[Antiracism] Death, Abundance and New Orleans

[Mary]

Message from Bridget Lehane of People's Institute 
for Survival and Beyond in New Orleans.

>
>For folks who haven't had an update on life in 
>New Orleans for a while, this is a pretty 
>accurate picture, beautifully painted by one of 
>our good friends and allies, Jordan Flaherty.
>
>Peace
>
>Note: forwarded message attached.
>
>
>Bridget Lehane
>New Orleans, LA
>
>-------------------
>Life is good.
>
>
>
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>Subject: [jordanhurricane] Death, Abundance and New Orleans
>Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----------=_1134627144-22618-9623"
>Content-Length: 5411
>
>Death, Abundance and New Orleans
>By Jordan Flaherty
>Wednesday, December 14, 2005
>
>On Sunday, I drove past streets named Abundance, 
>Pleasure and Humanity to a memorial for Meg 
>Perry, a 26 year old Common Ground Collective 
>volunteer from Maine.  Meg died on Saturday when 
>the bus she was in crashed near downtown New 
>Orleans.  She had come to New Orleans in 
>September, then left and returned with more 
>volunteers.  The memorial was in a community 
>garden she had been working on in the Gentilly 
>neighborhood.  All around were empty houses.  It 
>was a small moment of mourning, in a city of 
>mourning.  Mourning that feels like it wonít 
>end, because the disaster hasnít ended.
>
>Walking the streets of New Orleans, itís hard to 
>escape the feeling of death and loss.  The city 
>is heavy with the weight of those not present. 
>Many neighborhoods are still dark, not even 
>streetlights or stop lights, with long stretches 
>of houses that have been abandoned for months. 
>Even Central City, a mostly Black neighborhood 
>that saw little flooding, is mostly dark and 
>empty, although nearby (whiter) neighborhoods 
>like the Lower Garden District are more 
>populated.
>
>You almost never see children in the new New 
>Orleans.  And there is still a 2 am curfew. 
>Iíve heard several reports of people being 
>arrested for sitting on their porch at 2.  As 
>temperatures drop, much of the city doesnít have 
>gas service.  Every door has a spray painted 
>symbol from the National Guard, marking that 
>they entered the house to look for bodies. 
>
>Compared to much of the city, my neighborhood 
>was not hit hard by the storm, but months later 
>there are still mountains of debris on the 
>street and no regular trash pick up. I havenít 
>received mail from August, much less September 
>through December.  FEMA left a note on my door 
>saying that because they couldnít see our roof 
>from the street, they reserve the right to break 
>into our home anytime in the next six months to 
>inspect it.
>
>The longer homes stay empty, the worse things 
>get.  Houses that were left empty have been 
>infested with insects and refrigerators left 
>with food are filled with maggots. New Orleans 
>already had a massive termite infestation ñ I 
>can only assume that while the city was empty it 
>got worse.  Iíve heard the rat population has 
>multiplied. In garbage hauling alone, the city 
>needs to dispose of at least 22 million tons, 15 
>times the debris removed after the Sept. 11 
>attacks on the World Trade Center.
>
>Disaster response has political repercussions. 
>Corruption and stealing of post-earthquake 
>disaster aid in 1972 contributed to the fall of 
>the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua.  The 
>faulty federal response to the 1985 earthquake 
>that hit Mexico City ignited a grassroots 
>movement in Mexico that helped to end the PRI 
>governmentís decades of one party rule.  And, of 
>course, the 1927 flooding of the Mississippi 
>River helped to elect Huey P Long governor of 
>Louisiana. 
>
>Within two weeks post-Katrina, Michael Brown of 
>FEMA resigned. New Orleans police Superintendent 
>Eddie Compass followed soon after.  Now, Marsha 
>Evans, president of Red Cross, has also been 
>forced out.  As soon as we are able to have an 
>election in our city, Mayor Nagin will be gone. 
>And Bush administration poll numbers have been 
>in free fall. The stakes are high, and the 
>possibilities for change are real.
>
>When I saw the floodwaters rising in New 
>Orleans, I expected poor people would be cut out 
>of the reconstruction money.  What has surprised 
>me is the extent to which the entire city has 
>been left out. While some local elites have 
>profited, much of the money has gone to disaster 
>profiteers from Halliburton and Blackwater and 
>bureaucrats from major relief organizations. 
>And, on a deeper level, the money necessary to 
>rebuild New Orleans simply hasnít come.  We 
>still donít even know if the levees will be 
>rebuilt, or to what level.  As the New York 
>Times pointed out in a powerful editorial this 
>week, we are facing the death of a city, and we 
>feel the rest of the country has forgotten us.
>
>Money for rebuilding and relief has arrived from 
>across the US.  However, only pennies compared 
>to the 1.5 billion dollars Red Cross has 
>collected so far. And many organizations are 
>providing only a dubious service.  ìCan anyone 
>tell me why the SPCA is still breaking into 
>homes to look for animals?î a friend asked. 
>ìItís been almost four months.  Peoples pets 
>have either survived or they havenít.î
>
>Another friend who is working for a big relief 
>organization expressed her concerns to me ìWeíre 
>getting $35 a day for food, on top of our 
>salaries,î she said.  ìThings take forever to be 
>approved - sometimes so long that by the time we 
>have the support we need, the effort has passed. 
>Thereís so much money behind usówe can do pretty 
>much whatever we want and donít have to worry 
>about funding, but it feeds lifestyles that are 
>much more demanding than Iíd hope relief workers 
>would be.î
>
>Progressive resources have been scarce. With the 
>financial and political support of the labor 
>movement, progressive organizers in New Orleans 
>could create a union city deep in the 
>traditionally non-union south.  The labor 
>movement pledged hundreds of thousands of 
>dollars towards relief, and some union 
>organizers and activists came down to struggle 
>with grassroots groups.  But, so far, the vast 
>resources potentially available from labor have 
>been absent.
>
>Progressive and liberal foundations and 
>nonprofits will spend millions of dollars more, 
>but its very likely most of that money will not 
>go to New Orleans-initiated projects.  One 
>funder I spoke to told me that foundations have 
>received very few funding requests from new 
>Orleans-based projects ñ no doubt because many 
>excellent New Orleans based projects are too 
>overwhelmed to write grants right now.  She told 
>me that several outside organizations have 
>leaped into this vacuum to apply for this money, 
>while local projects will be left out.
>
>New Orleans ñ and the south in general ñ has a 
>long history of outsiders spending large sums of 
>money for organizing without community 
>leadership or involvement.  Efforts like this 
>always fail.  The AFL-CIO spent millions of 
>dollars in the late 90s on an effort called 
>HOT-ROC to organize the hospitality industry in 
>New Orleans.  Several years and hundreds of 
>organizers later, the campaign quietly folded up 
>shop, without organizing a single worker. 
>Meanwhile, vital local efforts go unfunded and 
>unsupported.
>
>For example, NO HEAT ñ the New Orleans Housing 
>Emergency Action Team, a local organization with 
>no paid staff or grants ñ has set up a phone 
>tree, currently with at least 50 people, to 
>respond immediately to any evictions.  Theyíve 
>had demonstrations, press conferences and 
>community meetings, and work closely with the 
>Peopleís Hurricane Fund legal network.
>
>The Latino Health Outreach Project is another 
>small local effort that has been doing vital 
>work with virtually no funding or attention from 
>outside New Orleans.  They have been setting up 
>clinics for Latino day laborers wherever they 
>can find them ñ from the hotels and campsites 
>theyíre staying in to a restaurant on Canal 
>Street many hang out at on Friday nights.
>
>Catherine Jones, who helped initiate the project, writes,
>
>ìThe stories we are hearing from workers are so 
>monumental we donít know what to do with them. 
>Some people are working in mold-infested houses 
>with no masks or protective gear; some contract 
>laborers are being imprisoned in hotels by their 
>bosses, who wonít let them leave the premises 
>once they return from the dayís work. People are 
>working six and seven days a week, often for ten 
>or more hours a day. We have talked to many day 
>laborers who donít get paid after working for a 
>day or even an entire week. These cold nights, 
>many people are sleeping in tents while their 
>bosses stay next door in heated trailers. Some 
>people sleep under cars or bridges. Everyone is 
>worried about flu, what it will mean to get sick 
>in this climate where no job is guaranteed and a 
>dayís wage helps support as many as ten people 
>back home. 
>
>ìA friend who used to live near the clinic told 
>us how one day, when he and some other people 
>were going to work in Chalmette, they got 
>stopped by the police at the checkpoint and the 
>police asked them for their green cards. Our 
>friend showed his Texas driversí license and 
>explained that he didnít have a green card since 
>heís a US citizen. ëYou need a green card,í they 
>said. They turned back the entire truck and told 
>everyone they couldnít go to work that day.î
>
>
>Iím no voice for New Orleans.  Iím white, Iíve 
>only lived here a few years, and my house didnít 
>flood.  There are many people who can speak more 
>effectively about what is happening in New 
>Orleans ñ and some have.  At the same time, 
>there are still so many stories that arenít 
>getting out.  And many of the people who would 
>be the best ones to tell them are too 
>overwhelmed with the losses weíve all faced.
>
>So, on behalf of everyone in New Orleans too 
>overwhelmed to write right now, please, donít 
>forget us.  Weíre still drowning.
>
>  =====================================
>  Jordan Flaherty is a union organizer and an 
>editor of Left Turn Magazine.  This is his 
>thirteenth article from New Orleans.   Jordanís 
>previous articles from New Orleans are at 
>http://www.leftturn.org/articles/SpecialCollections/katrina.aspx
>  =====================================
>Based on conversations with organizers and 
>community members, Left Turn Magazine has 
>compiled a list of grassroots New Orleans 
>organizations focused on relief, recovery, 
>social justice and cultural preservation that 
>need your support. The list is online at
>http://www.leftturn.org/Articles/Viewer.aspx?id=689&type=W
>  =====================================
>
>If you want to know whatís up in New Orleans, 
>and read more about the Latino Health Outreach 
>Project, racial profiling in the city and more, 
>see these writings by Catherine Jones: 
>http://floodlines.blogspot.com/
>You can also listen to Catherine interviewed at 
>http://www.againstthegrain.org/audio12.12.05.mp3
>
>Comprehensive website for information and action 
>related to prisoners in New Orleans: 
>http://www.criticalresistance.org/katrina/
>
>More info on Meg Perry: http://neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2005/12/6551.php
>
>Other Resources for information and action:
>
>Reconstruction Watch - http://www.reconstructionwatch.org/
>Common Ground - http://www.commongroundrelief.org
>Peoples Hurricane Fund - http://www.communitylaborunited.net
>Resource for Journalists - http://www.katrinainfonet.net
>Justice for New Orleans - http://www.justiceforneworleans.org/
>New Orleans Housing Emergency Action Team - http://www.no-heat.org/
>
>
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>Flaherty's emails from New Orleans.  To 
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