By Bill Quigley, 8/22/06
Bernice
Mosely is 82 and lives alone in New Orleans in a shotgun double.
On August 29, 2005, as Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, the levees constructed
by the U.S. Corps of Engineers failed in five places and New Orleans
filled with water.
One
year ago Ms. Mosely was on the second floor of her neighborhood
church. Days later, she was helicoptered out. She was so dehydrated
she spent eight days in a hospital. Her next door neighbor, 89 years
old, stayed behind to care for his dog. He drowned in the eight
feet of floodwaters that covered their neighborhood.
Ms.
Mosely now lives in her half-gutted house. She has no stove, no
refrigerator, and no air-conditioning. The bottom half of her walls
have been stripped of sheetrock and are bare wooden slats from the
floor halfway up the wall. Her food is stored in a styrofoam cooler.
Two small fans push the hot air around.
Two
plaster Madonnas are in her tiny well-kept front yard. On a blazing
hot summer day, Ms. Mosely used her crutches to gingerly come down
off her porch to open the padlock on her fence. She has had hip
and knee replacement surgery. Ms. Mosely worked in a New Orleans
factory for over thirty years sewing uniforms. When she retired
she was making less than $4 an hour. “Retirement benefits?”
she laughs. She lives off social security. Her house had never flooded
before. Because of her tight budget tight, Ms. Mosely did not have
flood insurance.
Thousands of people like Ms. Mosely are back in
their houses on the Gulf Coast. They are living in houses that most
people would consider, at best, still under construction, or, at
worst, uninhabitable. Like Ms. Mosely, they are trying to make their
damaged houses into homes.
New
Orleans is still in intensive care. If you have seen recent television
footage of New Orleans, you probably have a picture of how bad our
housing situation is. What you cannot see is that the rest of our
institutions, our water, our electricity, our healthcare, our jobs,
our educational system, our criminal justice systems – are
all just as broken as our housing. We remain in serious trouble.
Like us, you probably wonder where has the promised money gone?
Ms.
Mosely, who lives in the upper ninth ward, does not feel sorry for
herself at all. “Lots of people have it worse,” she
says. “You should see those people in the Lower Ninth and
in St. Bernard and in the East. I am one of the lucky ones.”
Housing
Hard
as it is to believe, Ms. Mosely is right. Lots of people do have
it worse. Hundreds of thousands of people from the Gulf Coast remain
displaced. In New Orleans alone over two hundred thousand people
have not been able to make it home.
Homeowners
in Louisiana, like Ms. Mosely, have not yet received a single dollar
of federal housing rebuilding assistance to rebuild their severely
damaged houses back into homes.
Over
100,000 homeowners in Louisiana are on a waiting list for billions
in federal rebuilding assistance through the Community Development
Block Grant (CDBG) program. So far, no money has been distributed.
Renters,
who comprised most of the people of New Orleans before Katrina,
are much worse off than homeowners. New Orleans lost more than 43,000
rental units to the storm. Rents have skyrocketed in the undamaged
parts of the area, pricing regular working people out of the market.
The official rate of increase in rents is 39%. In lower income neighborhoods,
working people and the elderly report rents are up much higher than
that. Amy Liu of the Brookings Institute said “Even people
who are working temporarily for the rebuilding effort are having
trouble finding housing.”
Renters
in Louisiana are not even scheduled to receive assistance through
the Louisiana CDBG program. Some developers will receive assistance
at some point, and when they do, some apartments will be made available,
but that is years away.
In
the face of the worst affordable housing shortage since the end
of the Civil War, the federal government announced that it refused
to allow thousands of families to return to their public housing
units and was going to bulldoze 5000 apartments. Before Katrina,
over 5000 families lived in public housing – 88 percent women-headed
households, nearly all African American.
These
policies end up with hundreds of thousands of people still displaced
from their homes. Though all ages, incomes and races are displaced,
some groups are impacted much more than others. The working poor,
renters, moms with kids, African-Americans, the elderly and disabled
– all are suffering disproportionately from displacement.
Race, poverty, age and physical ability are great indicators of
who has and who has made it home.
The
statistics tell some of the story. The City of New Orleans says
it is half its pre-Katrina size – around 225,000 people. But
the U.S. Post Office estimates that only about 170,000 people have
returned to the city and 400,000 people have not returned to the
metropolitan area. The local electricity company reports only about
80,000 of its previous 190,000 customers have returned.
Texas
also tells part of the story. It is difficult to understand the
impact of Katrina without understanding the role of Texas –
home to many of our displaced. Houston officials say their city
is still home to about 150,000 storm evacuees – 90,000 in
FEMA assisted housing. Texas recently surveyed the displaced and
reported that over 250,000 displaced people live in the state and
41 percent of these households report income of less than $500 per
month. Eighty-one percent are black, 59 percent are still jobless,
most have at least one child at home, and many have serious health
issues.
Another
100,000 people displaced by Katrina are in Georgia, more than 80,000
in metro Atlanta – most of whom also need long-term housing
and mental health services.
In
Louisiana, there are 73,000 families in FEMA trailers. Most of these
trailers are 240 square feet of living space. More than 1600 families
are still waiting for trailers in St. Bernard Parish. FEMA trailers
did not arrive in the lower ninth ward until June – while
the displaced waited for water and electricity to resume. Aloyd
Edinburgh, 75, lives in the lower ninth ward and just moved into
a FEMA trailer. His home flooded as did the homes of all five of
his children. “Everybody lost their homes,” he told
the Times-Picayune, “They just got trailers. All are rebuilding.
They all have mortgages. What else are they going to do?”
Until
challenged, FEMA barred reporters from talking with people in FEMA
trailer parks without prior permission – forcing a reporter
out of a trailer in one park and residents back into their trailer
in another in order to stop interviews.
One
person displaced into a FEMA village in Baton Rouge has been organizing
with her new neighbors. Air conditioners in two trailers for the
elderly have been out for over two weeks, yet no one will fix them.
The contractor who ran the village has been terminated and another
one is coming – no one knows who. She tells me, “My
neighbors are dismayed that no one in the city has stepped forward
to speak for us. We are “gone.” Who will speak for us?
Does anyone care?”
Trailers are visible signs of the displaced. Tens of thousands of
other displaced families are living in apartments across the country
month to month under continuous threats of FEMA cutoffs.
Numbers
say something. But please remember behind every number, there is
a Ms. Mosely. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of people
each with a personal story like Ms. Mosely are struggling to return,
trying to make it home.
Water
and Electricity
New
Orleans continues to lose more water than it uses. The Times-Picayune
discovered that the local water system has to pump over 130 million
gallons a day so that 50 million gallons will come out. The rest
runs away in thousands of leaks in broken water lines, costing the
water system $2000,000 a day. The lack of water pressure, half that
of other cities, creates significant problems in consumption, sanitation,
air-conditioning, and fire prevention. In the lower 9th ward, the
water has still not been certified as safe to drink – one
year later.
Only
half the homes in New Orleans have electricity. Power outages are
common as hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs have not been
made because Entergy New Orleans is in bankruptcy. Entergy is asking
for a 25 percent increase in rates to help it become solvent. Yet
Entergy New Orleans” parent company, Entergy Corporation reported
earnings of $282 million last year on revenue of $2.6 billion.
Health
and Healthcare
Early this month, on August 1, 2006, another Katrina
victim was found in her home in New Orleans, buried under debris.
The woman was the 28th person found dead since March 2006. A total
of 1577 died in Louisiana as a result of Katrina.
A friend of mine, a lawyer with health insurance
and a family physician, went for an appointment recently at 11am.
The office was so crowded he had to sit out in the hall on the floor
to wait his turn for a seat in the waiting room. Three hours later
he met his doctor. The doctor thought might have a gall stone. The
doctor tried to set up an ultrasound. None were available. He ordered
my friend to the emergency room for an ultrasound. At 4pm my friend
went to the hospital emergency room, which was jammed with people:
stroke victims, young kids with injuries, people brought in by the
police. At 5am the next morning, my friend finished his ultrasound
and went home. If it takes a lawyer with health insurance that long
to get medical attention, consider what poor people without health
insurance are up against.
Half the hospitals open before Katrina are still
closed. The state’s biggest public healthcare provider, Charity
Hospital, remains closed and there are no current plans to reopen
it anytime soon. Healthcare could actually get worse. Dr. Mark Peters,
board chair of the Metropolitan Hospital Council of New Orleans
said within the next two to three months, “all the hospitals”
will be looking seriously at cutbacks. Why? Doctors and healthcare
workers have left and there is surging demand from the uninsured
who before Katrina went through now non-existent public healthcare.
There is a shortage of nurses. Blue Cross Blue Shield officials
reported “About three-quarters of the physicians who had been
practicing in New Orleans are no longer submitting claims.”
There is no hospital at all in the city for psychiatric
patients. While the metropolitan area had about 450 psychiatric
beds before the storm, 80 are now available. The police are the
first to encounter those with mental illness. One recent Friday
afternoon, police dealt with two mental patients – one was
throwing bricks through a bar window, the other was found wandering
naked on the interstate.
The elderly are particularly vulnerable. Over 70
percent of the deaths from Katrina were people over 60 years old.
No one knows how many seniors have not made it back home. Esther
Bass, 69, told the New York Times, after months of searching for
a place to come home to New Orleans, “If there are apartments,
I can’t afford them. And they say there will be senior centers,
but they”re still being built. They can’t even tell
you what year they”ll be finished.” As of late July
2006, most nursing homes in the 12 parish Gulf Coast area of Louisiana
are still not fully prepared to evacuate residents in the face of
a hurricane.
The healthcare community has been rocked by the
arrest of a doctor and two nurses after the Louisiana Attorney General
accused them of intentionally ending the lives of four patients
trapped in a now-closed local hospital. The accusations now go before
a local grand jury which is not expected to make a decision on charges
for several more months. The case is complicated for several reasons.
Most important is that the doctor and nurses are regarded as some
of the most patient-oriented and caring people of the entire hospital
staff. It is undisputed that they worked day and night to save hundreds
of patients from the hospital during the days it was without water,
electricity or food. Others say that entire hospital and many others
were abandoned by the government and that is what the attorney general
should be investigating. The gravity of the charges, though, is
giving everyone in the community pause. This, like so much else,
will go on for years before there is any resolution.
Jobs
Before Katrina, there were over 630,000 workers
in the metropolitan New Orleans area – now there are slightly
over 400,000. Over 18,000 businesses suffered “catastrophic”
damage in Louisiana. Nearly one in four of the displaced workers
is still unemployed. Education and healthcare have lost the most
employees. Most cannot return because there is little affordable
housing, child care, public transportation and public health care.
Women
workers, especially African American women workers, continue to
bear the heaviest burden of harm from the storm. The Institute for
Women’s Policy Research reports that the percentage of women
in the New Orleans workforce has dropped. The number of single mother
families in New Orleans has dropped from 51,000 to 17,000. Low-income
women remain displaced because of the lack of affordable housing
and traditional discrimination against women in the construction
industry.
Tens
of thousands of migrant workers, roughly half undocumented, have
come to the Gulf Coast to work in the recovery. Many were recruited.
Most workers tell of being promised good wages and working conditions
and plenty of work. Some paid money up front for the chance to come
to the area to work. Most of these promises were broken. A tour
of the area reveals many Latino workers live in houses without electricity,
other live out of cars. At various places in the city whole families
are living in tents. Two recently released human rights reports
document the problems of these workers.
Immigrant
workers are doing the dirtiest, most dangerous work, in the worst
working conditions. Toxic mold, lead paint, fiberglass, and who
knows what other chemicals are part of daily work. Safety equipment
is not always provided. Day laborers, a new category of workers
in New Orleans, are harassed by the police and periodic immigration
raids. Wage theft is widespread as employers often do not pay living
wages, and sometimes do not pay at all. Some of the powers try to
pit local workers against new arrivals – despite the fact
that our broken Gulf Coast clearly needs all the workers we can
get.
Public
transportation to and from low-wage jobs is more difficult. Over
200 more public transit employees have been terminated – cutting
employment from over 1300 people pre-Katrina to about 700 now.
Single
working parents seeking childcare are in trouble. Before Katrina,
New Orleans had 266 licensed day care centers. Mississippi State
University surveyed the city in July 2006 and found 80 percent of
the day care centers and over 75 percent of the 1912 day care spots
are gone. Only one-third of the Head Start centers that were open
pre-Katrina survived.
Public
Education
Before Katrina, 56,000 students were enrolled in
over 100 public schools in New Orleans. At the end of the school
year there were only 12,500. Right after the storm, the local school
board gave many of the best public schools to charter groups. The
State took over almost all the rest. By the end of the school year,
four schools were operated by the pre-Katrina school board, three
by the State, and eighteen were new charter schools.
After thirty-two years of collective bargaining,
the union contract with the New Orleans public school teachers elapsed
and was not renewed and 7500 employees were terminated.
For
this academic year, no one knows for certain how many students will
enroll in New Orleans public schools. Official estimates vary between
a low of 22,000 and a high of 34,000.
There
will be five traditional locally supervised public schools, eighteen
schools operated by the State, and thirty-four charter schools.
As of July 1, not a single teacher had been hired for fifteen of
the state-run schools. As of August 9, 2006, the Times-Picayune
reported there are no staff at all identified to educate students
with discipline problems or other educational issues that require
special attention.
Whatever
the enrollment in the new public school system is in the fall, it
will not give an accurate indication of how many children have returned.
Why? Many students in the public charter schools were in private
schools before the hurricane.
Criminal
Legal System
Consider
also our criminal legal system. Chaka Davis was arrested on misdemeanor
charges in October 2005 and jailed at the Greyhound station in New
Orleans in October of 2005.
Under
Louisiana law, he was required to be formally charged within 30
days of arrest or released from custody. Because of a filing error
he was lost in the system. He was never charged, never went to court,
and never saw a lawyer in over 8 months – even though the
maximum penalty for conviction for one of his misdemeanors was only
6 months. His mother found him in an out of town jail and brought
his situation to the attention of the public defenders. He was released
the next day.
Crime is increasingly a problem. In July, New Orleans
lost almost as many people to murder as in July of 2005, with only
40 percent of the population back. There are many young people back
in town while their parents have not returned. State and local officials
called in the National Guard to patrol lightly populated areas so
local police could concentrate on high-crime, low-income neighborhoods.
Arrests have soared, but the number of murders remain high. Unfortunately,
several of the National Guard have been arrested for criminal behavior
as well – two for looting liquor from a home, two others for
armed robbery at a traffic stop.
Criminal Court District Judge Arthur Hunter has
declared the current criminal justice system shameful and unconstitutional
and promises to start releasing inmates awaiting trial on recognizance
bonds on the one year anniversary of Katrina. The system is nearly
paralyzed by a backlog of over 6000 cases. There are serious evidence
problems because of resigned police officers, displaced victims,
displaced witnesses, and flooded evidence rooms. The public defender
system, which was down to 4 trial attorneys for months, is starting
to rebuild.
“After 11 months of waiting, 11 months of
meetings, 11 months of idle talk, 11 months without a sensible recovery
plan and 11 months tolerating those who have the authority to solve,
correct and fix the problem but either refuse, fail or are just
inept, then necessary action must be taken to protect the constitutional
rights of people,” said Hunter.
In the suburbs across the lake, Sheriff Jack Strain
told the media on TV that he was going to protect his jurisdiction
from “thugs” and “trash” migrating from
closed public housing projects in New Orleans. He went on to promise
that every person who wore “dreadlocks or che-wee hairstyles”
could expect to be stopped by law enforcement. The NAACP and the
ACLU called in the U.S. Justice Department and held a revival-like
rally at a small church just down the road from the jail. Though
the area is over 80 percent white, the small group promised to continue
to challenge injustice no matter how powerful the person committing
the injustice. Recently, the same law enforcement people set up
a roadblock and were stopping only Latino people to check IDs and
insurance. I guess to prove they were not only harassing black people?
Finally, a grand jury has started looking into
actions by other suburban police officers who blocked a group of
people, mostly black, from escaping the floodwaters of New Orleans
by walking across the Mississippi River bridge. The suburban police
forced the crowd to flee back across the two mile bridge by firing
weapons into the air.
This is the criminal legal system in the New Orleans
area in 2006. None dare call it criminal justice.
International
Human Rights
The Gulf Coast has gained new respect for international
human rights because they provide a more appropriate way to look
at what should be happening. The fact that there is an international
human right of internally displaced people to return to their homes
and a responsibility on government to help is heartening even though
yet unfulfilled.
The United Nations has blasted the poor U.S. response
to Katrina. The UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva accepted a report
from Special Reporter Arjun Sengupta who visited New Orleans in
fall of 2005 and concluded: “The Committee”remains concerned
about information that poor people, and in particular African-Americans,
were disadvantaged by the rescue and evacuation plans implemented
when Hurricane Katrina hit the United States of America, and continue
to be disadvantaged under the reconstruction plans.”
Asian
tsunami relief workers who visited New Orleans over the summer were
shocked at the lack of recovery. Somsook Boonyabancha, director
of the Community Organisations Development Institute in Thailand,
told Reuters she was shocked at the lack of progress in New Orleans.
“I’m surprised to see why the reconstruction work is
so slow, because this is supposed to be one of the most rich and
efficient countries in the world. It is starting at such a slow
speed, incredibly slow speed.”
Warnings
to the Displaced
Local United Way officials see the lack of housing,
healthcare and jobs and conclude that low-income people should seriously
consider not returning to New Orleans anytime soon.
United Way wrote: “Most of these people want to come home,
but if they do not have a recovery plan they need to stay where
they are. Some of these evacuees think that they can come back and
stay with families and in a few weeks have a place of their own.
But the reality is that they may end up living with those relatives
for years. Sending people back without a realistic plan may have
serious consequences: the crowding of families into small apartments/homes/FEMA
trailers is causing mental health problems – stress, abuse,
violence, and even death – and this problem is going to get
worse, not better. Also, when the elderly (and others) are those
returning and living in these conditions, their health is impacted
and then the lack of medical facilities and hospital beds is a problem.
Again the result may be death”.Basically if an evacuee says
they have a place to stay – like with relatives – those
communities will give them bus fare back or pay for U-hauls. If
an evacuee was a renter here and they want to return they should
be told to plan on returning in 3-7 years, and in the meantime stay
there, get a job, and be much better off.”
FEMA officials in Austin are also warning people
about returning to New Orleans. They wrote: “Before you return”.New
Orleans is a changing place”you should consider the conditions
you may be returning to. Many neighborhood schools will not be open
by August. Your children may have to travel some distance to get
to school”Grocery and supermarkets have been slow to return
to many neighborhoods. Sometimes there aren’t enough residents
back in your neighborhood for a store to open and be profitable.
You may have to travel a large distance to groceries. Walking to
the store might not be an option”If you or your family members
require regular medical attention, or if you are pregnant or nursing,
the services you received before the storm may be scattered and
in very different and distant locations. Depending on your medical
needs, you may have to drive across the river or even as far away
as Baton Rouge”If you or your family members have allergies,
remember that there is lots of dust and mold still in the city.
While you may have suffered from allergies before the storm, please
consider that being in the city will only worsen your allergies.
If you have asthma, other respiratory or cardiac conditions, or
immune system problems, you would be safer staying out of flooded
areas due to the mold, particles and dust in the air. If you must
return to the city, wear an approved respirator when working in
moldy or dusty areas. “Additionally, police, fire and emergency
personnel are stretched to their limits”If you own a car,
gas and service stations are limited in many areas. You may need
to purchase a gas can in the event you cannot get gas near your
home”Public transportation (busses) are also limited and do
not operate in all areas”.Available and affordable housing
is extremely rare. Waiting lists for apartments are as large as
300 on the list, depending on how many bedrooms you need. Living
inside your home could be dangerous if mold has set in of if your
utilities are not in top working condition”Living in New Orleans
may be easier said than done until we have fully recovered from
the storm.”
This
is New Orleans, one year after Katrina.
Where
Did the Money Go?
Everyone
who visits New Orleans asks the same question that locals ask –
where is the money? Congress reportedly appropriated over $100 billion
to rebuild the Gulf Coast. Over $50 billion was allocated to temporary
and long-term housing. Just under $30 billion was for emergency
response and Department of Defense spending. Over $18 billion was
for State and local response and the rebuilding of infrastructure.
$3.6 billion was for health, social services and job training and
$3.2 for non-housing cash assistance. $1.9 billion was allocated
for education and $1.2 billion for agriculture.
One
hour in New Orleans shows the check must still be in the mail.
Not
a single dollar in federal housing rehab money has made it into
a hand in Louisiana. Though Congress has allocated nearly $10 billion
in Community Development Block Grants, the State of Louisiana is
still testing the program and has not yet distributed dollar number
one.
A
lot of media attention has gone to the prosecution of people who
wrongfully claimed benefits of $2000 or more after the storm. Their
fraud is despicable. It harms those who are still waiting for assistance
from FEMA.
But,
be clear – these little $2000 thieves are minnows swimming on the
surface. There are many big savage sharks below. Congress and the
national media have so far been frustrated in their quest to get
real answers to where the millions and billions went. How much was
actually spent on FEMA trailers? How much did the big contractors
take off the top and then subcontract out the work? Who were the
subcontractors for the multi-million dollar debris removal and reconstruction
contracts?
As
Corpwatch says in their recent report, “Many of the same “disaster
profiteers” and government agencies that mishandled the reconstruction
of Afghanistan and Iraq are responsible for the failure of “reconstruction”
of the Gulf Coast region. The Army Corps, Bechtel and Halliburton
are using the very same “contract vehicles” in the Gulf
Coast as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. These are “indefinite
delivery, indefinite quantity” open-ended “contingency”
contracts that are being abused by the contractors on the Gulf Coast
to squeeze out local companies. These are also “cost-plus”
contracts that allow them to collect a profit on everything they
spend, which is an incentive to overspend.”
We
do know billions of dollars in no-bid FEMA contracts went to Bechtel
Corporation, the Shaw Group, CH2M Hill, and Fluor immediately after
Katrina hit. Riley Bechtel, CEO of Bechtel Corporation, served on
President Bush’s Export Council during 2003-2004. A lobbyist
for the Shaw Group, Joe Allbaugh, is a former FEMA Director and
friend of President Bush. The President and Group Chief Executive
of the International Group at CH2MHill is Robert Card, appointed
by President Bush as undersecretary to the US Department of Energy
until 2004. Card also worked at CH2M Hill before signing up with
President Bush. Fluor, whose work in Iraq was slowing down, is one
of the big winners of FEMA work and its stock is up 65 percent since
it started Katrina work.
Senator
Byron Dorgan of North Dakota has raised many protests and questions
over inflated prices. “It is hard to overstate the incompetence
involved in all of these contracts – we have repeatedly asked
them for information and you get nothing.” Republican U.S.
Representative Charles Bustany, who represents an area heavily damaged
by Hurricane Rita, asked FEMA for reasons why the decision was made
to stop funding 100 percent of the cost of debris removal in his
district. FEMA refused to tell him. He then filed a Freedom of Information
request to get the information, and was again refused. When he asked
to appeal their denial, he was told that there were many appeals
ahead of his and he would have to wait.
If
a US Senator and a local U.S. Republican Representative cannot get
answers from FEMA, how much accountability can the people of the
Gulf Coast expect? There are many other examples of fraud, waste
and patronage.
How
did a company that did not own a truck get a contract for debris
removal worth hundreds of millions of dollars? The Miami Herald
reported that the single biggest receiver of early Katrina federal
contracts was Ashbritt, Inc. of Pompano Beach, FL, which received
over $579 million in contracts for debris removal in Mississippi
from Army Corps of Engineers.
The
paper reported that the company does not own a single dumptruck!
All they do is subcontract out the work. Ashbritt, however, had
recently dumped $40,000 into the lobbying firm of Barbour, Griffith
& Rogers, which had been run by Mississippi Governor and former
National GOP Chair Haley Barbour. The owners of Ashbritt also trucked
$50,000 over to the Republican National Committee in 2004.
How
did a company that filed for bankruptcy the year before and was
not licensed to build trailers get a $200 million contract for trailers?
Circle B Enterprises of Georgia was awarded $287 million in contracts
by FEMA for temporary housing. At the time, that was the seventh
highest award of Katrina money in the country. According to the
Washington Post, Circle B was not even being licensed to build homes
in its own state of Georgia and filed for bankruptcy in 2003. The
company does not even have a website.
FEMA
spent $7 million to build a park for 198 trailers in Morgan City
Louisiana – almost 2 hours away from New Orleans.
Construction
was completed in April. Three months later only 20 of the trailers
were occupied. One displaced New Orleans resident who lives there
has to walk three miles to the nearest grocery.
Hurricanes are now a booming billion dollar business.
No wonder there is a National Hurricane Conference for private companies
to show off their wares – from RVs to portable cell phone
towers to port-a-potties. One long time provider was quoted by the
Miami Herald at the conference that there are all kinds of new people
in the field – ‘Some folks here said, `Man, this is huge business;
this is my new business. I’m not in the landscaping business anymore,
I’m going to be a hurricane debris contractor.’ ”
On
the local level, we are not any better.
One
year after Katrina the City of New Orleans still does not have a
comprehensive rebuilding plan. The first plan by advisors to the
Mayor was shelved before the election. A city council plan was then
started and the state and federal government mandated yet another
process that may or may not include some of the recommendations
of the prior two processes. One of the early advisors from the Urban
Land Institute, John McIlwain, blasted the delays in late July.
“It’s virtually a city with a city administration and
its worse than ever”You need a politician, a leader that is
willing to make tough decisions and articulate to people why these
decisions are made, which means everyone is not going to be happy.”
Without major changes at City Hall the City will have miles of neglected
neighborhoods for decades. “We”re talking Dresden after
World War II.”
Signs
of Hope
Despite the tragedies that continue to plague our
Gulf Coast, there is hope. Between the rocks of hardship, green
life continues to sprout defiantly.
Fifteen
feet of water washed through Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary
School for Science and Technology in the lower 9th Ward. When people
were finally able to get into the building, the bodies of fish were
found on the second floor. Parents and over 90% of the teachers
organized a grass-roots effort to put their school back together.
Their first attempts to gut and repair the school by locals and
volunteers from Common Ground were temporarily stopped by local
school officials and the police. Even after the gutting was allowed
to resume, the community was told that the school could not reopen
due to insufficient water pressure in the neighborhood.
But
the teachers and parents are pressing ahead anyway in a temporary
location until they can get back in their school. Assistant Principal
Joseph Recasner told the Times-Picayune: “Rebuilding our school
says this is a very special community, tied together by more than
location, but by spirituality, by bloodlines, and by a desire to
come back.”
New Orleans is fortunate to have a working newspaper
again. The Times-Picayune won a well-deserved Pulitzer for its Katrina
coverage. Its staff continues to provide quality documentation of
the Gulf Coast region’s efforts to repair and rebuild.
The New Orleans Vietnamese people continue to inspire
us. They were among the very first group back and they have joined
forces to care for their elders, rebuild their community church,
and work together in a most cooperative manner to resurrect their
community. Recently they took legal and direct action to successfully
stop the placement of a gigantic landfill right next to their community.
Their determination and sense of community-building is a good model
for us all.
The only Republican running for Congress in New
Orleans is blasting President Bush over failed Katrina promises.
Joe Lavigne is running radio ads saying, “Sadly, George Bush
has forgotten us. He’s spending too much time and money on
Iraq and not enough living up to his promise to rebuild New Orleans.
His priorities are wrong. I’m running for Congress to hold
President Bush accountable.” Maybe other Republicans will
join in.
Tens of thousands of volunteers from every walk
of life have joined with the people of the Gulf Coast to help repair
and rebuild. Lawyers are giving free help to Katrina victims who
need legal help to rebuild their homes. Medical personnel staff
free clinics. Thousands of college, high school and even some grade
school students have traveled to the area to help families gut their
devastated homes. Churches, temples, and mosques from across the
world have joined with sisters and brothers in New Orleans to repair
and rebuild.
Despite
open attempts to divide them, black and brown and white and yellow
workers have started to talk to each other. Small groups have started
to work together to fight for living wages and safe jobs for all
workers. Thousands came together for a rally for respectful treatment
for Latino and immigrant workers. Seasoned civil rights activists
welcomed the new movement and pledged to work together.
Ultimately,
the people of the Gulf Coast are the greatest sign of hope. Despite
setbacks that people in the US rarely suffer, people continue to
help each other and fight for their right to return home and the
right to live in the city they love.
On
Sunday morning, a 70 year old woman told a friend where her children
are. “They are all scattered,” she sighed. “One
is in Connecticut, one in Rhode Island, one in Austin.” When
he asked about her, she said, “Me? I am in Texas right now.
I am back here to visit my 93 year old mother and go to the second
line of Black Men of Labor on Labor Day. But I’m coming back.
Yes indeed. I will return. I’m coming back.”
Bill
Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola
University New Orleans. You can reach him at Quigley@loyno.edu
For
more information see www.justiceforneworleans.org