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Back inside New Orleans<br><br>
by Jordan Flaherty<br><br>
September 12, 2005<br><br>
What actually happened in New Orleans these past two weeks? We need to
sort<br>
through the rumors and distortions. Perhaps we need our version of
South<br>
Africa’s Truth And Reconciliation Commission. Some way to sort
through the<br>
many narratives and find a truth, and to find justice.<br><br>
I spent yesterday inside the city of New Orleans, speaking to a few of
the<br>
last holdouts in the 9th ward/bywater neighborhood. Their stories
paint a<br>
very different picture from what we’ve heard in the media. Instead
of<br>
stories of gangs of criminals and police and soldiers keeping order,
there<br>
were stories of collective action, everyone looking out for each
other,<br>
communal responses.<br><br>
The first few nights there was a large, free community barbecue at a<br>
neighborhood bar called The Country Club. People brought food and
cooked<br>
and cooked and drank and went swimming (yes, there's a pool in the
bar).<br><br>
Emily Harris and Richie Kay, from Desire Street, traveled out on their
boat<br>
and brought supplies and gave rides. They have been doing this
almost every<br>
day since the hurricane struck. They estimate that they have
rescued at<br>
least a hundred people. Emily doesn’t want to leave. She is a
carpenter<br>
and builder, and says, “I want to stay and rebuild. I love New
Orleans.”<br><br>
Emily describes a community working together in the first days after
the<br>
hurricane. She also describes a scene of abandonment and
disappointment.<br>
“A lot of people came to the high ground at St. Claude Avenue. They
really<br>
thought someone would come and rescue them, and they waited all day
for<br>
something - a boat, a helicopter, anything. There were helicopters
in the<br>
sky, but none coming down.”<br><br>
So people started walking as a mass uptown to Canal Street. Along
the way,<br>
youths would break into grocery stores, take the food and distribute
it<br>
evenly among houses in the community.<br><br>
“Then they reached Canal Street, and saw that there was still no one
that<br>
wanted to rescue them. That's when people broke into the stores on
Canal<br>
Street.”<br><br>
I asked Okra, in his house off of Piety Street, what the biggest problem
has<br>
been. He said, “It’s been the police - they’ve lost the last
restraints on<br>
their behavior they had, and gotten a license to go wild. They can
do<br>
anything they want. I saw one cop beat a guy so hard that he almost
took<br>
his ear off. And this was someone just trying to walk
home.”<br><br>
Walking through the streets, I witnessed hundreds of soldiers patrolling
the<br>
streets. Everyone I spoke to said that soldiers were coming to
their house<br>
at least once a day, trying to convince them to leave, bringing stories
of<br>
disease and quarantine and violence. I didn’t see or speak to any
soldiers<br>
involved in any clean up or rebuilding.<br><br>
There are surely reasons to leave - I would not be living in the city
at<br>
this point. I’m too attached to electricity and phone lines.
But I can<br>
attest that those holdouts I spoke to are doing fine. They have
enough food<br>
and water and have been very careful to avoid exposing themselves to
the<br>
many health risks in the city.<br><br>
I saw more city busses rolling through poor areas of town than I ever
saw<br>
pre-hurricane. Unfortunately, these buses were filled with patrols
of<br>
soldiers. What if the massive effort placed into patrolling this
city and<br>
chasing everyone out were placed into beginning the rebuilding
process?<br><br>
Some neighborhoods are underwater still, and the water has turned into
a<br>
sticky sludge of sewage and death that turns the stomach and breaks
my<br>
heart. However, some neighborhoods are barely damaged at all,
and if a<br>
large-scale effort were put into bringing back electricity and clearing
the<br>
streets of debris, people could begin to move back in now.<br><br>
Certainly some people do not want to move back, but many of us do.
We want<br>
to rebuild our city that we love. The People’s Hurricane Fund - a<br>
grassroots, community based group made up of New Orleans community<br>
organizers and allies from around the US - has already made one of
their<br>
first demands a “right of return” for the displaced of New
Orleans.<br><br>
In the last week, I’ve traveled between Houston, Baton Rouge,
Covington,<br>
Jackson and New Orleans and spoken to many of my former friends and<br>
neighbors. We feel shell shocked. It used to be we would see
each other in<br>
a coffee shop or a bar or on the street and talk and find out what
we’re<br>
doing. Those of us who were working for social justice felt a
community.<br>
We could share stories, combine efforts, and we never felt alone.
Now we’re<br>
alone and dispersed and we miss our homes and our communities and we
still<br>
don’t know where so many of our loved ones even are.<br><br>
It may be months before we start to get a clear picture of what happened
in<br>
New Orleans. As people are dispersed around the US reconstructing
that<br>
story becomes even harder than reconstructing the city. Certain
sites, like<br>
the Convention Center and Superdome, have become legendary, but despite
the<br>
thousands of people who were there, it still is hard to find out
exactly<br>
what did happen.<br><br>
According to a report that’s been circulated, Denise Young, one of
those<br>
trapped in the convention center told family members, “yes, there were
young<br>
men with guns there, but they organized the crowd. They went to Canal
Street<br>
and ‘looted,’ and brought back food and water for the old people and
the<br>
babies, because nobody had eaten in days. When the police rolled
down<br>
windows and yelled out ‘the buses are coming,’ the young men with
guns<br>
organized the crowd in order: old people in front, women and children
next,<br>
men in the back,just so that when the buses came, there would be
priorities<br>
of who got out first.” But the buses never came. “Lots of people
being<br>
dropped off, nobody being picked up. Cops passing by, speeding off.
We<br>
thought we were being left to die.”<br><br>
Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky, paramedics from Service
Employees<br>
International Union Local 790 reported on their experience downtown,
after<br>
leaving a hotel they were staying at for a convention. “We walked to
the<br>
police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street and were told ...that
we<br>
were on our own, and no they did not have water to give us. We now
numbered<br>
several hundred. We held a mass meeting to decide a course of action.
We<br>
agreed to camp outside the police command post. We would be plainly
visible<br>
to the media and would constitute a highly visible embarrassment to the
City<br>
officials. The police told us that we could not stay. Regardless, we
began<br>
to settle in and set up camp. In short order, the police commander
came<br>
across the street to address our group. He told us he had a solution:
we<br>
should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater
New<br>
Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of
the<br>
City...<br><br>
“We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with
great<br>
excitement and hope. ...As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna
sheriffs<br>
formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough
to<br>
speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the
crowd<br>
fleeing in various directions...<br><br>
“Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from
the<br>
rain under an overpass. We debated our options and in the end decided
to<br>
build an encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway on
the<br>
center divide, between the O'Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned
we<br>
would be visible to everyone, we would have some security being on
an<br>
elevated freeway and we could wait and watch for the arrival of the yet
to<br>
be seen buses.<br><br>
“All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the
same<br>
trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be
turned<br>
away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to
be<br>
verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleanians were
prevented<br>
and prohibited from self-evacuating the City on foot. Meanwhile, the
only<br>
two City shelters sank further into squalor and disrepair. The only
way<br>
across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks,
buses,<br>
moving vans, semi-trucks and any car that could be hot wired. All
were<br>
packed with people trying to escape the misery New Orleans had
become.”<br><br>
Media reports of armed gangs focused on black youth, but New Orleans<br>
community activist, Black Panther, and former Green Party candidate for
City<br>
Council Malik Rahim reported from the West Bank of New Orleans, “There
are<br>
gangs of white vigilantes near here riding around in pickup trucks, all
of<br>
them armed.” I also heard similar reports from two of my neighbors
- a<br>
white gay couple - who i visited on Esplanade Avenue.<br><br>
The reconstruction of New Orleans starts now. We need to
reconstruct the<br>
truth, we need to reconstruct families, who are still separated, we need
to<br>
reconstruct the lives and community of the people of New Orleans,
and,<br>
finally, we need to reconstruct the city.<br><br>
Since I moved to New Orleans, I’ve been inspired and educated by the<br>
grassroots community organizing that is an integral part of the life of
the<br>
city. It is this community infrastructure that is needed to step
forward<br>
and fight for restructuring with justice.<br><br>
In 1970, when hundreds of New Orleans police came to kick the Black
Panthers<br>
out of the Desire Housing Projects, the entire community stood between
the<br>
police and the Panthers, and the police were forced to retreat.<br><br>
The grassroots infrastructure of New Orleans is the infrastructure
of<br>
secondlines and Black Mardi Gras: true community support. The
Social Aid<br>
and Pleasure Clubs organize New Orleans’ legendary secondline parades
-<br>
roving street parties that happen almost every weekend. These
societies<br>
were formed to provide insurance to the Black community because Black
people<br>
could not buy insurance legally, and to this day the “social aid” is
as<br>
important as the pleasure.<br><br>
The only way that New Orleans will be reconstructed as even a shadow of
its<br>
former self is if the people of New Orleans have direct control over
that<br>
reconstruction. But, our community dislocation is only
increasing. Every<br>
day, we are spread out further. People leave Houston for Oregon
and<br>
Chicago. We are losing contact with each other, losing our
community that<br>
has nurtured us.<br><br>
Already, the usual forces of corporate restructuring are lining up.<br>
Halliburton's Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary has begun work on a
$500<br>
million US Navy contract for emergency repairs at Gulf Coast naval
and<br>
marine facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Blackwell Security
- the<br>
folks that brought you Abu Ghraib - are patrolling the streets of our
city.<br><br>
The Wall Street Journal reported that the rich white elite is
already<br>
planning their vision of New Orleans’ reconstruction, from the
super-rich<br>
gated compounds of Audubon Place Uptown, where they have set up a
heliport<br>
and brought in a heavily-armed Israeli security company. “The
new city<br>
must be something very different,” one of these city leaders was quoted
as<br>
saying, “with better services and fewer poor people. Those who want
to see<br>
this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way:<br>
demographically, geographically and politically.”<br><br>
While the world’s attention is focused on New Orleans, in a time when
its<br>
clear to most of the world that the federal government’s greed and<br>
heartlessness has caused this tragedy, we have an opportunity to make a
case<br>
for a people’s restructuring, rather than a Halliburton
restructuring.<br><br>
The people of New Orleans have the will. Today, I met up with
Andrea<br>
Garland, a community activist with Get Your Act On who is planning a
bold<br>
direct action; she and several of her friends are moving back in to
their<br>
homes. They have generators and supplies, and they invite anyone
who is<br>
willing to fight for New Orleans to move back in with them. Malik
Rahim, in<br>
New Orleans’ West Bank, is refusing to leave and is inviting others to
join<br>
him. Community organizer Shana Sassoon, exiled in Houston, is
planning a<br>
community mapping project to map out where our diaspora is being sent,
to<br>
aid in our coming back together. Abram Himmelstein and Rachel
Breulin of<br>
The Neighborhood Story Project are beginning the long task of
documenting<br>
oral histories of our exile.<br><br>
Please join us in this fight. This is not just about New
Orleans. This is<br>
about community and collaboration versus corporate profiteering.
The<br>
struggle for New Orleans lives on.<br><br>
<br>
-----------------------------------------------<br>
Jordan Flaherty is a union organizer and an editor of Left Turn
Magazine<br>
(<a href="http://www.leftturn.org). /" eudora="autourl">
www.leftturn.org). </a> He is not planning on moving out of New
Orleans.<br>
-----------------------------------------------<br>
Some Organizations Mentioned in This Article:<br><br>
<a href="http://www.qecr.org/" eudora="autourl">www.qecr.org<br>
</a><a href="http://www.getyouracton.com/" eudora="autourl">
www.getyouracton.com<br>
</a><a href="http://www.neighborhoodstoryproject.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.neighborhoodstoryproject.org<br>
</a><a href="http://www.indyvoter.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.indyvoter.org<br><br>
</a>Other Organizations That Need your Support:<br>
<a href="http://www.jjpl.org/" eudora="autourl">www.jjpl.org<br>
</a><a href="http://www.thejusticecenter.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.thejusticecenter.org<br>
</a><a href="http://www.criticalresistance.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.criticalresistance.org<br>
</a><a href="http://www.nolahumanrights.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.nolahumanrights.org<br>
</a></font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
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