 Protesters serve FEMA with eviction notice. Feb. 7, 2006, Oakland, Calif. Photo: Bill Hackwell |
On Feb. 16, acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency David Paulison went before cameras to discuss funding changes for the August 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster. “The emergency is over,” he declared. (PBS Newshour, Feb. 16)
Paulison’s words bring to mind George Bush’s May 1, 2003 announcement in front of an enormous “Mission Accomplished” sign, proudly declaring victory in Iraq.
Three days before Paulison’s proclamation, FEMA ended hotel payments for 12,000 families—4,400 of them in New Orleans. These families were instructed to vacate their rooms immediately.
That followed the early February FEMA termination of its funding for 4,500 hotel rooms because the occupants had failed to request an extension.
FEMA continued to evict Katrina survivors through February and March. The remaining 7,400 Mississippi and Louisiana hotel occupants were to be evicted by April 15. Some found alternate housing, while others headed to homeless shelters.
In San Antonio, Texas, spontaneous protests broke out among evicted hurricane survivors, forcing the government to grant temporary extensions. And in St. Bernard Parish in New Orleans itself, survivors who had been housed on docked cruise ships attempted to stall the FEMA deadline with a lawsuit. A federal judge quickly threw it out.
The federal government has proved to be far more efficient in terminating its relief than it was in delivering it when the hurricane hit in late August.
This most recent round of evictions only represents the tip of the iceberg in an unabated housing crisis for the people of the Gulf Coast region. It is not just a crisis of natural destruction but a crisis caused by the capitalist system.
From day one, the federal government’s recovery efforts have been oriented towards assisting land and business owners. The waters had hardly receded before landlords were rushing to sell their properties off to real estate corporations. Many poor and working people returned to the Gulf Coast to find their homes intact but their belongings on the street and eviction notices on their doors.
Again and again, the government has effectively protected the property of the rich, but failed to provide even a coherent plan for those in need. On Aug. 28, the day before the hurricane hit land, government officials recommended that the people of New Orleans evacuate. They provided no mass transportation or plan for such an evacuation.
The same “free market” approach that performed so dismally during the crisis is still in effect today. FEMA officials have issued repeated “warnings” and reminders about the termination of the temporary housing but provided no comprehensive plan for replacement housing. FEMA has promised to continue giving rent assistance on a much-reduced scale. Many survivors have been unable to find adequate and affordable housing.
Crimes of capitalism
The government is destroying homes without providing new housing for former New Orleans residents.
Photo: UPI/A.J. Sisco |
As Hurricane Katrina survivors nationwide search for long-term housing assistance, 50,000 in Louisiana alone, 11,000 brand new mobile homes sit unused in a large field in Arkansas. FEMA spent $367 million of taxpayer dollars for the homes, many of which have sat unoccupied and sinking in mud since shortly after the hurricane.
What has delayed the delivery of these trailers? On one hand, only nine of 64 Louisiana parishes have accepted the trailers, citing financial worries about taking on additional residents. Even more ridiculous, though, is a law that prevents temporary housing from being constructed in areas characterized as “flood plains.” Yet the region needs temporary housing precisely because it is a flood plain. As of April 2006, only a few hundred mobile homes had been delivered.
This scenario—where the world’s richest government fails to allocate its immense resources to poor and working people in need—has been repeated too many times to still be considered an exception. It is the rule.
Thousands of trailers going to waste. Flooded bus yards full of buses that could have been used to evacuate thousands of New Orleans residents the day before Katrina reached land. Soldiers standing guard outside of supermarkets, operating with “shoot to kill” orders on all so-called “looters,” while stranded poor people pleaded for help from their rooftops. A private company removing all its portable toilets from a makeshift tent city of hurricane survivors because FEMA had failed to pay the bill.
Taken together, these images make up one damning collage of capitalism.
It would be wrong to say the people of Gulf Coast were simply “up the creek without a paddle.” They were up the creek with a whole stash of paddles locked away in a nearby private warehouse.
Politicians try to divert attention
Facing the possibility that the bankruptcy of U.S. capitalism will be apparent to millions of workers here and around the world, ruling class politicians of all stripes are pointing the finger in every direction—away from the system.
For example, a 520-page House report declared the government’s criminal negligence “a failure of initiative.” It spread blame widely, particularly on the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA. Those institutions are directly controlled by the Bush White House.
The White House report was simply titled, “Lessons Learned.” It is a whitewash of the Bush administration by avoiding the question of accountability altogether. It clearly exempts Bush, declaring “the response to Hurricane Katrina fell far short of the seamless, coordinated effort that had been envisioned by President Bush when he ordered the creation of a National Response Plan in February 2003.” This is utterly false.
Of course, any National Response Plan that failed to produce a mass, public evacuation plan for the residents of the Gulf Coast was on its face rotten to the core.
It’s easy to point the finger at the Bush administration. It was blatant in its callous disregard and outright racism. The fact that right-wing politicians are so energetically trying to shift the blame is a sign of their own bankruptcy.
Congress has budgetary power. Congressional Democrats could have proposed a massive aid plan designed to help New Orleans working people, especially the hard-hit Black community, rebuild their homes, jobs and lives. No pundit from the “liberal” media is demanding to see a real alternative.
Instead, the pundits spend countless hours bickering over which governmental body knew about the breach of the levees first. For years, governmental reports had warned about breach failures. The 2004 “Southeastern Louisiana Catastrophic Hurricane Plan” details with astonishing accuracy the devastating aftermath that would be caused by a “a slow-moving category 3, 4 or 5 hurricane that … crosses New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain.”
None of the media now talk about how the government neglected the poor and working-class areas for years before the hurricane.
The constant finger pointing between the Louisiana state government, FEMA, Congress, and the White House only hides the fact that the government is still failing to provide for hurricane survivors to this day.
Big business takeover underway
Behind the finger pointing is the reality of New Orleans, a city still in disarray. Activists and survivors are demanding their “right of return” to their communities and families. But the government has teamed up with corporate interests to systematically alter the socio-economic landscape of the city.
So far, only 20 schools have reopened in the city—15 percent of the pre-Katrina figure. Of these, 16 are charter schools not covered by union contracts.
The Orleans Parish School Board has decided to fire some 7,500 teachers, and 3,000 city employees have already been laid off. Overall, the city’s projected budget would lay off half its workforce, a significant section of the city’s Black workforce.
With big business forces given a blank check to rebuild the city to their own liking, low-income housing seems to have been done away with. Many believe the city will become a “jazz version of Disneyland.” Already, New Orleans, which previously was two-thirds Black, is thought to be now a majority white city.
Twenty-seven organizations have successfully petitioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to investigate human rights violations in the New Orleans disaster response and reconstruction projects. The groups are claiming that the U.S. government discriminated against low-income African American and immigrant communities during the relief planning and relief efforts, and that it continues to do so during the recovery.
At the end of the day, the whole system went wrong. The capitalist system is responsible. The government experienced a “failure of initiative” because we live in an economic system where the drive for profit, as opposed to the drive to meet human needs, is the source of all initiative.
Articles may be reprinted with credit to Socialism and Liberation magazine. |
