Fwd: [ NOLA_C3_Discussion] New Orleans One Year After Katrina....Quigley

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[NOLA_C3_Discussion] New Orleans One Year After Katrina....Quigley

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Trying to Make It Home: New Orleans One Year After Katrina

 

By Bill Quigley.

 

Bill is a human rights lawyer and

law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. You

can reach him at Quigley For more

information see www.justiceforneworleans.org

 

 

Bernice Mosely is 82 and lives alone in New Orleans in

a shotgun double. On August 29, 2005, as Katrina hit

the Gulf Coast, the levees constructed by the U.S.

Corps of Engineers failed in five places and New

Orleans filled with water.

 

One year ago Ms. Mosely was on the second floor of her

neighborhood church. Days later, she was helicoptered

out. She was so dehydrated she spent eight days in a

hospital. Her next door neighbor, 89 years old,

stayed behind to care for his dog. He drowned in the

eight feet of floodwaters that covered their

neighborhood.

 

Ms. Mosely now lives in her half-gutted house. She

has no stove, no refrigerator, and no

air-conditioning. The bottom half of her walls have

been stripped of sheetrock and are bare wooden slats

from the floor halfway up the wall. Her food is

stored in a styrofoam cooler. Two small fans push the

hot air around.

 

Two plaster Madonnas are in her tiny well-kept front

yard. On a blazing hot summer day, Ms. Mosely used

her crutches to gingerly come down off her porch to

open the padlock on her fence. She has had hip and

knee replacement surgery. Ms. Mosely worked in a New

Orleans factory for over thirty years sewing uniforms.

When she retired she was making less than $4 an

hour. " Retirement benefits? " she laughs. She lives

off social security. Her house had never flooded

before. Because of her tight budget tight, Ms. Mosely

did not have flood insurance.

 

Thousands of people like Ms. Mosely are back in their

houses on the Gulf Coast. They are living in houses

that most people would consider, at best, still under

construction, or, at worst, uninhabitable. Like Ms.

Mosely, they are trying to make their damaged houses

into homes.

 

New Orleans is still in intensive care. If you have

seen recent television footage of New Orleans, you

probably have a picture of how bad our housing

situation is. What you cannot see is that the rest of

our institutions, our water, our electricity, our

healthcare, our jobs, our educational system, our

criminal justice systems – are all just as broken as

our housing. We remain in serious trouble. Like us,

you probably wonder where has the promised money gone?

 

 

Ms. Mosely, who lives in the upper ninth ward, does

not feel sorry for herself at all. " Lots of people

have it worse, " she says. " You should see those

people in the Lower Ninth and in St. Bernard and in

the East. I am one of the lucky ones. "

 

 

Housing

 

Hard as it is to believe, Ms. Mosely is right. Lots

of people do have it worse. Hundreds of thousands of

people from the Gulf Coast remain displaced. In New

Orleans alone over two hundred thousand people have

not been able to make it home.

 

Homeowners in Louisiana, like Ms. Mosely, have not yet

received a single dollar of federal housing rebuilding

assistance to rebuild their severely damaged houses

back into homes. Over 100,000 homeowners in

Louisiana are on a waiting list for billions in

federal rebuilding assistance through the Community

Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. So far, no

money has been distributed.

 

Renters, who comprised most of the people of New

Orleans before Katrina, are much worse off than

homeowners. New Orleans lost more than 43,000 rental

units to the storm. Rents have skyrocketed in the

undamaged parts of the area, pricing regular working

people out of the market. The official rate of

increase in rents is 39%. In lower income

neighborhoods, working people and the elderly report

rents are up much higher than that. Amy Liu of the

Brookings Institute said " Even people who are working

temporarily for the rebuilding effort are having

trouble finding housing. "

 

Renters in Louisiana are not even scheduled to receive

assistance through the Louisiana CDBG program. Some

developers will receive assistance at some point, and

when they do, some apartments will be made available,

but that is years away.

 

In the face of the worst affordable housing shortage

since the end of the Civil War, the federal government

announced that it refused to allow thousands of

families to return to their public housing units and

was going to bulldoze 5000 apartments. Before

Katrina, over 5000 families lived in public housing –

88 percent women-headed households, nearly all African

American.

 

These policies end up with hundreds of thousands of

people still displaced from their homes. Though all

ages, incomes and races are displaced, some groups are

impacted much more than others. The working poor,

renters, moms with kids, African-Americans, the

elderly and disabled – all are suffering

disproportionately from displacement. Race, poverty,

age and physical ability are great indicators of who

has and who has made it home.

 

The statistics tell some of the story. The City of

New Orleans says it is half its pre-Katrina size –

around 225,000 people. But the U.S. Post Office

estimates that only about 170,000 people have returned

to the city and 400,000 people have not returned to

the metropolitan area. The local electricity company

reports only about 80,000 of its previous 190,000

customers have returned.

 

Texas also tells part of the story. It is difficult

to understand the impact of Katrina without

understanding the role of Texas – home to many of our

displaced. Houston officials say their city is still

home to about 150,000 storm evacuees – 90,000 in FEMA

assisted housing. Texas recently surveyed the

displaced and reported that over 250,000 displaced

people live in the state and 41 percent of these

households report income of less than $500 per month.

Eighty-one percent are black, 59 percent are still

jobless, most have at least one child at home, and

many have serious health issues.

 

Another 100,000 people displaced by Katrina are in

Georgia, more than 80,000 in metro Atlanta – most of

whom also need long-term housing and mental health

services.

 

In Louisiana, there are 73,000 families in FEMA

trailers. Most of these trailers are 240 square feet

of living space. More than 1600 families are still

waiting for trailers in St. Bernard Parish. FEMA

trailers did not arrive in the lower ninth ward until

June – while the displaced waited for water and

electricity to resume. Aloyd Edinburgh, 75, lives in

the lower ninth ward and just moved into a FEMA

trailer. His home flooded as did the homes of all

five of his children. " Everybody lost their homes, "

he told the Times-Picayune, " They just got trailers.

All are rebuilding. They all have mortgages. What

else are they going to do? "

 

Until challenged, FEMA barred reporters from talking

with people in FEMA trailer parks without prior

permission – forcing a reporter out of a trailer in

one park and residents back into their trailer in

another in order to stop interviews.

 

One person displaced into a FEMA village in Baton

Rouge has been organizing with her new neighbors. Air

conditioners in two trailers for the elderly have been

out for over two weeks, yet no one will fix them. The

contractor who ran the village has been terminated and

another one is coming – no one knows who. She tells

me, " My neighbors are dismayed that no one in the city

has stepped forward to speak for us. We are " gone. "

Who will speak for us? Does anyone care? "

 

Trailers are visible signs of the displaced. Tens of

thousands of other displaced families are living in

apartments across the country month to month under

continuous threats of FEMA cutoffs.

 

Numbers say something. But please remember behind

every number, there is a Ms. Mosely. Tens of

thousands, hundreds of thousands, of people each with

a personal story like Ms. Mosely are struggling to

return, trying to make it home.

 

 

Water and Electricity

 

New Orleans continues to lose more water than it

uses. The Times-Picayune discovered that the local

water system has to pump over 130 million gallons a

day so that 50 million gallons will come out. The

rest runs away in thousands of leaks in broken water

lines, costing the water system $2000,000 a day. The

lack of water pressure, half that of other cities,

creates significant problems in consumption,

sanitation, air-conditioning, and fire prevention.

In the lower 9th ward, the water has still not been

certified as safe to drink – one year later.

 

Only half the homes in New Orleans have electricity.

Power outages are common as hundreds of millions of

dollars in repairs have not been made because Entergy

New Orleans is in bankruptcy. Entergy is asking for a

25 percent increase in rates to help it become

solvent. Yet Entergy New Orleans' parent company,

Entergy Corporation reported earnings of $282 million

last year on revenue of $2.6 billion.

 

 

Health and Healthcare

 

Early this month, on August 1, 2006, another Katrina

victim was found in her home in New Orleans, buried

under debris. The woman was the 28th person found

dead since March 2006. A total of 1577 died in

Louisiana as a result of Katrina.

 

A friend of mine, a lawyer with health insurance and

a family physician, went for an appointment recently

at 11am. The office was so crowded he had to sit out

in the hall on the floor to wait his turn for a seat

in the waiting room. Three hours later he met his

doctor. The doctor thought might have a gall stone.

The doctor tried to set up an ultrasound. None were

available. He ordered my friend to the emergency room

for an ultrasound. At 4pm my friend went to the

hospital emergency room, which was jammed with people:

stroke victims, young kids with injuries, people

brought in by the police. At 5am the next morning, my

friend finished his ultrasound and went home. If it

takes a lawyer with health insurance that long to get

medical attention, consider what poor people without

health insurance are up against.

 

Half the hospitals open before Katrina are still

closed. The state's biggest public healthcare

provider, Charity Hospital, remains closed and there

are no current plans to reopen it anytime soon.

Healthcare could actually get worse. Dr. Mark Peters,

board chair of the Metropolitan Hospital Council of

New Orleans said within the next two to three months,

" all the hospitals " will be looking seriously at

cutbacks. Why? Doctors and healthcare workers have

left and there is surging demand from the uninsured

who before Katrina went through now non-existent

public healthcare. There is a shortage of nurses.

Blue Cross Blue Shield officials reported " About

three-quarters of the physicians who had been

practicing in New Orleans are no longer submitting

claims. "

 

There is no hospital at all in the city for

psychiatric patients. While the metropolitan area

had about 450 psychiatric beds before the storm, 80

are now available. The police are the first to

encounter those with mental illness. One recent

Friday afternoon, police dealt with two mental

patients – one was throwing bricks through a bar

window, the other was found wandering naked on the

interstate.

 

The elderly are particularly vulnerable. Over 70

percent of the deaths from Katrina were people over 60

years old. No one knows how many seniors have not

made it back home. Esther Bass, 69, told the New

York Times, after months of searching for a place to

come home to New Orleans, " If there are apartments, I

can't afford them. And they say there will be senior

centers, but they're still being built. They can't

even tell you what year they'll be finished. " As of

late July 2006, most nursing homes in the 12 parish

Gulf Coast area of Louisiana are still not fully

prepared to evacuate residents in the face of a

hurricane.

 

The healthcare community has been rocked by the

arrest of a doctor and two nurses after the Louisiana

Attorney General accused them of intentionally ending

the lives of four patients trapped in a now-closed

local hospital. The accusations now go before a local

grand jury which is not expected to make a decision on

charges for several more months. The case is

complicated for several reasons. Most important is

that the doctor and nurses are regarded as some of the

most patient-oriented and caring people of the entire

hospital staff. It is undisputed that they worked

day and night to save hundreds of patients from the

hospital during the days it was without water,

electricity or food. Others say that entire hospital

and many others were abandoned by the government and

that is what the attorney general should be

investigating. The gravity of the charges, though,

is giving everyone in the community pause. This, like

so much else, will go on for years before there is any

resolution.

 

 

Jobs

 

Before Katrina, there were over 630,000 workers in

the metropolitan New Orleans area – now there are

slightly over 400,000. Over 18,000 businesses

suffered " catastrophic " damage in Louisiana. Nearly

one in four of the displaced workers is still

unemployed. Education and healthcare have lost the

most employees. Most cannot return because there is

little affordable housing, child care, public

transportation and public health care.

 

Women workers, especially African American women

workers, continue to bear the heaviest burden of harm

from the storm. The Institute for Women's Policy

Research reports that the percentage of women in the

New Orleans workforce has dropped. The number of

single mother families in New Orleans has dropped from

51,000 to 17,000. Low-income women remain displaced

because of the lack of affordable housing and

traditional discrimination against women in the

construction industry.

 

Tens of thousands of migrant workers, roughly half

undocumented, have come to the Gulf Coast to work in

the recovery. Many were recruited. Most workers

tell of being promised good wages and working

conditions and plenty of work. Some paid money up

front for the chance to come to the area to work.

Most of these promises were broken. A tour of the

area reveals many Latino workers live in houses

without electricity, other live out of cars. At

various places in the city whole families are living

in tents. Two recently released human rights reports

document the problems of these workers. Immigrant

workers are doing the dirtiest, most dangerous work,

in the worst working conditions. Toxic mold, lead

paint, fiberglass, and who knows what other chemicals

are part of daily work. Safety equipment is not

always provided. Day laborers, a new category of

workers in New Orleans, are harassed by the police and

periodic immigration raids. Wage theft is widespread

as employers often do not pay living wages, and

sometimes do not pay at all. Some of the powers try

to pit local workers against new arrivals – despite

the fact that our broken Gulf Coast clearly needs all

the workers we can get.

 

Public transportation to and from low-wage jobs is

more difficult. Over 200 more public transit

employees have been terminated – cutting employment

from over 1300 people pre-Katrina to about 700 now.

 

Single working parents seeking childcare are in

trouble. Before Katrina, New Orleans had 266 licensed

day care centers. Mississippi State University

surveyed the city in July 2006 and found 80 percent of

the day care centers and over 75 percent of the 1912

day care spots are gone. Only one-third of the Head

Start centers that were open pre-Katrina survived.

 

 

Public Education

 

 

Before Katrina, 56,000 students were enrolled in over

100 public schools in New Orleans. At the end of the

school year there were only 12,500. Right after the

storm, the local school board gave many of the best

public schools to charter groups. The State took over

almost all the rest. By the end of the school year,

four schools were operated by the pre-Katrina school

board, three by the State, and eighteen were new

charter schools.

 

After thirty-two years of collective bargaining, the

union contract with the New Orleans public school

teachers elapsed and was not renewed and 7500

employees were terminated.

 

For this academic year, no one knows for certain how

many students will enroll in New Orleans public

schools. Official estimates vary between a low of

22,000 and a high of 34,000. There will be five

traditional locally supervised public schools,

eighteen schools operated by the State, and

thirty-four charter schools. As of July 1, not a

single teacher had been hired for fifteen of the

state-run schools. As of August 9, 2006, the

Times-Picayune reported there are no staff at all

identified to educate students with discipline

problems or other educational issues that require

special attention.

 

Whatever the enrollment in the new public school

system is in the fall, it will not give an accurate

indication of how many children have returned. Why?

Many students in the public charter schools were in

private schools before the hurricane.

 

Criminal Legal System

 

Consider also our criminal legal system. Chaka

Davis was arrested on misdemeanor charges in October

2005 and jailed at the Greyhound station in New

Orleans in October of 2005. Under Louisiana law, he

was required to be formally charged within 30 days of

arrest or released from custody. Because of a filing

error he was lost in the system. He was never

charged, never went to court, and never saw a lawyer

in over 8 months – even though the maximum penalty for

conviction for one of his misdemeanors was only 6

months. His mother found him in an out of town jail

and brought his situation to the attention of the

public defenders. He was released the next day.

 

Crime is increasingly a problem. In July, New

Orleans lost almost as many people to murder as in

July of 2005, with only 40 percent of the population

back. There are many young people back in town while

their parents have not returned. State and local

officials called in the National Guard to patrol

lightly populated areas so local police could

concentrate on high-crime, low-income neighborhoods.

Arrests have soared, but the number of murders remain

high. Unfortunately, several of the National Guard

have been arrested for criminal behavior as well – two

for looting liquor from a home, two others for armed

robbery at a traffic stop.

 

Criminal Court District Judge Arthur Hunter has

declared the current criminal justice system shameful

and unconstitutional and promises to start releasing

inmates awaiting trial on recognizance bonds on the

one year anniversary of Katrina. The system is nearly

paralyzed by a backlog of over 6000 cases. There are

serious evidence problems because of resigned police

officers, displaced victims, displaced witnesses, and

flooded evidence rooms. The public defender system,

which was down to 4 trial attorneys for months, is

starting to rebuild.

 

" After 11 months of waiting, 11 months of meetings,

11 months of idle talk, 11 months without a sensible

recovery plan and 11 months tolerating those who have

the authority to solve, correct and fix the problem

but either refuse, fail or are just inept, then

necessary action must be taken to protect the

constitutional rights of people,' said Hunter.

 

In the suburbs across the lake, Sheriff Jack Strain

told the media on TV that he was going to protect his

jurisdiction from " thugs " and " trash " migrating from

closed public housing projects in New Orleans. He

went on to promise that every person who wore

" dreadlocks or che-wee hairstyles " could expect to be

stopped by law enforcement. The NAACP and the ACLU

called in the U.S. Justice Department and held a

revival-like rally at a small church just down the

road from the jail. Though the area is over 80

percent white, the small group promised to continue to

challenge injustice no matter how powerful the person

committing the injustice. Recently, the same law

enforcement people set up a roadblock and were

stopping only Latino people to check IDs and

insurance. I guess to prove they were not only

harassing black people?

 

Finally, a grand jury has started looking into

actions by other suburban police officers who blocked

a group of people, mostly black, from escaping the

floodwaters of New Orleans by walking across the

Mississippi River bridge. The suburban police forced

the crowd to flee back across the two mile bridge by

firing weapons into the air.

 

This is the criminal legal system in the New Orleans

area in 2006. None dare call it criminal justice.

 

 

International Human Rights

 

The Gulf Coast has gained new respect for

international human rights because they provide a more

appropriate way to look at what should be happening.

The fact that there is an international human right of

internally displaced people to return to their homes

and a responsibility on government to help is

heartening even though yet unfulfilled.

 

The United Nations has blasted the poor U.S. response

to Katrina. The UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva

accepted a report from Special Reporter Arjun Sengupta

who visited New Orleans in fall of 2005 and concluded:

" The Committee…remains concerned about information

that poor people, and in particular African-Americans,

were disadvantaged by the rescue and evacuation plans

implemented when Hurricane Katrina hit the United

States of America, and continue to be disadvantaged

under the reconstruction plans. "

 

Asian tsunami relief workers who visited New Orleans

over the summer were shocked at the lack of recovery.

Somsook Boonyabancha, director of the Community

Organisations Development Institute in Thailand, told

Reuters she was shocked at the lack of progress in New

Orleans. " I'm surprised to see why the reconstruction

work is so slow, because this is supposed to be one of

the most rich and efficient countries in the world. It

is starting at such a slow speed, incredibly slow

speed. "

 

 

Warnings to the Displaced

 

Local United Way officials see the lack of housing,

healthcare and jobs and conclude that low-income

people should seriously consider not returning to New

Orleans anytime soon.

 

United Way wrote: " Most of these people want to come

home, but if they do not have a recovery plan they

need to stay where they are. Some of these evacuees

think that they can come back and stay with families

and in a few weeks have a place of their own. But the

reality is that they may end up living with those

relatives for years. Sending people back without a

realistic plan may have serious consequences: the

crowding of families into small apartments/homes/FEMA

trailers is causing mental health problems – stress,

abuse, violence, and even death – and this problem is

going to get worse, not better. Also, when the

elderly (and others) are those returning and living in

these conditions, their health is impacted and then

the lack of medical facilities and hospital beds is a

problem. Again the result may be death….Basically if

an evacuee says they have a place to stay – like with

relatives – those communities will give them bus fare

back or pay for U-hauls. If an evacuee was a renter

here and they want to return they should be told to

plan on returning in 3-7 years, and in the meantime

stay there, get a job, and be much better off. "

 

FEMA officials in Austin are also warning people

about returning to New Orleans. They wrote: " Before

you return….New Orleans is a changing place…you should

consider the conditions you may be returning to. Many

neighborhood schools will not be open by August. Your

children may have to travel some distance to get to

school…Grocery and supermarkets have been slow to

return to many neighborhoods. Sometimes there aren't

enough residents back in your neighborhood for a store

to open and be profitable. You may have to travel a

large distance to groceries. Walking to the store

might not be an option…If you or your family members

require regular medical attention, or if you are

pregnant or nursing, the services you received before

the storm may be scattered and in very different and

distant locations. Depending on your medical needs,

you may have to drive across the river or even as far

away as Baton Rouge…If you or your family members have

allergies, remember that there is lots of dust and

mold still in the city. While you may have suffered

from allergies before the storm, please consider that

being in the city will only worsen your allergies. If

you have asthma, other respiratory or cardiac

conditions, or immune system problems, you would be

safer staying out of flooded areas due to the mold,

particles and dust in the air. If you must return to

the city, wear an approved respirator when working in

moldy or dusty areas. …Additionally, police, fire and

emergency personnel are stretched to their limits…If

you own a car, gas and service stations are limited in

many areas. You may need to purchase a gas can in the

event you cannot get gas near your home…Public

transportation (busses) are also limited and do not

operate in all areas….Available and affordable housing

is extremely rare. Waiting lists for apartments are

as large as 300 on the list, depending on how many

bedrooms you need. Living inside your home could be

dangerous if mold has set in of if your utilities are

not in top working condition…Living in New Orleans may

be easier said than done until we have fully recovered

from the storm. "

 

This is New Orleans, one year after Katrina.

 

 

Where Did the Money Go?

 

Everyone who visits New Orleans asks the same

question that locals ask – where is the money?

Congress reportedly appropriated over $100 billion to

rebuild the Gulf Coast. Over $50 billion was

allocated to temporary and long-term housing. Just

under $30 billion was for emergency response and

Department of Defense spending. Over $18 billion was

for State and local response and the rebuilding of

infrastructure. $3.6 billion was for health, social

services and job training and $3.2 for non-housing

cash assistance. $1.9 billion was allocated for

education and $1.2 billion for agriculture.

 

One hour in New Orleans shows the check must still be

in the mail.

 

Not a single dollar in federal housing rehab money has

made it into a hand in Louisiana. Though Congress has

allocated nearly $10 billion in Community Development

Block Grants, the State of Louisiana is still testing

the program and has not yet distributed dollar number

one.

 

A lot of media attention has gone to the prosecution

of people who wrongfully claimed benefits of $2000 or

more after the storm. Their fraud is despicable. It

harms those who are still waiting for assistance from

FEMA.

 

But, be clear - these little $2000 thieves are minnows

swimming on the surface. There are many big savage

sharks below. Congress and the national media have

so far been frustrated in their quest to get real

answers to where the millions and billions went. How

much was actually spent on FEMA trailers? How much

did the big contractors take off the top and then

subcontract out the work? Who were the subcontractors

for the multi-million dollar debris removal and

reconstruction contracts?

 

As Corpwatch says in their recent report, " Many of the

same 'disaster profiteers' and government agencies

that mishandled the reconstruction of Afghanistan and

Iraq are responsible for the failure of

'reconstruction' of the Gulf Coast region. The Army

Corps, Bechtel and Halliburton are using the very same

'contract vehicles' in the Gulf Coast as they did in

Afghanistan and Iraq. These are 'indefinite delivery,

indefinite quantity' open-ended 'contingency'

contracts that are being abused by the contractors on

the Gulf Coast to squeeze out local companies. These

are also 'cost-plus' contracts that allow them to

collect a profit on everything they spend, which is an

incentive to overspend. "

 

We do know billions of dollars in no-bid FEMA

contracts went to Bechtel Corporation, the Shaw Group,

CH2M Hill, and Fluor immediately after Katrina hit.

Riley Bechtel, CEO of Bechtel Corporation, served on

President Bush's Export Council during 2003-2004. A

lobbyist for the Shaw Group, Joe Allbaugh, is a former

FEMA Director and friend of President Bush. The

President and Group Chief Executive of the

International Group at CH2MHill is Robert Card,

appointed by President Bush as undersecretary to the

US Department of Energy until 2004. Card also worked

at CH2M Hill before signing up with President Bush.

Fluor, whose work in Iraq was slowing down, is one of

the big winners of FEMA work and its stock is up 65

percent since it started Katrina work.

 

Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota has raised many

protests and questions over inflated prices. " It is

hard to overstate the incompetence involved in all of

these contracts – we have repeatedly asked them for

information and you get nothing. " Republican U.S.

Representative Charles Bustany, who represents an area

heavily damaged by Hurricane Rita, asked FEMA for

reasons why the decision was made to stop funding 100

percent of the cost of debris removal in his district.

FEMA refused to tell him. He then filed a Freedom of

Information request to get the information, and was

again refused. When he asked to appeal their denial,

he was told that there were many appeals ahead of his

and he would have to wait.

 

If a US Senator and a local U.S. Republican

Representative cannot get answers from FEMA, how much

accountability can the people of the Gulf Coast

expect? There are many other examples of fraud, waste

and patronage.

 

How did a company that did not own a truck get a

contract for debris removal worth hundreds of millions

of dollars? The Miami Herald reported that the single

biggest receiver of early Katrina federal contracts

was Ashbritt, Inc. of Pompano Beach, FL, which

received over $579 million in contracts for debris

removal in Mississippi from Army Corps of Engineers.

The paper reported that the company does not own a

single dumptruck! All they do is subcontract out the

work. Ashbritt, however, had recently dumped $40,000

into the lobbying firm of Barbour, Griffith & Rogers,

which had been run by Mississippi Governor and former

National GOP Chair Haley Barbour. The owners of

Ashbritt also trucked $50,000 over to the Republican

National Committee in 2004.

 

How did a company that filed for bankruptcy the year

before and was not licensed to build trailers get a

$200 million contract for trailers? Circle B

Enterprises of Georgia was awarded $287 million in

contracts by FEMA for temporary housing. At the time,

that was the seventh highest award of Katrina money in

the country. According to the Washington Post, Circle

B was not even being licensed to build homes in its

own state of Georgia and filed for bankruptcy in 2003.

The company does not even have a website.

 

FEMA spent $7 million to build a park for 198

trailers in Morgan City Louisiana – almost 2 hours

away from New Orleans. Construction was completed in

April. Three months later only 20 of the trailers

were occupied. One displaced New Orleans resident who

lives there has to walk three miles to the nearest

grocery.

 

Hurricanes are now a booming billion dollar business.

No wonder there is a National Hurricane Conference

for private companies to show off their wares – from

RVs to portable cell phone towers to port-a-potties.

One long time provider was quoted by the Miami Herald

at the conference that there are all kinds of new

people in the field - 'Some folks here said, `Man,

this is huge business; this is my new business. I'm

not in the landscaping business anymore, I'm going to

be a hurricane debris contractor.' "

 

On the local level, we are not any better. One year

after Katrina the City of New Orleans still does not

have a comprehensive rebuilding plan. The first plan

by advisors to the Mayor was shelved before the

election. A city council plan was then started and

the state and federal government mandated yet another

process that may or may not include some of the

recommendations of the prior two processes. One of

the early advisors from the Urban Land Institute, John

McIlwain, blasted the delays in late July. " It's

virtually a city with a city administration and its

worse than ever…You need a politician, a leader that

is willing to make tough decisions and articulate to

people why these decisions are made, which means

everyone is not going to be happy. " Without major

changes at City Hall the City will have miles of

neglected neighborhoods for decades. " We're talking

Dresden after World War II. "

 

 

Signs of Hope

 

Despite the tragedies that continue to plague our

Gulf Coast, there is hope. Between the rocks of

hardship, green life continues to sprout defiantly.

 

Fifteen feet of water washed through Dr. Martin

Luther King, Jr. Elementary School for Science and

Technology in the lower 9th Ward. When people were

finally able to get into the building, the bodies of

fish were found on the second floor. Parents and over

90% of the teachers organized a grass-roots effort to

put their school back together. Their first attempts

to gut and repair the school by locals and volunteers

from Common Ground were temporarily stopped by local

school officials and the police. Even after the

gutting was allowed to resume, the community was told

that the school could not reopen due to insufficient

water pressure in the neighborhood. But the teachers

and parents are pressing ahead anyway in a temporary

location until they can get back in their school.

Assistant Principal Joseph Recasner told the

Times-Picayune: " Rebuilding our school says this is

a very special community, tied together by more than

location, but by spirituality, by bloodlines, and by a

desire to come back. "

 

New Orleans is fortunate to have a working newspaper

again. The Times-Picayune won a well-deserved

Pulitzer for its Katrina coverage. Its staff

continues to provide quality documentation of the Gulf

Coast region's efforts to repair and rebuild.

 

The New Orleans Vietnamese people continue to inspire

us. They were among the very first group back and

they have joined forces to care for their elders,

rebuild their community church, and work together in a

most cooperative manner to resurrect their community.

Recently they took legal and direct action to

successfully stop the placement of a gigantic landfill

right next to their community. Their determination

and sense of community-building is a good model for us

all.

 

The only Republican running for Congress in New

Orleans is blasting President Bush over failed Katrina

promises. Joe Lavigne is running radio ads saying,

" Sadly, George Bush has forgotten us. He's spending

too much time and money on Iraq and not enough living

up to his promise to rebuild New Orleans. His

priorities are wrong. I'm running for Congress to

hold President Bush accountable. " Maybe other

Republicans will join in.

 

Tens of thousands of volunteers from every walk of

life have joined with the people of the Gulf Coast to

help repair and rebuild. Lawyers are giving free help

to Katrina victims who need legal help to rebuild

their homes. Medical personnel staff free clinics.

Thousands of college, high school and even some grade

school students have traveled to the area to help

families gut their devastated homes. Churches,

temples, and mosques from across the world have joined

with sisters and brothers in New Orleans to repair and

rebuild.

 

Despite open attempts to divide them, black and brown

and white and yellow workers have started to talk to

each other. Small groups have started to work

together to fight for living wages and safe jobs for

all workers. Thousands came together for a rally for

respectful treatment for Latino and immigrant workers.

Seasoned civil rights activists welcomed the new

movement and pledged to work together.

 

Ultimately, the people of the Gulf Coast are the

greatest sign of hope. Despite setbacks that people

in the US rarely suffer, people continue to help each

other and fight for their right to return home and the

right to live in the city they love.

 

On Sunday morning, a 70 year old woman told a friend

where her children are. " They are all scattered, " she

sighed. " One is in Connecticut, one in Rhode Island,

one in Austin. " When he asked about her, she said,

" Me? I am in Texas right now. I am back here to

visit my 93 year old mother and go to the second line

of Black Men of Labor on Labor Day. But I'm coming

back. Yes indeed. I will return. I'm coming back. "