(no subject)
in addition to the sites listed in teh email below, youtube has a number of EXTREMELY informative summations of the new orleans ethnic cleansing crisis, all for under ten minutes of your time:
#1 Save PUblic housing in New ORleans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuQv4eAsvGE
#2 HANO to demolish N.O. Public Housing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXJLzS4__BM&NR=1
#3 Black New ORleans Fights to Return Home
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=662L21owniY&feature=related
make no mistake: these changes to 'mixed-income' complexes are not about any altruistic 'integration' or 'progress' for the tens of thousands of people we're talking about. arguably it's an 'aesthetic' one to serve more lucrative development schemes.
i have personally SEEN more than one of these complexes, a bunch of which got no more than a FOOT of water- *very minor damage. this should've meant merely a few MINOR repairs upon retunring--- but these people were never ALLOWED home!!! they were FORCIBLY evacuated during the flood (often through VERY sketchy and violent means to the superdomes and other living hells we've all heard so much- or so little...- about, wiht many people arrested, tortured, or shot outright in 'mixups' by the national guard and the police.)
and TEHN simply **EVICTED, wholesale. as the lawyer guy with teh earpiece says (middle of video # 2) almost all of these families had LEGAL leases they'd been paying on, and there was NO stipulation that they could simply be evicted due to natural disaster. and yet, that's exactly what our government is DOING!! is a lease- a contract- worth as much to teh government when it's a black/poor person holding it? when the land/property/LIVElihood of these people might interfere with grander 'restrcuturing' schemes?
and yes, there were high chain-link fences and barbed wire around all of these apartments and active patrols enforing the orders. (which i also witnessed, in january '06 at st. bernard and later in a number of times/locations)
people did manage to break in or hide; those that the means of getting back and staying back, of staying somewhere else, with relatives or whatnot.
the fact taht this many renters and former public-housing tenants HAVE made it back under THESE circumstances is a testament to their STRENGTH and determination; people LOVE nola, and simply can't leave. there are definitely exceptions, but more people than not feel like most of the 'displaced' are just that; displaced, from home.
"whatcha see in new orleans happening is happening in every other community around the country. what is different about new olreans is that katrina gave the government a chance to fast-forawrd and to condense what other communities are going through in terms of the conversion of traditional public housing... and the displacement of hundreds and thousands of families." -bill quigley (in 'black nola fights')
"really i believe that you all are still trying to kill us all." -the snippet of one rather matter-of-fact statement from a resident, directed at HANO right in the middle of the 'HANO to demolish' clip. gotta catch that; this is the cold fact lying within a wide array of statements made. when we ask about poor people "but where will they go?" and as Rep. Maxine Waters says of her legislative brethren, "they NEVER have an answer!!"-- what else is there?
#1 Save PUblic housing in New ORleans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuQv4eAsvGE
#2 HANO to demolish N.O. Public Housing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXJLzS4__BM&NR=1
#3 Black New ORleans Fights to Return Home
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=662L21owniY&feature=related
make no mistake: these changes to 'mixed-income' complexes are not about any altruistic 'integration' or 'progress' for the tens of thousands of people we're talking about. arguably it's an 'aesthetic' one to serve more lucrative development schemes.
i have personally SEEN more than one of these complexes, a bunch of which got no more than a FOOT of water- *very minor damage. this should've meant merely a few MINOR repairs upon retunring--- but these people were never ALLOWED home!!! they were FORCIBLY evacuated during the flood (often through VERY sketchy and violent means to the superdomes and other living hells we've all heard so much- or so little...- about, wiht many people arrested, tortured, or shot outright in 'mixups' by the national guard and the police.)
and TEHN simply **EVICTED, wholesale. as the lawyer guy with teh earpiece says (middle of video # 2) almost all of these families had LEGAL leases they'd been paying on, and there was NO stipulation that they could simply be evicted due to natural disaster. and yet, that's exactly what our government is DOING!! is a lease- a contract- worth as much to teh government when it's a black/poor person holding it? when the land/property/LIVElihood of these people might interfere with grander 'restrcuturing' schemes?
and yes, there were high chain-link fences and barbed wire around all of these apartments and active patrols enforing the orders. (which i also witnessed, in january '06 at st. bernard and later in a number of times/locations)
people did manage to break in or hide; those that the means of getting back and staying back, of staying somewhere else, with relatives or whatnot.
the fact taht this many renters and former public-housing tenants HAVE made it back under THESE circumstances is a testament to their STRENGTH and determination; people LOVE nola, and simply can't leave. there are definitely exceptions, but more people than not feel like most of the 'displaced' are just that; displaced, from home.
"whatcha see in new orleans happening is happening in every other community around the country. what is different about new olreans is that katrina gave the government a chance to fast-forawrd and to condense what other communities are going through in terms of the conversion of traditional public housing... and the displacement of hundreds and thousands of families." -bill quigley (in 'black nola fights')
"really i believe that you all are still trying to kill us all." -the snippet of one rather matter-of-fact statement from a resident, directed at HANO right in the middle of the 'HANO to demolish' clip. gotta catch that; this is the cold fact lying within a wide array of statements made. when we ask about poor people "but where will they go?" and as Rep. Maxine Waters says of her legislative brethren, "they NEVER have an answer!!"-- what else is there?