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<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18585" eudora="autourl">
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18585<br><br>
</a></font><h1><b>Three Years After Katrina<br><br>
<br>
</b></h1><h3><b>While Republicans and Democrats Gather and Celebrate, A
City Still Searches for Recovery</b></h3><font size=3>August 27, 2008 By
<b>Jordan Flaherty</b> <br><br>
<br>
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.<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
<b>Divided City<br><br>
</b>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.<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
<b>Blank Slate or Burial Ground<br><br>
</b>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."<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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."<br><br>
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."<br><br>
"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)."<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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." <br><br>
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.<br><br>
<b>Anniversary and Commemoration<br><br>
</b>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."<br><br>
"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."<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
<br>
<b><i>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.<br><br>
</i></b> <br><br>
<b><u>Resources for Information and Action:<br>
</u></b>Sankofa New Orleans March:<br>
</font><font size=3 color="#000080"><a href="http://www.sankofanola.org/">
www.sankofanola.org</a></font><font size=3>.<br>
Katrina March and Commemoration:<br>
</font><font size=3 color="#000080">
<a href="http://katrinacommemoration.ning.com/">
http://katrinacommemoration.ning.com/<br>
</a></font><font size=3>Greater New Orleans Community Data Center <br>
</font><font size=3 color="#000080"><a href="http://www.gnocdc.org/">
http://www.gnocdc.org/<br>
</a></font><font size=3>Kaiser Family Foundation Poll:<br>
</font><a href="http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/7789.cfm">
<font size=3 color="#000080">http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/7789.cfm<br>
</a></font><font size=3>Policylink Report:<br>
</font><font size=3 color="#000080">
<a href="http://www.policylink.org/threeyearslater/">
http://www.policylink.org/threeyearslater/<br>
</a></font><font size=3>Left Turn Magazine:<br>
</font><font size=3 color="#000080"><a href="http://www.leftturn.org/">
http://www.leftturn.org<br>
</a></font><font size=3>Right To The City Alliance<br>
</font><font size=3 color="#000080">
<a href="http://www.righttothecity.org/">
http://www.righttothecity.org/</a><br><br>
<br><br>
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