[News] Gutting New Orleans

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/quigley06292006.html

June 28, 2006


Katrina, 10 Months Later


Gutting New Orleans

By BILL QUIGLEY

Saturday I joined some volunteers and helped gut the home of one of 
my best friends. Two months after she finished paying off her 
mortgage, her one-story brick home was engulfed in 7 feet of water. 
Because she was under-insured and remains worried about a repeat of 
the floods, my friend, a grandmother, has not yet decided if she is 
going to rebuild.

Though it is Saturday morning, on my friend's block no children play 
and no one is cutting the grass. Most of her neighbors' homes are 
still abandoned. Three older women neighbors have died since Katrina.

We are still finding dead bodies. Ten days ago, workers cleaning a 
house in New Orleans found a body of a man who died in the flood. He 
is the twenty-third person found dead from the storm since March.

Over two hundred thousand people have not yet made it back to New 
Orleans. Vacant houses stretch mile after mile, neighborhood after 
neighborhood. Thousands of buildings remain marked with brown ribbons 
where floodwaters settled. Of the thousands of homes and businesses 
in eastern New Orleans, thirteen percent have been re-connected to 
electricity.

The mass displacement of people has left New Orleans older, whiter 
and more affluent. African-Americans, children and the poor have not 
made it back -- primarily because of severe shortages of affordable housing.

Thousands of homes remain just as they were when the floodwaters 
receded --ghost-like houses with open doors, upturned furniture, and 
walls covered with growing mold.

Not a single dollar of federal housing repair or home reconstruction 
money has made it to New Orleans yet. Tens of thousands are waiting. 
Many wait because a full third of homeowners in the New Orleans area 
had no flood insurance. Others wait because the levees surrounding 
New Orleans are not yet as strong as they were before Katrina and 
fear re-building until flood protection is more likely. Fights over 
the federal housing money still loom because Louisiana refuses to 
clearly state a commitment to direct 50% of the billions to low and 
moderate income families.

Meanwhile, seventy thousand families in Louisiana live in 240 square 
foot FEMA trailers --three on my friend's street. As homeowners, 
their trailer is in front of their own battered home. Renters are not 
so fortunate and are placed in gravel strewn FEMA-villes across the 
state. With rents skyrocketing, thousands have moved into houses 
without electricity.

Meanwhile, privatization of public services continues to accelerate.

Public education in New Orleans is mostly demolished and what remains 
is being privatized. The city is now the nation's laboratory for 
charter schools --publicly funded schools run by private bodies. 
Before Katrina the local elected school board had control over 115 
schools --they now control 4. The majority of the remaining schools 
are now charters. The metro area public schools will get $213 million 
less next school year in state money because tens of thousands of 
public school students were displaced last year. At the same time, 
the federal government announced a special allocation of $23.9 
million which can only be used for charter schools in Louisiana. The 
teachers union, the largest in the state, has been told there will be 
no collective bargaining because, as one board member stated, "I 
think we all realize the world has changed around us."

Public housing has been boarded up and fenced off as HUD announced 
plans to demolish 5000 apartments -- despite the greatest shortage of 
affordable housing in the region's history. HUD plans to let private 
companies develop the sites. In the meantime, the 4000 families 
locked out since Katrina are not allowed to return.

The broken city water system is losing about 85 million gallons of 
water in leaks every day. That is not a typo, 85 million gallons of 
water a day, at a cost of $200,000 a day, are still leaking out of 
the system even after over 17,000 leaks have been plugged. Michelle 
Krupa of the Times-Picayune reports that the city pumps 135 million 
gallons a day through 80 miles of pipe in order for 50 million 
gallons to be used. We are losing more than we are using; the repair 
bill is estimated to be $1 billion - money the city does not have.

Public healthcare is in crisis. Our big public hospital has remained 
closed and there are no serious plans to reopen it. A neighbor with 
cancer who has no car was told that she has to go 68 miles away to 
the closest public hospital for her chemotherapy.

Mental health may be worse. In the crumbling city and in the shelters 
of the displaced, depression and worse reign. Despite a suicide rate 
triple what it was a year ago, the New York Times reports we have 
lost half of our psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists and 
other mental health care workers. Mental health clinics remain 
closed. The psych unit of the big public hospital has not been 
replaced in the private sector as most are too poor to pay. The 
primary residence for people with mental health problems are our 
jails and prisons.

For children, the Washington Post reports, the trauma of the floods 
has not ended. A LSU mental health screening of nearly 5,000 children 
in schools and temporary housing in Louisiana found that 96 percent 
saw hurricane damage to their homes or neighborhoods, 22 percent had 
relatives or friends who were injured, 14 percent had relatives or 
friends who died, and 35 percent lost pets. Thirty-four percent were 
separated from their primary caregivers at some point; 9 percent 
still are. Little care is directed to the little ones.

The criminal justice system remains shattered. Six thousand cases 
await trial. There were no jury trials and only 4 public defenders 
for 9 of the last 10 months. Many people in jail have not seen a 
lawyer since 2005. The Times-Picayune reported one defendant, jailed 
for possession of crack cocaine for almost two years, has not been 
inside a court room since August 2005 despite the fact that a key 
police witness against him committed suicide during the storm.

You may have seen on the news that we have some new neighbors --the 
National Guard. We could use the help of our military to set up 
hospitals and clinics. We could use their help in gutting and 
building houses or picking up the mountains of debris that remain. 
But instead they were sent to guard us from ourselves. Crime 
certainly is a community problem. But many question the Guard helping 
local police dramatically increase stops of young black males --who 
are spread out on the ground while they and their cars are searched. 
The relationship between crime and the collapse of all of these other 
systems is a one rarely brought up.

It has occurred to us that our New Orleans is looking more and more 
like Baghdad.

People in New Orleans wonder if this is the way the US treats its own 
citizens, how on earth is the US government treating people around 
the world? We know our nation could use its money and troops and 
power to help build up our community instead of trying to extending 
our economic and corporate reach around the globe. Why has it chosen not to?

We know that what is happening in New Orleans is just a more 
concentrated, more graphic version of what is going on all over our 
country. Every city in our country has some serious similarities to 
New Orleans. Every city has some abandoned neighborhoods. Every city 
in our country has abandoned some public education, public housing, 
public healthcare, and criminal justice. Those who do not support 
public education, healthcare, and housing will continue to turn all 
of our country into the Lower Ninth Ward unless we stop them. Why do 
we allow this?

There are signs of hope and resistance.

Neighborhood groups across the Gulf Coast are meeting and insisting 
that the voices and wishes of the residents be respected in the 
planning and rebuilding of their neighborhoods.

Public outrage forced FEMA to cancel the eviction of 3,000 families 
from trailers in Mississippi.

Country music artists Faith Hill and Tim McGraw blasted the failed 
federal rebuilding effort, saying "When you have people dying because 
they're poor and black or poor and white, or because of whatever they 
are " if that's a number on a political scale " then that is the most 
wrong thing. That erases everything that's great about our country."

There is a growing grassroots movement to save the 4000+ apartments 
of public housing HUD promises to bulldoze. Residents and allies plan 
a big July 4 celebration of resistance.

Voluntary groups have continued their active charitable work on the 
Gulf Coast. Thousands of houses are being gutted and repaired and 
even built by Baptist, Catholic, Episcopal, Jewish, Mennonite, 
Methodist, Muslim, Presbyterian and other faith groups. The AFL-CIO 
announced plans to invest $700 million in housing in New Orleans.

Many ask what the future of New Orleans is going to be like? I always 
give the lawyer's answer, "It depends." The future of New Orleans 
depends on whether our nation makes a commitment to those who have so 
far been shut out of the repair of New Orleans. Will the common good 
prompt the federal government to help the elderly, the children, the 
disabled and the working poor return to New Orleans? If so, we might 
get most of our city back. If not, and the signs so far are not so 
good, then the tens of thousands of people who were left behind when 
Katrina hit 10 months ago, will again be left behind.

The future of New Orleans depends on those who are willing to fight 
for the right of every person to return. Many are fighting for that 
right. Please join in.

Some ask, what can people who care do to help New Orleans and the 
Gulf Coast? Help us rebuild our communities. Pair up your community, 
your business, school, church, professional or social organization, 
with one on the Gulf Coast --and build a relationship where your 
organization can be a resource for one here and provide opportunities 
for your groups to come and help and for people here to come and tell 
their stories in your communities. Most groups here have adopted the 
theme --Solidarity not Charity. Or as aboriginal activist Lila Watson 
once said: "If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. 
But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, 
then let us struggle together."

For the sake of our nation and for our world, let us struggle together.

In the meantime, I will be joining other volunteers this Saturday, 
knocking out the mold covered ceiling of my friend's home and putting 
it out on the street -- 10 months after Katrina.

For more information, see 
<http://www.justiceforneworleans.org/>www.justiceforneworleans.org

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola Law 
School in New Orleans. He can be reached at: 
<mailto:Quigley at loyno.edu.>Quigley at loyno.edu.


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