On Aug. 1, PSLweb.org’s Richard Becker and Eugene Puryear sat down with Malik Rahim, New Orleans activist and co-founder of the Common Ground Collective. They discussed the conditions in New Orleans two years after Katrina at Common Ground’s office in the city’s Ninth Ward.
Common Ground provides a wide range of services for working-class people in the region, including clothing and food distribution, free medical and legal clinics and rehabilitating damaged homes.
It’s almost two years after Katrina destroyed much of New Orleans. What is the situation now?
It is still a tale of two cities. In the Deep South, everything is determined by racism and privilege. So, if you are white or
|
The Road Home program is based upon connections. Some people who haven’t lost anything have received thousands of dollars and other people who lost everything haven’t received anything.
In Louisiana, when money is allocated to the state, they put it into an interest bearing bank account and sit on it. If you have a billion dollars in the bank, do you know how much interest that will make in a year?
It is sad that this is allowed to be the norm, and not the exception. But the powers that be didn’t want certain areas to be rebuilt, so they set up disincentives to coming back.
Here in the Ninth Ward and New Orleans East the traditional African American community was no longer tolerated; they made sure their houses were destroyed.
And this city was flooded with toxic waste water. That is another story.
Nothing is being done to clean up the environment. Nothing is being done to clean up our wetlands. Everywhere that the levees broke, it was the absence of wetlands that caused it.
Most of the people here now are suffering from some sort of respiratory ailment because of the environment. If you stayed in your home, you came into contact with black mold. The ground is laden with lead and arsenic. And now we find out that the trailers they gave us were toxic with formaldehyde.
So, they are doing everything they can to literally kill us off.
That’s why at Common Ground we plant sunflowers. Sunflowers pull the heavy metals out of the ground, like lead. We plant mustard greens because they pull the arsenic out of the ground. We tell people about the Boston ferns and other plants that they can put into those trailers that can help eliminate the formaldehyde.
If we can do this, why can’t the government?
If a pandemic crisis would hit Louisiana—say it is the bird flu—who is going to get the vaccine?
The government presence has been virtually zero except for the police.
What is the makeup of the population of New Orleans East and the Ninth Ward?
New Orleans East is about 80 percent Black, 10 percent white and 10 percent Vietnamese.
The Ninth Ward is 70-80 percent Black and 20-30 percent white. The government didn’t flood the white section.
The Ninth Ward breaks down into the Upper and Lower Ninth Ward. In the Lower Ninth Ward, no rebuilding has happened. The city wants to make the area an industrial park.
The people who used to live there are displaced around the country.
One of the highest rates of homeownership of African Americans in the country was right there. Most people were working poor, but they were working. Only about 8 percent of the area was rental units.
Before the hurricane, there were 12,000 people there. Now, the population is around 400.
They could have easily given people trailers to put by their homes like they did in Shelmet and St. Bernard Parish. In
 |
The government realized that, if they didn’t allow poor Blacks to come back into the city, the demographics would change and the voting power would change. Many of the white racists that have always run Louisiana looked at this as a golden opportunity to take the city back.
You can trace it back to when [KKK leader] David Duke ran for governor. He won 70 percent of the white vote. In certain parishes, like Jefferson Parish, he won almost 90 percent of the white vote.
Jefferson Parish is off limits to Blacks. They wouldn’t allow African Americans fleeing the disaster to find refuge.
There hasn’t yet been one white vigilante who has been indicted for the murders that happened during Hurricane Katrina.
When you look at what’s going on here versus more privileged areas, there is a difference. It is a qualitative difference based on race and class.
What role has New Orleans’ mayor Ray Nagin played?
It is because of him that the city is in the shape it is in now. He hasn’t really done anything to help in the recovery.
Common Ground has served over 170,000 people directly—140,000 in the city of New Orleans—and Nagin has yet to come to any of our locations.
His role can only be defined in deeds and actions. He made sure the Superdome was rebuilt in record time. He made sure that the Convention Center was rebuilt in record time; that the French Quarter was up and running; that the Garden District was up and running; and that the downtown businesses were given everything they needed.
When you look at this community, you realize that schools are closed. The first school to be integrated in the state of Louisiana is two blocks from here and it is closed. This building we are in was first Catholic school to be integrated in the state; it is closed.
How much money has Common Ground received from the government?
Nothing. They haven’t even met with us.
They call us the Hamas of New Orleans. They look at me as an old militant that they don’t want here. As long as I’m the head of Common Ground, they won’t work with us.
Last November, the government raided our offices. All of our files were seized because they refused to sell us the Woodlands apartment complex after we reduced the rent. Because we did not increase it, we couldn’t get Section 8 [low-cost housing] status.
Section 8 told us that we had to accept $1,600 for a four-bedroom apartment. We told them we were charging $750. They said, “Oh no, you can’t do that and receive Section 8.”
The rent in New Orleans for a four-bedroom apartment is now $1,600. You find two, three, four family members staying an apartment together.
Because there are no rent rules, everything is geared toward the landlord. Renters have no rights here.
The U.S. Postal Service reported that two-thirds of New Orleans’ population has returned. Is this true?
I don’t think it is accurate. About two-thirds of the people may be receiving mail at their homes, but they don’t actually
 |
Pre-Katrina, we had a population of about 495,000. Only about 190,000 live here now. Another 30,000-40,000 more commute here for work.
It appears that nearly everyone has returned to the Lakeview section of New Orleans. You can see the contrast with the Ninth Ward.
Yes, and it was hit just as hard as the Ninth Ward. But, that section is made up of whites and privileged Blacks.
They did everything they could to prevent the flooding, but they were hit just as hard as we were.
Where did they get the money for recovery? From banks. But the same banks won’t lend a poor Black family anything. And it is still federal money.
We want to start a divestment campaign this year. If a bank won’t loan federal money to rebuild, then we want every federal dollar that has been allocated for recovery in this city to be taken out of that bank.
A judge recently acquitted a cop who beat Robert Davis, an elderly Black man, in Katrina’s aftermath. What does that signify?
Blacks were never really allowed in the French Quarter unless they were musicians. Davis just happened to be there and he was beaten savagely.
The police shot two African Americans in the back on a bridge after Katrina. They did not go to jail.
What happened to Davis has been happening for decades. You don’t have any rights here unless you are privileged.
Look at how many state and federal buildings that we could have housing in. If we can house 12,000 volutneers in this building over the course of 18 months, why can’t the state house anybody in the empty buildings they own?
The trailers have been a joke. A trailer costs $14,000 to manufacture. By the time the trailer leaves the manufacturer and gets here, it costs $60,000. If the government gave people the money they paid for the trailers, this community would be rebuilt.
And the military isn’t here to help us rebuild. They have never sent one troop here with a hammer. Every solder that came here had a gun.
Click here to read more from PSL about New Orleans two years after Katrina.
