Changing New Orleans

[callady]

Changing New Orleans

by Jordan Flaherty

November 06, 2005
 

Printer Friendly Version
EMail Article to a Friend


Its bittersweet being back in New Orleans.  Although the architecture is the same, and its a relief to walk the streets and reunite with old friends, already this is a very different city from the one I love.  Its a city where some areas are quickly rebuilding and other parts are being left far behind.  A city where people who have lived here for generations are now unwelcome in a hundred different ways.

White New Orleans is steadily coming back, and Black New Orleans is moving out.  A grassroots organizer with New Orleans Network tells me she has been speaking to people in every moving truck she sees.  She reports that in every case, “they’re Black, they are renters, they’re  moving out of New Orleans, and they say they would stay, if they had a choice.”

Inequality continues through the cleanup of New Orleans.  Some areas have electricity, gas, and clean streets, and some areas are untouched.  Medical volunteer Catherine Jones reports that driving the streets of New Orleans at night, “ I felt like I was in the middle of a checkerboard. The Quarter lit up like Disneyworld; poor black neighborhoods a few blocks over so dark I couldn't even see the street in front of me.”

<snip>

There are still thousands of New Orleans residents who have not been convicted of any crime trapped in maximum security prisons and “no one in a position of power finds this pressing,” says Ursula Price, a staff researcher with A Fighting Chance, an indigent defense group.  She estimates at least 2000 prisoners from Orleans Parish Prison remain in Angola, the notorious former slave plantation in rural Louisiana.  These are people who were picked up for “misdemeanor offenses such as public drunkenness, traffic violations, soliciting a prostitute,” Price says.  If convicted, at most they would have served less time than they have been in for.  But, in Orleans Parish and Jefferson Parish, courts have been closed for most of this time, and public defenders have been laid off.  “The system is not working with us,” Price tells me.  “I don't understand why prosecutors are in there arguing against release of someone on a misdemeanor charge.  We have women who have had miscarriages, mental heath problems, physical health problems, and no one in power seems to care.”  The total population of Orleans Parish Prison at the time of hurricane Katrina was at least 7,000 people.  In a city of just 500,000, that's a significant population.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=72&ItemID=9061

[Double T]

1. I was thinking about New Orleans today and wondering if REAL help......

had actually arrived and if the help would be ongoing. With this article, you have confirmed my greatest reservations regarding the government support and true help. The government is totally incompetent about everything and its response to NOLA is no different.

[callady]

3. Here's an excellent recent article by Medea Benjamin and what you can do

http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?id=574

Two Months Later, Katrina Survivors are Losing the Battle to Return Home

By Medea Benjamin

Two months after Katrina, the residents of New Orleans most traumatized by the hurricane and its aftermath are now traumatized in their battle to return home. And many of the city's poor, black "Katrina survivors" are losing this second battle.

Diane Watson lived in the district that was the poorest and the hardest hit: the lower Ninth Ward. Two months after Katrina, that area remains cordoned off by military guards and they're still finding dead bodies beneath the rubble. Mrs. Watson, who was evacuated to Houston, drove back to New Orleans with a relative to see the home she had lived in for the last 40 years. She was directed to the Red Cross tent, where an escort from the mayor's office took her to see the house. She returned in a daze. "It was supposed to be my house, but it sure didn't look like it. The roof was on one side, the house was somewhere else, and my neighbor's carport was smack in the middle." Her eyes bulged in disbelief and tears ran down her checks. "They wouldn't let me go inside to see if I could find something, anything, for memory's sake, like a picture of my late husband."

Mrs. Watson had no insurance. When her husband died two years ago, she forgot to keep up the payments. "A whole lifetime of work and now I have nothing," she sighed. "I'll have to move to Chicago and live with my daughter. My arthritis acts up bad in the cold, but I have no choice."

John Turner was luckier-his house in the Gentilly section was water logged but still standing, and he had insurance. But at 75, he was too overwhelmed by his ordeal at the Superdome and too tired to start all over again. "My house was a 'fixer-upper' when I bought it back in 1975, and I've been fixing it up ever since. This year I retired and was just able to start enjoying it. Now this," he said, tears welling up in his eyes. While Mr. Turner had home insurance, he didn't have flood insurance. He had no idea what his insurance would cover, but he prayed it would enough for him to move somewhere else.

<snip>

Before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was a city of 485,000 people, 65% of whom were black. Today, officials estimate that during the day there are some 125,000 people, falling to 70,000 at nighttime when many leave to find shelter outside the city. Mayor Nagin predicted that New Orleans would lose about half its pre-Katrina population. And with government policies and market forces stacked against the poor, the "new" New Orleans is becoming whiter and whiter.

What Can We Do?

The "whitification" of New Orleans, however, is not inevitable. There are many solutions: demanding a massive program for affordable housing, halting evictions and price gouging for rental properties, making it possible for evacuees who are scattered around the country to move to temporary shelters (trailers, vacant apartments, tents) back home, giving job priority to local residents, reopening pubic schools, providing support systems to those returning, demanding that the poor be represented in the rebuilding decisions.

[Daphne08]

2. I fear that New Orleans will become something unrecognizable

to those of us born in Louisiana.

I keep thinking of Disneyland and the new Las Vegas. :-(