Just puttin it out there re: New Orleans

I got a forward on the Radical Reference lists regarding the state of the city of New Orleans, one year after the hurricane. Yesterday I was looking at photos and trying to find news sites that actually carried coverage of the aftermath. Specifically, I'm looking for any information regarding the gut-out-or-get-out issue thats going down this week. Apparently, residents have been told if they haven't gutted their houses by the end of the week they will be torn down. While on a logistical level, I understand the need to remove abandoned homes, but I worry that most of those homes aren't abandoned and that the displaced residents have no means or opportunity to clear their homes and rebuild, largely a result of governmental incompetency and lack of care from their fellow citizens.

So I'm sickened, and have still been unable to shake the images that I saw when I was there in June. I went to Common Ground's website yesterday to look up volunteer opportunities because I want to return and help for a longer period of time. Common Ground provides you housing and food, but you need to get your own transportation down there. That's my problem. No car, no money for a plane ticket. I want to go the week of Christmas, as thats my week off from work and the residents could really use the support over the holidays.

So Here is where you come in: Does anyone want to go that also has a car to split gas costs with me? Come on, you can't all want to hang with family! I'm not above asking for donations. Otherwise, I'll probably ask for an advance of cash from my family for a plane ticket in lieu of Christmas gifts. I can't think of a better way to spend my week off during Christmas than being in New Orleans helping. Its frustrating that I don't have the means to get there, and is inhibiting my ability to help.

And if you want to read the forward from the radref list, I've copied it here. Hopefully the authors won't mind...


Our Summer Vacation

It is a small one-story double house for two families, painted yellow, with
sets of three concrete steps leading up to the front doors on either side.
Writing covers the front of the house -- in the inverted v at the bottom of
an oversized X, the number 3. Three people lost here. Scrawled in black
paint across the front: "1 dog loose under house. Maybe more." Next door
looks the same. So do all the houses in the next block and all the houses
as far as we can see. There is no rebuilding or construction. No people, no
electricity restored -- just the ruins of a great city. Just the
breathtaking reminder of what once was. Eighty percent of New Orleans has
turned to wasteland.

It's not just the Ninth Ward that we've heard so much about. It's Gentilly.
Holy Cross. Lake Vista. East New Orleans. Old Metarie. St. Bernard Parish.
It's everywhere. It's thousands of homes and entire neighborhoods. It's
large shopping centers and small strip malls. It's Walmart and KMart and
Sears and Dillards and Motel 6. It's gas stations and hospitals and schools
and apartment complexes. It's Taco Bells and IHOPs and banks and
drugstores. It's Six Flags America, an amusement park turned ghost town.
And it all sits there eerie and empty and rotting.

Bodies were still being found last weekend. Homeowners had recently been
notified their homes would be bulldozed by the end of the week if they
didn't start clearing them out. Clothes still hang in trees where they were
swept by wind and water a year ago. Debris from the homes clogs canals and
has blown against every fence.

The legal wrangling over insurance continues. Was it wind or flood or
wind-swept water? Each company's decision on each home determines whether
or not the owner eventually gets a settlement to rebuild. Flood insurance
cost $4500 before Katrina. Few had it. Even fewer have the funds saved up
to tackle their homes on their own. And there's no help from the
government. One year later, and still no help.

"I came back in September and the bar reopened in October," the bartender
at the Old Absinthe House on Bourbon Street told us. "George Bush stood
right there in Jackson Square and said, 'We'll do whatever it takes.' Well,
guess what. Nothing happened." Chaos reigns. The judicial system hasn't
even been restored yet.

There are FEMA trailers where people don't need them and people who need
them can't get them. The trailers are tiny and certainly meant to be
temporary. Our taxi driver said his sister has one, but it's too small for
the family so he sleeps in his car each night. "Lots of people do that
here," he said.

"Where did all the Red Cross money go?" the residents are asking. No one
knows. In the meantime, they still have to make their mortgage payments on
homes that are not inhabitable. They have good words for Habitat for
Humanity and some of the church groups trying to help but it isn't enough.
The need for money and volunteers is enormous. They are enraged and rightly
so about FEMA, and the US government's priorities for where and how our tax
dollars are spent. Shirts for sale in shop windows are emblazoned with the
New Orleans fleur de lis and the words MAKE LEVEES NOT WAR.

New Orleans, a city that was predominately black before Katrina is now
predominately white. No one can come home until there is affordable housing
for them to live in. And jobs. And medical care. And grocery stores.

All of the conventions have canceled with the sole exception of the
librarians. Cheers for the brave librarians -- the folks who not only
showed up in New Orleans but also refused to turn our reading records over
to Homeland Security. The crime rate has soared, with 3-4 murders a day.
The local TV news is one Katrina story after another. The levees have not
been fixed, let alone brought up to the standards that the Army Corps of
Engineers should have used when they built them. Hurricane season is here
again. It doesn't end until November 30.

New Orleans is in crisis. The depression and grief are so deep that the
city wears it like a shroud. Start a conversation with someone who lived
through this tragedy and the Katrina stories spill out. They need you to
listen. It's not easy to do.

The French Quarter, the Garden District and the Arts/Warehouse District,
all built on higher ground, escaped the worst of the destruction. Yet they
haven't recovered either, even as the Chamber of Commerce heralds the
"Rebirth of New Orleans." In the French Quarter, trash overflows containers
and piles up in the street. The homeless and aggressive street thugs who
prey on them have replaced the artists and musicians around Jackson Square.
The favorite standby restaurants, stores and clubs are either boarded over
or reopened under new names and owners. Stripper clubs have taken over much
of Bourbon Street. The street performers and mimes around Cafe du Monde and
Jackson Square and Bourbon Street have left the city.

New Orleans, that creative, one-of-a-kind city was hit with a disaster and
then so easily forgotten. A year later, help is still not on the way. It is
an historic, cultural and musical treasure that belongs to all of us and
it's being lost.

The people we met in New Orleans thought you would want to know.

Max and Jan Keaffaber