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Back Inside New Orleans

By Jordan Flaherty, AlterNet. Posted September 14, 2005.


What if the massive effort poured into patrolling this city -- and chasing everyone out -- went into beginning the rebuilding process?
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I spent yesterday inside the city of New Orleans, speaking to a few of the last holdouts in the 9th Ward/Bywater neighborhood. Their stories paint a very different picture from what we've heard in the media. Instead of stories of gangs of criminals and police and soldiers keeping order, there were stories of collective action, everyone looking out for each other, communal responses.

The first few nights there was a large, free community barbecue at a neighborhood bar called The Country Club. People brought food and cooked and drank and went swimming (yes, there's a pool in the bar).

Emily Harris and Richie Kay, from Desire Street, traveled out on their boat and brought supplies and gave rides. They have been doing this almost every day since the hurricane struck. They estimate they have rescued at least 100 people. Harris doesn't want to leave. She is a carpenter and builder, and says, "I want to stay and rebuild. I love New Orleans."

Harris describes a community working together in the first days after the hurricane. She also describes a scene of abandonment and disappointment. "A lot of people came to the high ground at St. Claude Avenue. They really thought someone would come and rescue them, and they waited all day for something -- a boat, a helicopter, anything. There were helicopters in the sky, but none coming down."

So people started walking as a mass uptown to Canal Street. Along the way, youths would break into grocery stores, take the food and distribute it evenly among houses in the community.

"Then they reached Canal Street, and saw that there was still no one that wanted to rescue them. That's when people broke into the stores on Canal Street."

I asked Okra, who lives in a house off Piety Street, what the biggest problem has been. He said, "It's been the police -- they've lost the last restraints on their behavior they had, and gotten a license to go wild. They can do anything they want. I saw one cop beat a guy so hard that he almost took his ear off. And this was someone just trying to walk home."

Walking through the streets, I witnessed hundreds of soldiers patrolling the streets. Everyone I spoke to said that soldiers were coming to their house at least once a day, trying to convince them to leave, bringing stories of disease and quarantine and violence. I didn't see or speak to any soldiers involved in any clean-up or rebuilding.

There are surely reasons to leave -- I would not be living in the city at this point. I'm too attached to electricity and phone lines. But I can attest that those holdouts I spoke to are doing fine. They have enough food and water and have been very careful to avoid exposing themselves to the many health risks in the city.

I saw more city buses rolling through poor areas of town than I ever saw pre-hurricane. Unfortunately, these buses were filled with patrols of soldiers. What if the massive effort devoted to patrolling this city and chasing everyone out were diverted into beginning the rebuilding process?

Some neighborhoods are underwater still, and the water has turned into a sticky sludge of sewage and death that turns the stomach and breaks my heart. However, some neighborhoods are barely damaged at all, and if a large-scale effort were put into bringing back electricity and clearing the streets of debris, people could begin to move back in.

Certainly some people do not want to move back, but many of us do. We want to rebuild the city that we love. The People's Hurricane Fund, a grassroots, community-based group made up of New Orleans community organizers and allies from around the U.S., has already made one of their first demands a "right of return" for the displaced of New Orleans.

In the last week, I've traveled between Houston, Baton Rouge, Covington, Jackson and New Orleans and spoken to many of my former friends and neighbors. We feel shell-shocked. It used to be we would see each other in a coffee shop or a bar or on the street and talk and find out what we're doing. Those of us working for social justice felt a sense of community. We could share stories, combine efforts, and we never felt alone. Now we're alone and dispersed and we miss our homes and our communities, and we still don't know where so many of our loved ones even are.

It may be months before we start to get a clear picture of what happened in New Orleans. As people are dispersed around the country, reconstructing that story becomes even harder than reconstructing the city. Certain sites, like the Convention Center and Superdome, have become legendary, but despite the thousands of people who were there, it still is hard to find out exactly what happened.

According to one report that's been circulated, Denise Young, one of those trapped in the convention center told family members, "Yes, there were young men with guns there, but they organized the crowd. They went to Canal Street and 'looted,' and brought back food and water for the old people and the babies, because nobody had eaten in days. When the police rolled down windows and yelled out 'The buses are coming,' the young men with guns organized the crowd in order: old people in front, women and children next, men in the back, just so that when the buses came, there would be priorities of who got out first."


Digg!

Jordan Flaherty is a union organizer and an editor of Left Turn Magazine.

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gastly, Gretna. Gastly.
Posted by: Ashington on Sep 14, 2005 2:01 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
It seems that the last battle for new orleans wasnt the final one. how terribly sad, and all i get to hear about frmo my friends and family, is that the response is justifeid for fear of getting killed by snipers and others. how about the fear of letting another citizen of your country perish by neglect?

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The Battle for New Orleans
Posted by: menckenman on Sep 14, 2005 4:28 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The evangelical right will try to take New Orleans through eminent domain, condemnation, and other devices of crony capitalism. The corporate military will take the other half.

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Class War
Posted by: kww355 on Sep 14, 2005 4:44 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Once again, the Bushies are waging war against the poor. This is nothing short of a diaspora...a modern day Trail of Tears.

Has the government even kept track of where people have been sent? Absolutely NOT !!! When they finally decide to let the poor back in to check their homes,(mind you,the rich have been allowed back in already) the poor will all be in UTAH or some other place where they can't afford the trip back. This will make it just that much easier for Halliburton to completely bulldoze the 9th Ward.

How does "Our Glorious Leader" sleep at night?

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agitator church and state
Posted by: eileenflmng on Sep 14, 2005 6:13 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Grassroots community collaboration is the way out of the horror and misery we all witnessed in New Orleans!

Incompetent local, state and federal government, aging infrastructure, sick wetlands and marshes and thousands of USA citizens who live in poverty is a WAKE UP call to all of us that it most certainly is time to change course!

One billion USA tax dollars a day goes to support the war in Iraq.

I wonder why not one local, state or federal official did not bother to scrounge around for enough money to assure that adequate food, fluid and medicine would be available in every 'shelter.'

Habitat for Humanity is a grassroots community collaboration and offers the way to resettle our refugees into peaceful dwellings.

"We have it in our power to change the world."-Thomas Paine

Refugees could build their own homes working alongside men and women of good will.

We have it in our power to DO SOMETHING, do we also have the will?

www.wearewideawake.org

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well duh...
Posted by: kikz on Sep 14, 2005 6:29 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
What if the massive effort poured into patrolling this city -- and chasing everyone out -- went into beginning the rebuilding process?



sorry jordan,


but.....

well duh, you are in fact, witnessing the wholesale of NO, and the MS gulfcoast.

respectfully,
kikz*

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Who owns what in the 9th. ward??? and other questions
Posted by: fedupamerican on Sep 14, 2005 6:42 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I'm a north Mississippian who's been keeping up with Katrina and New Orleans since this all began. I am interested in any statistics available on the 9th. ward and any other areas where poor people lived.

What percentage of the 9th. was actually owned by families? What percentage was owned by the government?
What percentage was owned by slumlords?

Although I don't live there, I worry about all of those evacuees, their displacement, and the losses of their homes...
because of the new power given to imminent domain,
because of corp.s like Halliburton,
because of the favoritism given to the "haves" vs. the lack of consideration for the "have nots."

This is truly becoming the plight of the poor and a blight on our nation. I have this horrible vision of the 9th. being bulldozed and Condos going up and multiplying like rabbits.

If the poor black population, now evacuated out, want to come back there to live, and they weren't home owners, how will they be housed ???
If they owned, but had no insurance, what will happen to their land after their home is bulldozed ???
How will the city/feds accomplish the enormous feat of bringing those evacuees back into the city AND making them a PART of the community - as it seems to me, they weren't truly a part of New Orleans as "community" ????

It seems to me that New Orleans is now 'up for grabs.' And that is scary!!!

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Heartbreaking indeed
Posted by: Olympiada on Sep 14, 2005 10:37 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I am shocked by this story. Is this getting out into the mainstream media?

I doubt it.

This is human rights violation. Keeping people from crossing bridges with police barricades? Not letting people go back in their homes? I hear about facism and totalitarian state, and now I know why.

And meanwhile on KALW here in the Bay Area the Senate Judiciary Committee is taking place with slick Roberts sounding oh so good.

The corruption in this country is astounding. I say again, forget the academic mercenaries in Nigeria. Look at us! We are shameless, absolutely shameless .

I am not proud to be an American, not at all.

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One more thing
Posted by: Olympiada on Sep 14, 2005 10:39 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
And yes, after writing that last comment, I am moved to complete my morning prayers and pray for the non-existent leadership of this God forsaken country.

Lord have mercy.

I am sure Jesus is in heaven weeping over our sins, and His Holy Mother too. God help us all down here. We are doing a horrible job.

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"Grassroots? Where's the Profit In That?"
Posted by: monkeywrench on Sep 14, 2005 11:00 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Quote form the article: "What if the massive effort devoted to patrolling this city and chasing everyone out were diverted into beginning the rebuilding process?"

Well –– we can't have THAT! What would Halliburton, Fluor, and Bechtel do about their bottom lines? Better to remove ALL of the population of New Orleans, so that comprehensive "urban renewal," i.e., bulldozing the whole Sodom & Gomorrah for 'gentrification' and tourism, can be done more efficiently.

I hope I'm wrong – I've been accused of being an alarmist – but watch out. (Especially if Disney is called on to redesign the French Quarter. . .)

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We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans...
Posted by: crystaldave on Sep 14, 2005 1:04 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
..."We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

Rep. Richard H. Baker, a 10-term Republican from Baton Rouge

...so sorry, but the writing is in the mud in blood...

...light a candle, say a prayer, and...

sorry, I can't go on...I'm really going to miss New Orleans...

Love and Light,

Crystal Dave (The Wizard of Wyrd)

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you'll have to come and get it
Posted by: kablooie on Sep 15, 2005 2:48 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
jordan there are hundreds of FEMA trucks with tons of supplies stuck in Memphis stockpiling at the Defense Depot and a refrigerated warehouse next to Libertyland Amusement Park.
What is not so amusing is that the drivers have been sent in circles and none of this stuff has reached the Gulf Coast.
When parts of Mississippi are being cordoned off by concertina wire, I have to wonder what the hell is going on and why hasn't this convoy been sent where it's needed? This has been going on for more than a week and the local government cannot get a response from FEMA on this idiocy.

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