between the Democratic and Republican conventions. While the Democratic and Republican parties crown their nominees, activists on the ground will be on the streets, still fighting for a just recovery. “It ain’t to rain on Obama’s parade,” says Sess 4-5, a New Orleans-based hip hop star and activist, “but the people down here need the world to understand that its still a tragic situation. The rent has tripled, the health care system is in shambles, we have less access to education for our kids. The working class and poor are being exploited, while everyone at the top is getting fat off our misery.”

“We think August 29 should be holy day, not a day for business as usual,” explains Sess, who is one of the organizers of a Katrina March and Commemoration, starting Friday morning in the Lower Ninth Ward, and marching into the 7th Ward. That march is one of two activist commemorations in the city that day, the other starting uptown, near the BW Cooper development, one of the major housing developments torn down this year. “The Mayor announced to the world that New Orleans was ‘open for business’ but we’re here to tell you that it is closed for families,” declares former public housing resident Barbara Jackson, who will be part of the demonstration at BW Cooper, called Sankofa Day of Commemoration. “Five thousand demolished homes. Eight thousand new jail beds. This is their one for one replacement plan for us.”

Taking to the streets is not the only agenda of local activists. In New Orleans, people have been organizing at the grassroots, working together to build a movement. In the aftermath of the U.S. Social Forum last year in Atlanta, a broad coalition of social justice organizations began meeting monthly to combine efforts. This group, called the Organizers Roundtable, is an important spot for collaborations and community building.

It’s been community, not foundations or government, that has led this city’s recovery at the grassroots. Bayou Road — a street of Black-owned, community-oriented, businesses in New Orleans’ seventh ward — has rebuilt post-Katrina to more businesses than they had before the storm. It hasn’t been government help that has enabled these businesses to come back, but the effort of community members coming together. It was also community, and local support, that has brought back the membership of many local cultural organizations, like the network of Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, who organize secondline parades nearly every weekend throughout the year, as well as benefits that provide school supplies for area youth.

The Right to the City alliance (RTTC), a nationwide coalition of organizations that focuses on urban issues such as health care, criminal justice, and education, sees the continuing crisis in New Orleans as central to their work. They are co-sponsoring the march in New Orleans, as well as actions in seven other cities, including Los Angeles, New York City, Oakland, Providence, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Miami.

The work of RTTC deserves special notice, as a coalition that has worked to support the struggles of the people of New Orleans, and to bring that struggle and solidarity home to their own communities, while taking guidance from voices on the ground. In this time of many competing visionaries struggling to reshape this city, that willingness to listen to the people who lives are being affected, and to take that struggle and those lessons home to their own communities, may be the radical change New Orleans needs most.

Source / AlterNet

Although he’s rather flippant and not particularly articulate, Dreyfuss relates his thoughts on Katrina and its aftermath in this interview with Norah O’Donnell of MSNBC.

Richard Dreyfuss on Katrina and the Republicans

The Rag Blog