One year ago, in late August 2005, the forces of nature, capitalism and racism combined to create a perfect storm of destruction on the Gulf Coast. A year later, only the natural part of that storm has receded.
 New Orleans public housing residents mobilize. Photo: Charlie Varley/SIPA Press |
Entire neighborhoods of New Orleans remain barren. Debris litters the street. Schools, hospitals and libraries remain closed. Houses and apartment buildings remain boarded up, gated and chained. Relief comes slowly, and when it comes it is inadequate.
And then there are the people—people who have lived through hunger and thirst, dislocation and fear, insult and injury, the incomparable frustration of not knowing the status of a loved one, and then, in too few cases, the joy of reuniting.
Many—especially among the formerly two-thirds African American residents—remain dislocated, insulted, injured, traumatized and frustrated. But they remain, nonetheless, struggling in the truest sense of the word, determined to survive.
The fight for affordable housing
The racism of the rebuilding efforts is now well documented. In the period directly following Hurricane Katrina, soldiers forced overwhelmingly Black public housing residents out of their homes—even if they were unaffected by the storm. City, state and federal authorities, working in concert with corporate developers, saw the opportunity to radically alter the landscape of New Orleans.
 Photo: Sabree Hill/Gamma |
Their racist program was to rid the city of its predominately Black working class and to replace low-income and public housing with profit-making condominiums and hotels. While the city’s displaced sought temporary refuge in cities and towns across the country, the grandest of all gentrification schemes took place behind their backs.
In a candid moment reported by the Wall Street Journal, Baton Rouge congressman Richard Baker, a 10-term Republican, told lobbyists on Sept. 9, 2005, “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.”
Over 200,000 people—nearly half of the city’s population—remain displaced. Activists demand that the poor and working-class people of New Orleans deserve the right of return to their homes. But many who have returned have come back to eviction notices, with the preposterous “explanation” that they had abandoned their homes.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Housing Authority of New Orleans have refused to reopen even the city’s functional public housing developments. On June 3, the residents of these developments, along with the community organizations Common Ground and the New Orleans Survivor Council, took action. Busting through boarded doors and cutting metal locks, displaced residents swept into their homes and began repairing them for occupancy.
Horrible news came on June 14. HUD announced plans to destroy 5,000 public housing units—even as thousands search for affordable housing.
This is hardly a new trend. According to Bill Quigley, a human rights lawyer and professor in New Orleans, HUD had systematically reduced the number of public housing units in New Orleans over the last decade, from 13,694 units in 1996, to 7,379 units before Katrina. The latest destruction plan—which would preserve only 2,000 units in the entire city—has so far been blocked by the continued resistance and protests from the city’s poor.
On July 3, African American public housing residents filed a class action lawsuit against HUD for unlawfully ordering the destruction of their homes, for violating the Fair Housing Act and for intentionally discriminating against low-income African Americans “by failing to reoccupy and repair housing units.”
Schools still closed
As of July 1, only 25 New Orleans schools have reopened, about 21 percent of the pre-Katrina figure. In the prior six months, the government only reopened eight schools—a staggering inadequacy considering the needs of the city. State authorities have announced that 30 additional schools will be ready by the beginning of the fall semester.
The process of reopening the schools has been characterized by bureaucratic incompetence reflecting the government’s misplaced priorities. Authorities had no trouble finding contractors and sub-contractors to build luxury hotels. But as of July, they hadn’t even interviewed teachers for the 30 schools scheduled for reopening in the fall. Most districts hire teachers in the winter and early spring for the coming school year.
The schools have been the source of continued controversy in New Orleans. The state announced a takeover of the city’s school system. Only four schools are now operated by the city government.
Louisiana’s state government then turned the operation of the schools over to independent organizations that will run them as charter schools. Because state law does not allow teachers in charter schools the right to collective bargaining, the takeover has all but wiped out teachers’ unions in New Orleans.
This is consistent with the entire rebuilding program. Days after the storm passed, Bush lifted the prevailing wage standards in the disaster-torn area so that employers and contractors wouldn’t have to worry about unions, decent working conditions and living wages.
Unemployment and displacement
Official press releases tout the claim that unemployment rates in the New Orleans area have now returned to their pre-Katrina level of 5.7 percent.
Even if those figures were accurate, this should be no cause for celebration. With so much to do and so much to rebuild, there shouldn’t be any unemployment in the Gulf Coast.
But what the figures hide is the astounding unemployment rate for the over 200,000 New Orleans residents still displaced by the hurricane. According to the Brookings Institution, which conducts monthly reviews of the situation in New Orleans, the displaced evacuees’ unemployment rate in June was essentially the same as it was last November. Twenty-five percent of evacuees—one out of every four—was jobless.
After a year, the long-term effects of Hurricane Katrina and the government’s historic neglect are coming into focus. How the city is rebuilt will depend largely on the extent to which the people can organize themselves and demand that their interests be served over those of the multimillionaires and billionaires.
Beyond the physical rebuilding are the psychological effects on the city’s poor and working people. Reports already indicate a veritable mental health crisis.
Children have seen their neighborhoods destroyed. The elderly have been uprooted from the only place they ever called home. Some families have been torn apart, while others live in shelters and tightly packed trailers.
Capitalism is responsible
In the face of a year’s racism and neglect, responsible government officials and big-business executives deserve to be tried for criminal neglect. It proves the utter bankruptcy of the profit-driven capitalist system and its inherent racism.
The storm blew away a year ago. That year has been full of conscious decisions by those in power to prioritize profits for the rich at the expense of poor, primarily African American working people. No natural disaster could leave the richest country in the world utterly incapable for an entire year of rebuilding the civilian infrastructure and providing for the basic needs of its population.
Other forces besides nature are now at play. One aspect of the perfect storm of nature, capitalism and racism has subsided—although hurricane season looms again. The other aspects won’t disappear on their own.
Ridding the country of capitalism and racism will require the conscious organization and mobilization of working people in New Orleans and around the country.
