Hurricane Katrina made landfall four years ago, resulting in one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in American history. Sadly, the horrific ripples seem to just spread wider and wider with the passage of time, as reported by Newsweek last fall:

Even before the storm, they were some of the country's neediest kids. Now, the children of Katrina who stayed longest in ramshackle government trailer parks in Baton Rouge are the sickest I have ever seen in the U.S., says Irwin Redlener, president of the Children's Health Fund and a professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. According to a new report by CHF and Mailman focusing on 261 displaced children, the well-being of the poorest Katrina kids has declined to an alarming level since the hurricane. Forty-one percent are anemic—twice the rate found in children in New York City homeless shelters, and more than twice the CDC's record rate for high-risk minorities. More than half the kids have mental-health problems. And 42 percent have respiratory infections and disorders that may be linked to formaldehyde and crowding in the trailers, the last of which FEMA finally closed in May. The unending bureaucratic haggling at federal and state levels over how to provide services and rebuild health centers for the Gulf's poor has made a bad situation much worse, says Redlener: As awful as the initial response to Katrina looked on television, it's been dwarfed by the ineptitude and disorganization of the recovery.

The low income victims of Katrina remain an internally displaced people, expelled, ostracized, abandoned.

Hat tips to Teddy Partridge and Peterr.

Labels: African Americans, Hurricane Katrina, Neoliberalism

From an article by Trinh Le and Jeffrey Buchanan at Counterpunch:

Despite President Barack Obama's decision to allow residents living in FEMA Trailers to remain in their trailers while the federal government partners with residents to find permanent housing, the Biloxi City Council is preparing to take action to kick these hurricane survivors out of their city. The Biloxi City Council will vote June 16th on an ordinance, backed by the City's community development office, forcing FEMA trailers to be removed from residential zones by August 9th. Housing and human rights advocates have denounced the proposed ordinance as another step in the victimization and marginalization of residents with disabilities, low income, elderly, immigrant, and minority survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita by their elected officials.

Chuck Rogers, a long-time Biloxi resident is currently living in a trailer along Redding Street as he works with Hope Community Development Agency, a community-based nonprofit working to find permanent homes for Katrina survivors, to redesign a new home for his lot. He is eager to move out of his trailer but now fears the city council ordinance will set back his plans to rebuild saying, "I'm just trying to do the best I can to build to the future."

"I think it's important that the city recognizes that everyone has not recovered completely from Katrina and that a number of people are still working on their homes," said Ward 2 Councilman Bill Stallworth, an outspoken critic of the ordinance who also serves as Executive Director of Hope Community Development Agency. "It will be unconscionable for the city to throw its citizens onto the streets."

"Biloxi will run afoul of the federal Fair Housing Act if the trailer occupants it displaces include high numbers of racial minorities, persons with disabilities, or single mothers with children," noted Reilly Morse, an attorney with the Mississippi Center for Justice.

Nearly 4 years have passed since Katrina struck New Orleans, and the victims are slowly, but surely, melting into an indistinguishable populace of poverty. Sadly, they appear doomed to live as perpetuately internally displaced people.

Labels: Hurricane Katrina, Neoliberalism, Poverty

Charitable contributions for alternative, left and radical causes. Here are some of the ones that I posted last year, and they remain equally suitable today:

KDVS Community Alternative Radio

Now, I admit that I broadcast on KDVS, so my self-interest is rather obvious. But KDVS is a station that is cooperatively managed by students and community programmers, with very little oversight by the UC Davis administrators. Programmers are free to broadcast almost anything outside of the commercial constraints of the marketplace. If you live beyond the confines of Northern California, look for a station with similar values, and consider financially supporting them, and remember NPR stations don't qualify.

Common Ground Collective

Hurricane Katrina has exacted a terrible toll upon New Orleans, one that endures to this day. Both the federal government and institutions, such as the Red Cross, have failed to respond adequately, requiring local, grassroots organizations to step forward: Common Ground's mission is to provide short term relief for victims of hurricane disasters in the gulf coast region, and long term support in rebuilding the communities affected in the New Orleans area. Common Ground is a community-initiated volunteer organization offering assistance, mutual aid and support. The work gives hope to communities by working with them, providing for their immediate needs and emphasizes people working together to rebuild their lives in sustainable ways.

Middle East Children's Alliance

Living conditions for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are dire, with more than one in four Palestinians considered deeply impoverished, as are the prospects for the creation of a Palestinian state that would acknowledge their right to self-determination. Western governments have withdrawn funds because of the electoral success of Hamas, seeking to collectively punish them as a means of forcing them to elect a new government more agreeable to them. The Middle East Children's Alliance, or MECA, raises funds for food and medical supplies for them, as well as for the people of Lebanon.

AK Press

As described by wikipedia, AK Press is a collectively owned and operated independent publisher and book distributor that specialises in radical and anarchist literature. It has published numerous books that describe social movements within the US and around the world that have been depreciated or otherwise deliberately erased from public memory by both the mainstream as well as the institutionalized left.

Last year's reissuance of The Subversion of Politics, by Georgy Katsiaficas, is an excellent example, and, having read it myself, a real page turner, as the suppressed memories of the past are remembered. Consider becoming a Friend of AK Press to assist in the continued publication of books that challenge the mainstream view of history, social relations and the origins of political change.

And, just to bring things up to date, living conditions in Gaza remain horrible, so a contribution to the Middle East Children's Alliance remains as important as ever, while AK Press has published a number of excellent books in the last year or so, including Marina Sitrin's Horizontalism and Ben Dangl's The Price of Fire. A contribution will enable it to continue to release more excellent works of this kind.

Labels: AK Press, Alternative Media, Humanitarian Assistance, Hurricane Katrina, Lebanon, Middle East Children's Alliance, Palestine

. . . without ever using the words Allende, socialism or neoliberalism. But, then, that would require evaluating events in Chile outside the constraints of duopoly politics in America. It might also encourage people to compare the neoliberal economic system of Chile with the emerging nationalistic, more socialistic one in Venezuela, which would break the liberal blogosphere boycott against praising anything Hugo Chavez does.

Furthermore, the protests described in the post are about a lot more than just the declining living standards of the Chilean middle class. Not to mention that, by analogizing the Chilean middle class to the American one, the post obscures the fact that middle class Chileans, indeed, all Chileans, live much less prosperous, more insecure lives than their purported American brethren.

Perhaps, this is why liberal discourse is so narrow and uninspiring, as it appears incapable of acknowledging the existence of social movements except as manifestations of middle class discontent. For example, consider this post about infrastructure and Hurricane Katrina, which emphasizes the need for increased spending for levee protection so that middle class people elsewhere around the country do not lose their homes as well, while ignoring the existence of thousands of impoverished displaced people, living in conditions of rural social isolation, who cannot return to New Orleans in the absence of new housing constructed for them.

When progressive liberals expunge the poor victims of Katrina from public discourse by reference to a simplistic form of class analysis that cannot admit their existence for fear of having to address their dire situation, we can be certain that they are doomed, at least as far as establishment politics and governance is concerned. Rest assured, however, that they are supposed to magically appear on election day to vote for Democratic candidates. With that said, though, I probably wouldn't have heard about the protests in Santiago otherwise, at least until someone over at Lenin's Tomb mentioned it later in the day, so, maybe, I shouldn't be so ascerbic.

Labels: Alternative Media, Chile, Hurricane Katrina, Neoliberalism

In addition to the post by Ellis Sharp from which the title of this one was taken, consider this primer by lenin over at Lenin's Tomb. The critical insight is that climate change will not only be disproportionately destructive for poor people, but constitutes a perverse opportunity for capitalist development through their expulsion, as already revealed by the effort to transform post-Katrina New Orleans into an urban tourist resort park.

Labels: Environment, Hurricane Katrina, Neoliberalism

. . . another manifestation of the the American Palestinians:

It was bad enough when Hurricane Katrina chased Carrie Lewis out of her assisted-living home in New Orleans. Now she fears the rest of her life may be spent in the isolation of a federally sponsored trailer park.

Because hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed so much affordable housing, Lewis and thousands of others displaced - mainly the poor, elderly and infirm - have nowhere else to go.

"I want to go home," said Lewis, 79, who now lives in the Renaissance Village trailer park. "They don't have places for old people in New Orleans yet. What am I supposed to do? I don't want to die in a little trailer in the middle of a field somewhere."

The Federal Emergency Management Agency provided 120,000 trailers to people displaced from their Gulf Coast homes by the 2005 hurricanes.

Pamela Lomis and her two children feel abandoned. Lomis lives in a FEMA trailer in the Sugar Hill trailer park in the midst of cane fields near Convent, La., about midway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

It's 20 miles from the nearest grocery store. A single bus leaves each morning at 9 a.m. and returns at 4 p.m., Lomis' life line to a world that seems distant.

"We just sit around here with life slipping by," Lomis said. "We're just on hold. Just waiting for something that never comes," she said.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Labels: African Americans, Hurricane Katrina, Neoliberalism, Racism

For nation states, there is always the question: what are the reasons for their existence? What social, cultural, ethnic, religous and economic values support them? Contrary to what the Zionists say, no country has a right to exist, and historical processes remorelessly act upon them, like water on rock, polishing some while fragmenting and destroying others.

Now, the United States isn't going anywhere anytime soon (although, I'm sure that many said the same thing about the Soviet Union in, say, 1980), but a number of stories last week prompted me to speculate about what purpose, if any, is currently served by the US, as well as the extent to which, if at all, the country's more odious aspects are capable of being reformed.

First, as discussed here last Wednesday, The Nation ran a pathbreaking article about the occupation of Iraq as it is enforced by US troops. The authors interviewed about 50 soldiers, and the responses shattered any plausibility to the notion that the troops remain in the Iraq for any beneficial purpose.

Along these lines, Nick Turso of TomDispatch also posted an article about the tremendous reach of the US military globally, an article entitled, The Pentagon as Global Landlord. The Pentagon has 766 bases in 39 countries, and stations troops in 140 ones:

Still, to begin to grasp the Pentagon's global immensity, it helps to look, again, at its land holdings -- all 120,191 square kilometers which are almost exactly the size of North Korea (120,538 square kilometers). These holdings are larger than any of the following nations: Liberia, Bulgaria, Guatemala, South Korea, Hungary, Portugal, Jordan, Kuwait, Israel, Denmark, Georgia, or Austria. The 7,518 square kilometers of 20 micro-states -- the Vatican, Monaco, Nauru, Tuvalu, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Maldives, Malta, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Seychelles, Andorra, Bahrain, Saint Lucia, Singapore, the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati and Tonga -- combined pales in comparison to the 9,307 square kilometers of just one military base, White Sands Missile Range.

Predictably, the Pentagon has no intention of scaling back the immense scope of these facilities. It is instead investigating the means by which it can dominate the ocean and space as it currently does land. Of course, the Pentagon's global presence is objectionable, because it serves the purpose of facilitating global US imperial dominance, resulting in conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan, and covert operations in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran (and, probably, Venezuela).

Some theorists, like Giovanni Arrighi, believe that the US is the means by which capitalism is attempting to consummate centuries of expansion from nation states (the Dutch) to continents (the British) to the entire world. Interestingly, Arrighi is dubious that the US possesses the resources to achieve it. But this question, while an important one, is not the one that interests me. Rather, I am curious as to whether it is impossible for the US to exist at all without engaging in the use of economic coercion and extreme militaristic violence, resulting in the loss of life on a scale just below the genocidal, to assert dominance over others.

To put it another way, can the US be reformed in such a way so as to substantially reduce the violence engendered by its interaction with many of the peoples of the world? Or, will it require the destruction of the American political system by means of international resistance, conceivably resulting in a global conflict involving both nation states and non-governmental groups? Liberalism no doubt opts for the reformist alternative, but it has been singularly incapable of achieving a single success in restraining American violence. With a news report today that Cheney is pressuring Bush to attack Iran before the end of his term, such questions are not idle ones.

Domestically, one might contend that the US is necessary to maintain social order, and provide assistance in the event of a catastrophe. Another important article published last week in the New York Times tragically revealed, however, the inability, if not the unwillingness, of the federal government to assist the evacuated victims of Hurricane Katrina so that they can return home to New Orleans. In a post on Thursday, I described them as The American Palestinians.

The poor, the elderly and the disabled have been spread across the country, living in trailer parks and monochromatic apartments, desperately trying to find jobs as they stretch their monthly income to the limit to meet their basic needs. Evacuees living in trailers in Louisiana and Mississippi face the prospect that they will be zoned out of their housing. Meanwhile, the federal government is destroying low income housing in New Orleans, not building more, making it impossible for them to return to a city where rents have increased substantially. The emphasis appears to be upon exploiting the hurricane so that New Orleans can be rebuild as a tourist theme park, sans those disquieting aspects of everyday life that would otherwise intrude.

As with the US global militarism, the inability of the federal government to assist these victims of Katrina provokes a profound question as well. If the federal government cannot provide assistance in a catastrophe, if it leaves many people to fend for themselves, if, ultimately, one's survival is dependent upon one's economic status, then why have the federal government at all? Money has always enabled people to navigate their way through natural disasters, through political turmoil, and it is noteworthy precisely because it works its magic in the absence of the state, except to the extent that the state validates the currency and establishes mechanisms for its use, monetarism, in other words.

While disinterested in the victims of Katrina, the US seems to work quite well for international lending institutions, for investors, for neoliberal policy makers who want to enforce a new social order on the rest of the world. It also, to be fair, provides a good standard of living (albeit below Western European and Japanese standards) for educated elites who thrive under such policies. But are they accurately described as policies or are they endemic to the US political system? Time will tell, and the answers will go a long way towards determining whether the US transforms itself relatively non-violently, as did the old USSR, or whether it finds itself embroiled in one of the most destructive conflicts in world history.

Labels: American Empire, Hurricane Katrina, Neoliberalism, Occupation of Iraq, US Military

Expelled, ostracized, abandoned.

Labels: African Americans, Hurricane Katrina, Neoliberalism, Racism

When I first read about the Walter Reed scandal the thought that ran through my mind was "Hurricane Katrina".

My second thought was, how long until Democratic politicians start issuing press releases about the incompetence of the Bush administration? Not very long ... the synonym for incompetence this time around is "failure of leadership". But what happened at Walter Reed was not a failure of leadership -- any more than what happened in the CPA's Green Zone or in the aftermath of Katrina. A letter written to Josh Marshall gets it about right:

Incompetence, the lack of capacity or skill, is ultimately an exculpating trope. It insinuates that the plan, or effort, was sound and could have succeeded had it been competently carried out. Moreover, the incompetent are in way less liable: their lack of ability lets them off the hook. Thus, "incompetence" insulates the actors from accountability and leaves the policy itself unscathed.

As the letter I quoted above anticipated, the problems at Walter Reed turn out to be primarily due to the effects of privatization -- according to mainstream accounts, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is seeking a memorandum which "describes how the Army’s decision to privatize support services at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was causing an exodus of 'highly skilled and experienced personnel'".

Similarly, the Bush administration's plans for post-Hussein Iraq were to privatize everything and set up a sort of libertartian utopia -- the libertarian utopia, of course, never got much closer to reality than Ahmed Chalabi's coronation ceremony as sovereign king of the Republic of Israel-friendly Arabia but the fact remains BushCo's reconstruction effort was indeed a massive experiment in privatization; think of the KBR contracts, the mercenaries, the outsourcing of interrogation, for godsake.

The Bush administration's response to Katrina was basically to give billions of dollars to a group of private corporations for whom Hurricane Katrina was a fantastic gift -- it took care of a huge problem for big contractors and real estate developers, poor people. These corporations were free to pursue gentrification projects that had been previously out of reach. According to the Black Commentator:

Bush's Gulf Opportunity Zone Act provides billions in tax dodges for (big) business, while the threatened permanent depopulation of Black New Orleans would eliminate the possibility of return for the nearly 8,000 (small) Black businesses that served the neighborhoods.

And recall the list of "Pro-Free-Market Ideas for Responding to Hurricane Katrina and High Gas Prices" drafted by the House Republican Study Committee and unearthed by Naomi Klein.

The Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina simply was not the result of incompetence. The Bush administration demonstrated a steadfast resolve to not resort to a large federal rebuilding effort in New Orleans that conservatives and libertarians should admire. In my opinion, if ever there was a situation in my lifetime that called for a massive and expensive WPA-style federal program, it was the aftermath of Katrina and Bush, true to his conservative credentials, did not initiate such a project despite tremendous public pressure. One might say he demonstrated leadership -- conservatives should applaud Bush's handling of New Orleans. They should applaud the rubble, the wrecked houses, and the gutted neighborhoods that two years later have not been rebuilt by any socialist army of riff-raff and rabble whose paychecks were paid by their Uncle Sam.

Likewise, what happened at Walter Reed was due to the failure of an ideology and of the policies instantiated by those who pursue that ideology. The idea that private sector initiatives rather than public sector initiatives are always more efficient, less prone to corruption, and generally better solutions to all problems is, as I see it, perhaps the central plank of conservatism, and throughout Bush's reign this idea has been proven false time and time again. It has become increasingly in vogue among conservatives to distance oneself from Bush, to argue that Bush is not a real conservative. I am not a conservative and thus don't have strong feelings about this assertion -- but it seems to me that the desire to denounce Bush's conservative bonafides among those who are faithful to the free market gospel has a lot to do with the extent to which Bush has been faithful to that gospel and the extent to which he has demonstrated where such faithfulness leads.

Labels: CPA, Hurricane Katrina, privatization, Walter Reed

Charitable contributions are something that we should consider all year round, but the holidays motivate people to consider the question more seriously. For me, the question of personal and community empowerment has become increasingly primary in my thought, so here are some recommendations:

KDVS Community Alternative Radio

Now, I admit that I broadcast on KDVS, so my self-interest is rather obvious. But KDVS is a station that is cooperatively managed by students and community programmers, with very little oversight by the UC Davis administrators. Programmers are free to broadcast almost anything outside of the commercial constraints of the marketplace. If you live beyond the confines of Northern California, look for a station with similar values, and consider financially supporting them, and remember NPR stations don't qualify.

Common Ground Collective

Hurricane Katrina has exacted a terrible toll upon New Orleans, one that endures to this day. Both the federal government and institutions, such as the Red Cross, have failed to respond adequately, requiring local, grassroots organizations to step forward: Common Ground's mission is to provide short term relief for victims of hurricane disasters in the gulf coast region, and long term support in rebuilding the communities affected in the New Orleans area. Common Ground is a community-initiated volunteer organization offering assistance, mutual aid and support. The work gives hope to communities by working with them, providing for their immediate needs and emphasizes people working together to rebuild their lives in sustainable ways.

Middle East Children's Alliance

Living conditions for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are dire, with more than one in four Palestinians considered deeply impoverished, as are the prospects for the creation of a Palestinian state that would acknowledge their right to self-determination. Western governments have withdrawn funds because of the electoral success of Hamas, seeking to collectively punish them as a means of forcing them to elect a new government more agreeable to them. The Middle East Children's Alliance, or MECA, raises funds for food and medical supplies for them, as well as for the people of Lebanon.

Samidoun

Both Lebanon and Gaza were subjected to assaults by the Israeli military, using weapon systems supplied by the United States. In both instances, the US government has unequivocally supported these actions, despite the consequences for the civilian populace. Samidoun is an indigenous alternative to MECA if you want to contribute to an organization attempting to assist people in the aftermath of the IDF destruction of the infrastructure of Lebanon: SAMIDOUN is a grassroots coalition that aims to work in a democratic and participatory atmosphere. The coalition is multi-confessional and diverse in terms of nationality. The coalition is also diverse in its composition in terms of supporting organizations, from student groups, to the gay and lesbian center, to arts and film production collectives, to small political parties, to environmental groups. But the bulk of the work is through young volunteers from all over the country, some of whom are refugees themselves.

AK Press

As described by wikipedia, AK Press is a collectively owned and operated independent publisher and book distributor that specialises in radical and anarchist literature. It has published numerous books that describe social movements within the US and around the world that have been depreciated or otherwise deliberately erased from public memory by both the mainstream as well as the institutionalized left.

The reissuance of The Subversion of Politics, by Georgy Katsiaficas, is an excellent example, and, having read it myself, a real page turner, as the suppressed memories of the past are remembered:

Since the modern anti-globalization movement kicked off with the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, a new generation has been engaging in anti-capitalist direct action. Its aims, politics, lifestyles, and tactics grow directly out of the autonomous social movements that emerged in Europe from the 1970s through the mid-1990s. In fact, today's infamous "Black Blocs" are the direct descendants of the European "Autonomen." But these important historical connections are rarely noted, and never understood.

The Subversion of Politics sets the record straight, filling in the gaps between the momentous events of 1968 and 1999. Katsiaficas presents the protagonists of social revolt—Italian feminists, squatters, disarmament and anti-nuclear activists, punk rockers, and anti-fascist street fighters—in a compelling and sympathetic light. At the same time, he offers a work of great critical depth, drawing from these political practices a new theory of freedom and autonomy that redefines the parameters of the political itself.

Consider becoming a Friend of AK Press to assist in the continued publication of books that challenge the mainstream view of history, social relations and the origins of political change.

Labels: AK Press, Alternative Media, Humanitarian Assistance, Hurricane Katrina, Lebanon, Middle East Children's Alliance, Palestine

UPDATE (1/30/06): Sam Smith over at the indispensable Progressive Review places the destruction in New Orleans within the broader context of the philosophy of redevelopment.

The Ninth Ward of New Orleans is about to be struck by another disaster - not a natural one like Katrina, however, but by the human disaster of modern urban planning.

The problem with urban planners is two fold. First, they work for the wrong people, the government, rather than for the citizens. As local governments have become more corrupt and more beholden to the interests of a small number of developers and other businesses, urban planning has inevitably come to reflect these perverse priorities.

Second, urban planners believe in sweeping physical solutions to social problems. The idea, Richard Sennett has written, goes back to the 1860s design for Paris by Baron Haussmann. Haussmann, Sennett suggests, bequeathed us the notion that we could alter social patterns by changing the physical landscape. This approach was not about urban amenities such as park benches and gas lighting or technological improvements such as indoor plumbing but about what G. K. Chesterton called the huge modern heresy of "altering the human soul to fit its conditions, instead of altering human conditions to fit the human soul."

Smith also recognizes that redevelopment has historically been motivated by bias against African Americans:

One of the New Deal's reforms was the creation of the Home Owners Loan Corporation, which provided federal guarantees for home mortgages. According to the historian Kenneth T. Jackson, between 1933 and 1936 alone, the HOLC supplied funds for one tenth of all owner-occupied, non-farm residences in the country. The FHA, and later the VA, took over the task. By the end of 1958, the FHA had enabled nearly five million families to own homes and helped more than 22 million to improve their properties.

At the same time, however, the legislation discouraged the construction of multi-family units and provided only small short-term loans for repair of existing homes. This meant, Jackson noted, that "families of modest circumstances could more easily finance the purchase of a new home than the modernization of an old one." Jackson continued:

"The greatest fears of the Federal Housing Administration were reserved for 'unharmonious racial or nationality groups.' The alleged danger was that an entire area could lose its investment value if rigid white-black segregation was not maintained. To protect itself against such eventualities, the Underwriting Manual openly recommended 'enforced zoning, subdivision regulations, and suitable restrictive covenants. In addition, the FHA's Division of Economics and Statistics compiled detailed reports and maps charting the present and most likely future residential locations of black families." In a March 1939, map of Brooklyn, for example, the presence of a single non-white family on any block was sufficient to result in that entire block being marked black. Similarly, very extensive maps of the District of Columbia depicted the spread of the black population and the percentage of dwelling units occupied by persons other than white."

Jackson noted that "black neighborhoods were invariably rated 'D.'" These were neighborhoods described with such phrases as "the only hope is for demolition of these buildings and transition of the are into a business district" or "this particular spot is a blight on the surrounding area."

"Residential security maps" were drawn up for every block of a city. These maps were available to lenders and realtors but were kept secret from the general public. Some of these maps, including those for DC, Jackson found to be missing from government archives.

Smith does, however, have some solutions, along with much more insightful analysis. If you are interested, please go here.

ORIGINAL POST (1/27/06): On Tuesday, Joe discussed an article posted by The Black Commentator to emphasize the prospect that redevelopment of New Orleans is increasingly likely to result in the loss of much of its lower income population. Now, according to an ongoing Brown University study publicized today:

The city of New Orleans could lose up to 80 percent of its black population if people displaced by Hurricane Katrina are not able to return to damaged neighborhoods, according to an ongoing university study.

“This means that policy choices affecting who can return, to which neighborhoods, and with what forms of public and private assistance, will greatly affect the future character of the city,” according to the Brown University study, which is being funded by the National Science Foundation.

Sociologist John Logan, the lead researcher, said:

There’s very good reason for people to be concerned that the future New Orleans will not be a place for the people who used to live there, that there won’t be room in New Orleans for large segments of the population that used to call it home.

Accordingly, as The Black Commentator has already admonished:

Self-styled Black capitalists take note: this is the nature of the beast. Bush fronts for a class for which Katrina is not a catastrophe, but an opportunity. They believe devoutly in "creative chaos" - the often violent destruction of the old, so that new profits can be squeezed from the rubble. Through their Catch-22 ultimatums, they are deliberately inflicting additional "creative chaos" on the displaced people of New Orleans. The fact that the victims are mostly Black, makes it all the easier. Or so they assume.

To learn about the emerging resistance, read The Black Commentator article in its entirety here.

Labels: African Americans, Hurricane Katrina, Neoliberalism

UPDATE (9/9/05): From the New Standard, FEMA attempts media black out in New Orleans:

Additionally, several columnists, the Baltimore Sun editorial page editors and NBC News anchor and managing editor Brian Williams have all come forth to speak out about the recent and apparently growing effort to control the news coming from New Orleans.

In his personal weblog yesterday, Williams recounted being turned away from news sites by police and National Guardsmen. "While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard… taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the [French] Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard," Williams wrote. "At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads."

Similarly, Peter Fimrite, of the San Francisco Chronicle:

I did not actually count the number of automatic weapons pointed at me, but there were at least five, and I was certain they were all locked and loaded, or whatever that military phrase is signifying that a gun is ready to blow a hole in somebody.

"Step out!" commanded the black-helmeted man in the middle of what appeared to be a tactical formation. He was pointing a laser-like flashlight attached to his machine gun at me. I must have been quite a sight alone out there on the darkened New Orleans street wearing a headlamp and holding a cell phone at an odd right angle, the only way I could get it to work. I had just been placed on hold.

At least, unlike the US military in Baghdad, FEMA hasn't started shooting the reporters, not yet, anyway.

ORIGINAL POST (9/7/05): From Reuters, it appears that FEMA is more concerned with public relations than the provision of disaster relief:

The U.S. government agency leading the rescue efforts after Hurricane Katrina said on Tuesday it does not want the news media to take photographs of the dead as they are recovered from the flooded New Orleans area.

The Bush administration also has prevented the news media from photographing flag-draped caskets of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, which has sparked criticism that the government is trying to block images that put the war in a bad light.

And, one is compelled to add, the news media was also prevented, to the extent it was inclined to escape its embedded escorts, from establishing the number of people killed during the attack upon Falluja last November. In the old South, African Americans were at least legally construed as 3/5 of a person. In New Orleans, FEMA is trying to render them invisible, as the US military does with civilian casualties in Iraq.

Labels: African Americans, Hurricane Katrina

It is ubiquitous. Everywhere you look, they are exhortations to donate to the American Red Cross as the antiseptic, non-partisan, reliable way to assist the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Unfortunately, there is good reason to believe that the Red Cross will not be especially helpful to the people of Lousiana and Mississipppi. As Will Bunch has written in the Philadelphia Daily News, the Red Cross collaborated in the abandonment of the poor people of New Orleans before the storm struck:

"You're responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the person next to you," local Red Cross executive director Kay Wilkins explained to the Times-Picayune just six weeks ago. "If you have some room to get that person out of town, the Red Cross will have a space for that person outside the area. We can help you. But we don't have the transportation.”

Ironically, the Red Cross has run a network of shelters in New Orleans in the event of hurricane warnings. But it decided several years ago not to open them for a Category 3 or stronger storm that it was more important to get people out of the below-sea-level area - despite the lack of any organized system for transporting them.

Translation: the Red Cross will house and feed you if you don't drown, starve or die from lack of medical care on your way out of town. Apparently, the Red Cross agreed with local officials who, according to Bunch and the New Orleans Times Picayune, communicated the following approach in a DVD distributed to the public a few months ago:

"City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own."

When it came to the poor of New Orleans, where, again, according to Bunch, an estimated 134,000 people lacked vehicles, the Red Cross' decision to refuse to open shelters and organize transportation takes on a decidedly Mathusian cast. To put it bluntly, it failed New Orleans, and now it wants you and me to give them money to confront the consequences of their failure. I'm not very confident the Red Cross will overcome the racial and class bias that caused it, so I suggest that people look for alternatives.

Here is a random list of sites for possible donations and more information. Naturally, make sure and do your own due diligence.

FOOD NOT BOMBS

BATON ROUGE FOOD BANK

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE

CALIFORNIA NURSES ASSOCIATION AND THE NATIONAL NURSES ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now)

BATON ROUGE AREA FOUNDATION

Don't hesitate to provide additional links and information. An emphasis upon community based activity, with a sensitivity towards the needs of poor people and African Americans is appreciated.

Labels: African Americans, Hurricane Katrina

Selections from some excellent commentaries that speak for themselves. Links have been provided for those who want to read them in their entirety.

First, from Democracy Now yesterday:

AMY GOODMAN: Bill Quigley, I wanted to ask -- this is a bit of an odd question. You're a law professor. We usually talk to you about the crisis that's going on in Haiti, where you have been a number of times and represent, among others, Father Jean-Juste, who is in prison there. How does what you are seeing in New Orleans right now, how does it compare to Haiti?

BILL QUIGLEY: Well, you know, I had always hoped that Haiti would become more like New Orleans, but what's happened is New Orleans has become more like Haiti here recently. You know, we don't have power. We don't have transportation. At this point, I think, at least the people in the hospital have some fresh water, but they're telling people you can’t drink the water out of the taps. So there's people wandering around the city without water, without transportation, without medical care. So in many senses, we have about a million people in the New Orleans area who are experiencing, you know, what Haiti it like.

Second, from one of my favorite journalists, Chris Floyd:

The destruction of New Orleans represents a confluence of many of the most pernicious trends in American politics and culture: poverty, racism, militarism, elitist greed, environmental abuse, public corruption and the decay of democracy at every level.

Much of this is embodied in the odd phrasing that even the most circumspect mainstream media sources have been using to describe the hardest-hit victims of the storm and its devastating aftermath: "those who chose to stay behind." Instantly, the situation has been framed with language to flatter the prejudices of the comfortable and deny the reality of the most vulnerable.

It is obvious that the vast majority of those who failed to evacuate are poor: they had nowhere else to go, no way to get there, no means to sustain themselves and their families on strange ground. While there were certainly people who stayed behind by choice, most stayed behind because they had no choice. They were trapped by their poverty - and many have paid the price with their lives.

Third, New Orleans is one of the great multicultural American cities, with one of the most influential African American communities in this country. Katrina has inflicted imcomprehensible damage upon it:

I can't say I saw everything that the TV newscasters pumped out about Katrina, but I viewed enough repeated segments to say with 90 percent confidence that broadcasters covering the New Orleans end of the disaster demurred from mentioning two topics that must have occurred to every sentient viewer: race and class.

Nearly every rescued person, temporary resident of the Superdome, looter, or loiterer on the high ground of the freeway I saw on TV was African-American. And from the look of it, they weren't wealthy residents of the Garden District. This storm appears to have hurt blacks more directly than whites, but the broadcasters scarcely mentioned that fact.

To be sure, some reporters sidled up to the race and class issue. I heard them ask the storm's New Orleans victims why they hadn't left town when the evacuation call came. Many said they were broke—"I live from paycheck to paycheck," explained one woman. Others said they didn't own a car with which to escape and that they hadn't understood the importance of evacuation.

But I don't recall any reporter exploring the class issue directly by getting a paycheck-to-paycheck victim to explain that he couldn't risk leaving because if he lost his furniture and appliances, his pots and pans, his bedding and clothes, to Katrina or looters, he'd have no way to replace them. No insurance, no stable, large extended family that could lend him cash to get back on his feet, no middle-class job to return to after the storm.

Finally, for a good, one stop shop for information about Katrina and its aftermath, with numerous links, I have been visiting Sam Smith's excellent Progressive Review. Feel free to post links to whatever articles that you have found especially compelling.

Labels: African Americans, Hurricane Katrina, Neoliberalism