Who Is Killing New Orleans?
Mike Davis in The Nation
"More than 60 percent of Nagin's constituents--including an estimated 80 percent of the African-Americans--are still scattered in exile with no obvious way home.
In their absence, local business elites, advised by conservative think tanks, "New Urbanists" and neo-Democrats, have usurped almost every function of elected government. With the City Council largely shut out of their deliberations, mayor-appointed commissions and outside experts, mostly white and Republican, propose to radically shrink and reshape a majority-black and Democratic city. Without any mandate from local voters, the public-school system has already been virtually abolished, along with the jobs of unionized teachers and school employees. Thousands of other unionized jobs have been lost with the closure of Charity Hospital, formerly the flagship of public medicine in Louisiana. And a proposed oversight board, dominated by appointees of President Bush and Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, would end local control over city finances. [...]
With each passing week of neglect--what Representative Barney Frank has labeled "a policy of ethnic cleansing by inaction"--the likelihood increases that most black Orleanians will never be able to return. read more
posted by hysterical blackness @ 7:49 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Thanks so much for linking to this article.
All of what Davis describes was utterly predictable. One of my first thoughts after Katrina hit New Orleans was that,
so long as those who left the city cannot come back, the Republicans are guaranteed another seat in the U.S. Senate.
Mary Landrieu, the Democratic Senator from Louisiana, won her seat by a much smaller margin than 200,000, the
number of black people who have yet to return to New Orleans. You can be sure that this, and similar political
considerations, are the Bush administration's sole interest in the event (besides the no-bid contracts, of course).
Despite the best efforts of ACORN, the sole bright spot in Mike Davis's piece, I doubt New Orleans will be anything
like it was. As everyone knows, New Orleans was unique in its feeling, social organization, traditions, and culture.
Much of that is probably gone forever. For it to be otherwise, a huge number of people would have to organize, and
that is not likely to happen. I would welcome being surprised about this.
So, in the absence of any alternative, there is a bright side.
1. The poor and working class people who have left New Orleans, while having lost something priceless, have no doubt
enrolled their kids in schools that are far better than the ones they left. Some of those kids will flourish in a way that
they never could have growing up in New Orleans. A friend of mine, who has become the de facto father to one of his
neighbor's sons and has enrolled him in a school in Lake Charles, saw the change immediately. The boy just
blossomed. New Orleans was a city of no hope. For some, there will now be hope.
2. Mary Landrieu is at least as Republican as Democrat. She has often sided in the Senate with Bush against her own
party. I have been her waiter in New Orleans restaurants on several occasions, and I could intuit her power hunger
and self-centeredness instantly. (No, I don't remember if she undertipped.) Her loss would be of little consequence.
3. Finally, I do not believe that there is any question that global warming is going to get much worse. New Orleans
(and much of south Louisiana) will be gone in a hundred years, perhaps much sooner. The federal government's
unwillingness to spend any money making the levees hurricane-proof will only make the city's disappearance happen
earlier. No family that moves back to New Orleans will be back for very long. Perhaps the next hurricane to hit the
city can single out rich Republicans.
(This is the same as my other comment. I did not realize that pasting text into the comment form from another program would cause the additional line breaks. They ruin the readibility of the comment. Sorry.)
Thanks so much for linking to this article.
All of what Davis describes was utterly predictable. One of my first thoughts after Katrina hit New Orleans was that, so long as those who left the city cannot come back, the Republicans are guaranteed another seat in the U.S. Senate. Mary Landrieu, the Democratic Senator from Louisiana, won her seat by a much smaller margin than 200,000, the number of black people who have yet to return to New Orleans. You can be sure that this, and similar political considerations, are the Bush administration's sole interest in the event (besides the no-bid contracts, of course).
Despite the best efforts of ACORN, the sole bright spot in Mike Davis's piece, I doubt New Orleans will be anything like it was. As everyone knows, New Orleans was unique in its feeling, social organization, traditions, and culture.
Much of that is probably gone forever. For it to be otherwise, a huge number of people would have to organize, and that is not likely to happen. I would welcome being surprised about this.
So, in the absence of any alternative, there is a bright side.
1. The poor and working class people who have left New Orleans, while having lost something priceless, have no doubt enrolled their kids in schools that are far better than the ones they left. Some of those kids will flourish in a way that they never could have growing up in New Orleans. A friend of mine, who has become the de facto father to one of his neighbor's sons and has enrolled him in a school in Lake Charles, saw the change immediately. The boy just blossomed. New Orleans was a city of no hope. For some, there will now be hope.
2. Mary Landrieu is at least as Republican as Democrat. She has often sided in the Senate with Bush against her own party. I have been her waiter in New Orleans restaurants on several occasions, and I could intuit her power hunger and self-centeredness instantly. (No, I don't remember if she undertipped.) Her loss would be of little consequence.
3. Finally, I do not believe that there is any question that global warming is going to get much worse. New Orleans (and much of south Louisiana) will be gone in a hundred years, perhaps much sooner. The federal government's unwillingness to spend any money making the levees hurricane-proof will only make the city's disappearance happen earlier. No family that moves back to New Orleans will be back for very long. Perhaps the next hurricane to hit the city can single out rich Republicans.
--Jim
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