Gentrification’s Ground Zero

[LWolf]

In the ten years since Katrina, New Orleans has been remade into a neoliberal playground for young entrepreneurs.

As a teacher, I was aware of what happened to the public school system in NO after Katrina; it's mentioned in this article. I didn't know about the rest. This was well worth reading, and highlights why I oppose neoliberalism regardless of what party is promoting it.

The radical downsizing of public employment and more stable blue-collar jobs in favor of an economy clustered around creative enterprises progressively narrows employment opportunities for working-class residents, who will be forced to rely on service and tourism sector jobs — both known for low wages and just-in-time scheduling practices.

This manifestation of neoliberal expansion also diminishes the political and economic power of working-class residents. Start-up culture condones and encourages the anti-union, non-salaried ideology already prevalent in tourism-driven economic models, exalting job instability and impermanence as the new economic model of growth.

This is the real legacy of post-Katrina reconstruction. As education profiteers, speculative developers, and tech companies continue to gain in both capital and power, their success and maintenance necessitates the subjugation of working-class residents and regressive use of public resources. The creative economy only exacerbates the impact of revanchist policies that undermine social welfare and public employment.

In aiming to finish its nearly half-century-long project of making New Orleans’s workers invisible, the urban elite has reclaimed its place on the crest of the city’s new sinking levees.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/katrina-new-orleans-arne-duncan-charters/

[TexasMommaWithAHat]

1. A somewhat lengthy read, but worth reading.

nt

[LWolf]

3. I thought so.

Privatization has been moving steadily forward since the Reagan era, everywhere. It seems, though, that NO is a particularly pointed demonstration of neo-liberalism unchained.

For nearly four decades, New Orleans governing officials have exploited intentional loopholes in federal urban aid policy to reorganize the city around private interests at the expense of public benefit, deploying decentralized forms of urban aid, such as Community Development Block Grants, as a mechanism to leverage speculative growth.

Since the 1970s, successive mayors have diverted federal dollars earmarked for low-income neighborhoods to finance hotels, tourism centers, and corporate headquarters, legitimizing their actions as a response to federal retrenchment or as facilitating trickle-down growth.

Investing in the highly uneven tourism sector, city officials and their private sector beneficiaries pushed for containment, and then removal, of the city’s working class from “growth areas.” In response, public housing residents and local activists pushed back with some, albeit limited, success.

But after Hurricane Katrina the privatization push gained momentum. With the opportunity to enact proposals that had circulated since the mid-1980s, the city council voted unanimously to demolish 4,500 units of traditional public housing.

[Facility Inspector]

2. bacon infused kale cupcakes

and a different place to have appletinis every night.

[KamaAina]

4. I'll stick with my red beans and Sazeracs

thank you very much.

[MisterP]

9. eventually the yuppies will turn into hipsters--plaid, no visible income, Edison bulbs, $10 beer

[KamaAina]

5. This need not be the case

one of the many proposals I floated on NOLA blogs in the post-K period was to build up an artisanal economy. An example pre-K would be the glassblowers who hang out at the Saturn bar in the gentrifying Bywater neighborhood. (Bywater was gentrifying pre-K, as it is adjacent to Faubourg Marigny, the heart of the city's gay community.) One of the bloggers, Adrastos, has a shop on Jackson Square that sells beautiful handmade tiles, many with NOLA themes. Turns out the tiles are made in Santa Fe. Why, I asked him, are they not made in Bywater or someplace like it?

Come to think of it, I guess I was ahead of my time. Today we would call that "the maker economy".

[LWolf]

6. It need not be the case;

how do you create that "maker" economy? Alongside the neo-liberal post-K revolution, or?

[KamaAina]

7. Hell, if I knew that, I'd be down there in a heartbeat.

One idea might be to build a TechShop there. TechShop is the temple of the maker world here in the Bay Area and elsewhere. They have all kinds of cool stuff like laser cutters and even 3D printers that members can use.

http://www.techshop.ws

I could see one right on St. Claude Ave., the main drag in Bywater (where the aforementioned Saturn bar is).

[LWolf]

8. Maybe the answer is just that:

one person, one shop, at a time, gathering momentum.