From Mother Jones: Gentrifying Disaster

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From Mother Jones

 

 

Gentrifying Disaster

Commentary: In New Orleans: Ethnic Cleansing, GOP-Style

 

By Mike Davis

 

October 25, 2005

 

 

In a recent email to Louisiana officials, FEMA curtly turned down the

state's request for funding to notify displaced residents that they

could cast absentee ballots in the city's crucial February mayoral

election. FEMA also declined to share data with local authorities

about the current addresses of evacuees.

 

In the eyes of many local activists, FEMA's refusal to support the

voting rights of evacuees is consistent with a larger pattern of

federal inaction and delay that seems transparently designed to

discourage the return of Black residents to the city. As one

Associated Press dispatch presciently warned, " Hurricane Katrina [may]

prove to be the biggest, most brutal urban-renewal project Black

America has ever seen. "

 

Ethnic Cleansing, GOP-Style

 

Read the whole article at:

http://motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2005/10/gentrifying_disaster.html