[News] Three Years After Katrina

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18585


Three Years After Katrina




While Republicans and Democrats Gather and Celebrate, A City Still 
Searches for Recovery

August 27, 2008 By Jordan Flaherty


As headlines focus on conventions and running mates, the third 
anniversary of Katrina offers an opportunity to examine the results 
of disastrous federal, state and local policy on the people of New 
Orleans.  Several organizations have released reports in the past 
week, examining the current state of the city, and grassroots 
activists have plans to broadcast their message from the 
streets.  For those who have heard only uplifting stories about the 
city's recovery, the facts on the ground may be surprising.

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% 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% citywide (much more in some 
neighborhoods), while many city services remain very limited - for 
example, only 21% of public transit buses are running.

Divided City

Its not just activists that speak of race and class divisions in New 
Orleans. A poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 70% of 
residents feel we're divided by class and/or race.  The Kaiser survey 
also found unity among New Orleanians: we're united in feeling 
forgotten by the rest of the US. Eight out of 10 said the federal 
government has not provided sufficient support. Nearly two-thirds 
think that the US 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 definitive 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 has stagnated, while even optimistic figures report that 
150,000 - 200,000 former residents (out of a former population of 
nearly 500,000) have been unable to return.  The once nearly 70% 
African American city is now estimated to be less than 50% African 
American, a change reflected in the changing face of electoral 
politics statewide. While Republicans have been losing across the US, 
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 of New Orlean's newer residents 
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 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, many activists criticize what they 
see as token attempts at community involvement, and 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, with little input from 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% of the total)."

Several recent articles have expressed excitement and 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, and a 
massive influx of money and cheap (and young, idealistic) labor. 
Teach for America supplied 112 teachers last year, has committed 250 
this year, and a projected 500 next year, while tens of millions of 
dollars in funding is coming 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 New Orleanian 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% 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 NYTimes piece last Spring, received an 88% 
failure rate for English and an 86% failure rate for Math on state 
standardized tests.

Anniversary and Commemoration

August 29, 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 US 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.


Jordan Flaherty is a journalist based in New Orleans, and an editor 
of Left Turn Magazine.  He was the first writer to bring the story of 
the Jena Six to a national audience and his reporting on post-Katrina 
New Orleans has been published and broadcast in outlets including Die 
Zeit (Europe's largest circulation newspaper), Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, 
and Democracy Now.



Resources for Information and Action:
Sankofa New Orleans March:
<http://www.sankofanola.org/>www.sankofanola.org.
Katrina March and Commemoration:
<http://katrinacommemoration.ning.com/>http://katrinacommemoration.ning.com/
Greater New Orleans Community Data Center
<http://www.gnocdc.org/>http://www.gnocdc.org/
Kaiser Family Foundation Poll:
  <http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/7789.cfm>http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/7789.cfm
Policylink Report:
<http://www.policylink.org/threeyearslater/>http://www.policylink.org/threeyearslater/
Left Turn Magazine:
<http://www.leftturn.org/>http://www.leftturn.org
Right To The City Alliance
<http://www.righttothecity.org/>http://www.righttothecity.org/




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