A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR executive editor Glen Ford 
Click the flash player to listen to or the mic to download this commentary in mp3 format.
The line between Bush and Obama has not simply blurred in New Orleans: it has disappeared." President Obama has adopted, in whole, the Bush approach to rebuilding the city - minus the Black Diaspora that was scattered to the winds in 2005. Notices of eviction have been served on the mostly elderly and Black inhabitants of 3,000 FEMA trailers. The Obama Department of Housing and Urban Development is putting the finishing touches on public housing demolition in the city. Not a single "Katrina Cottage" has been made ready for occupancy. Obama no more favors the "right to return" to - or remain in - New Orleans, than Bush did.
Obama Shows His True Katrina Colors
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“The President delegated to his minions the task of evicting Katrina survivors from 3,000 FEMA trailers.”
If response to the crimes of Katrina is the litmus test for 21st Century Black politics – and it should be – then the Obama administration has failed to distinguish itself from its predecessor under George W. Bush. The Bush imperative was to take gruesome advantage of the hurricane’s destruction to accomplish a national goal: to drive poor Blacks from the central cities. Every governmental crime of omission and commission in the wake of Katrina was coldly calculated to permanently exile several hundred thousand African Americans from New Orleans. The city was deliberately rendered unlivable for a huge portion of its previous residents, while corporate vultures from across the nation and even Australia schemed to create a new urban “model” – minus African Americans.
From the beginning, candidate Obama denied that racism played a role in Katrina’s aftermath. The prevailing “incompetence,” he said, was “colorblind” – proving either that he, Obama, was the blind one or that the man who would be president is as hostile to the inner city poor as George Bush.
Obama waited until his first 100 days in office had passed to delegate to his minions the task of evicting Katrina survivors from 3,000 FEMA trailers. Most of the trailer inhabitants are elderly. Two-thirds of them own homes that they have been trying to make habitable, with or without help from the government. Their evictions from the trailers will make it that much harder to renew their lives as permanent residents of New Orleans – which is the whole point of the evictions.
“Obama has effectively adopted the Bush policy on New Orleans, in whole.”
FEMA claims that it has always offered to allow people to buy the trailers for as little as $300. But the trailer residents overwhelmingly dispute that story. According to the New York Times, “virtually all of the residents interviewed said they had offered” to buy their trailers, but were “told they could not.” Who are you going to believe, the people or FEMA?
And who is to blame? Not George Bush, not anymore. President Obama has effectively adopted the Bush policy on New Orleans, in whole. Not a single one of 500 planned “Katrina cottages” has been made ready for occupancy. Elderly people squat in abandoned buildings. There are no credible plans to repair or create an infrastructure that could accommodate the poor who still remain, much less the New Orleans diaspora, scattered to the four winds three and a half years ago.
President Obama’s economic stimulus plan, of which he is so proud, revealed his administration’s general attitude regarding Katrina. Rather than putting people to work rebuilding New Orleans for the benefit of its original population, the administration and Congress allocated the city less money than any other congressional district. And it was under Obama that the latest federal actions to demolish public housing in the city have occurred.
The line between Bush and Obama has not simply blurred in New Orleans: it has disappeared. The ominous ramifications reverberate far beyond the Gulf Coast. If post-Katrina New Orleans is the “urban model” for the future, then Black America has a great deal to fear from the Obama White House.
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
Comments
For once shine the spotlight on the progress that is being made.
Mr. Ford when was the last time you been to New Orleans???? I live there and with any disaster progress takes time and things are looking up in my city. As I see it the only people that are complaining are those without valid cause who refuses to be accountable for THEIR OWN LIVES. Everyday people that were getting rental assistance are being transitioned into the Section 8 program…everyday. New houses are being built in the lower Ninth Ward were most of the city’s damage took place. Matter of fact Brad Pitt is one of the true innovators of building housing for low-income families; also Dan Akroyd has joined the re-building coalition. In New Orleans east, a number of apartment complexes that were destroyed by Katrina are just about completed. Construction has started on the grounds of where those oppressive-brick projects once occupied.
So, Mr. Ford before you start talking about what is not being done here in my city it would be wise for you to come and take a look for yourself; instead of (I am assuming) getting your information from those people that are looking for the proverbial hand-out. Now please don’t think for once that I believe that no one here in New Orleans has come across dead ends or governmental bureaucracy because they have. I personally believe that you need to shine the spotlight on the progress that has been made here in New Orleans as well.
Hotep,
Teresa Cousin
Progress in New Orleans
I know it's a matter of glass half empty vs. glass half full, but Glen Ford was also addressing the problems of the senior citizens and others who owned homes and were there in trailers trying to rebuild their homes and lives without government handouts (i.e. the people still fighting State Farm, Allstate, etc. who are cheating them).
I know I have no validity commenting since I don't live in New Orleans, but I do know how insurance companies rip people off in the Midwest. Here, the tornados hit (or roofs collapse from snowstorms) and the white areas are claims-adjusted first and their claims treated fairly. Home owners in the black neighborhoods, who are often paying more in premiums, are adjusted last and their rates are never paid at the rates promised. In 1978-79, our roof collapsed, and my parents had insurance to cover this event b/c it does snow in Chicago, but my father never collected the full amount. Basically, he had to take a loan out from the credit union to pay for the roof. Yeah we got our roof fixed (half full) but we weren't pleased as punch b/c my father learned about his white fireman coworkers who had the same insurance and were covered at 100% (half empty).
Anyway, since you are from New Orleans and apparently are seeing Black home owners being treated well, do tell how they expedited their fair settlements with the insurance companies? Are these pulling-themselves-up-by-the-proverbial-bootstraps Black people receiving the same settlements as white people with the same level of coverage?
Also, did Pitt and his people figure out a way to add windows to his houses? Ya know, like he has on his in France?
NOLA housing:why were nonwater-damaged public housing demolished
I only lived in NOLA for a couple of years in the mid-1960s. A relative
who I went with, worked in the AntiPoverty Program, partnered with a local
man, who was African-American. (I am not Black.) I ask the question:
why has good housing stock, public housing, been demolished? It's
housing that was not wet after Hurricane Katrina. (I was there for Hurricane
Betsy.) The only conclusion that can be made, and has been by the
residents who were forced out and never allowed back, is to grab the land
for high rentals. The residents were African-American. DemocracyNow has had activists from NOLA on
the show several times; shows are archived. www.democracynow.org
Bill Quigley, an attorney with the Loyola Law Project has been working
on housing issues for a long time in NOLA: he has been on Dem.Now
also, and has writing about NOLA on many websites over the last several
years. (I am still learning this new format, sigh.)
land grabs everywhere
i think you are correct in your observations about the land grabs. rich people will always prey upon the poor. where has "urban renewal" benefitted the underclass? are the schools any better? where do the displaced go?
the poor have always gotten the shaft. the myth of america is anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. some do, some don't, some can't. and let's not forget the rules of the bootstrap game are different depending on your skin color and your gender. historically, ownership of land and property was a building block for wealth creation. our economy rewards property owners. you can get credit more readily, you get tax breaks. deny this opportunity and you deny the opportunity to grow your financial future. this particular land grab may or may not be about providing a new playground for the rich at the expense of the poor. it is definitely about creating obstacles to financial power to a whole class of people.
Coming Home
Thanks Mr. Ford for the FYI on the Katrina victims. It is absolutely amazing that after all this time the people that were displaced by Katrina are still being victimized. The people that were displaced (Urban Removed) from Nola are still getting screwed by FEMA the government the Insurance mafia and anybody else that stands to profit from this manufactured disaster. When I say manufactured disaster I mean this; Katrina was a natural disaster but every thing else that happened after Katrina was a man made manufactured disaster. To say that race was not a factor in the disaster you have to be ether delusional or demented or both.
I worked for FEMA in a call center in Pasadena CA so I have some personal experience with this. I know how FEMA screwed those affected. I talked to lots of Katrina victims (one of the most difficult jobs I ever had). I know how people were given the runaround misinformed and straight out lied to by call reps from other call centers about the status of their application for disaster assistance (this delayed the processing of their application for disaster assistance). I know how inspectors would play games with people calling the phone number at the damaged property (that nobody was at) and state that “the occupant was not there” (of course they were not there). The inspectors got paid whether they inspected a property or not. Have occupants make long trips to get back to the damaged property and then the inspector NOT show up. I could go on and on but space/time is limited.
When we referred people who wanted trailers all we had to give them was a phone number (the whole trailer process was contracted out from FEMA). In talking to people that called the number all they got was a recording (in other words it was a shell game crap shoot). The standard issue for trailers was a match box size thing that nobody wanted. If you wanted a large trailer you had to specify that. Occupants also said that the trailers were poorly constructed (What else would you expect from a for profit government contractor) think Halliburton.
The eviction of Katrina victims for the last remaining trailers is just reprehensible. They were evicted from the hotels when the Red Cross stopped paying and when FEMA stopped paying too. They have been relocated so many times. Obama is just continuing the actions started by the Bush cabal. As stated in the article most of the people still in trailers are/were home owners who have been trying to get properties rehabbed or rebuilt but because of bureaucratic BullSh*t from government and the Insurance mafia they have been kneecapped dropped kicked and scraped on the curb. I know that every Katrina victim was not screwed but far too many were and EVERY VICTIM has a horror story to tell about their disaster assistance experience with FEMA the bureaucratic labyrinth created by government and the Insurance mafia. I know that for a fact because they told them to me. The Obama administration is just continuing to obfuscate this event to cover the Bush junta but in doing so they are stepping into the pile of DOO DOO that they left.
Yes I know that there has been some progress in the rebuilding the Big Easy and I am NOT form New Orleans. I know that Black folks were not the only ones that got worked over and jerked out (I talked to some of everybody White Asian Hispanic) they got played just as badly too. BUT why were so many Black folks after Katrina not just MOVED OUT en mass but scattered every which a way??? I do not remember talking to a lot of other folks who had been relocated like that JUST US. The progress that has happened in Nola could be on an order of magnitude greater than what it is IF people had been given some practical means to return IF rents had not been jacked up IF schools had not been closed IF public housing had not been torn down IF jobs that pay living wages were available. The victims of Katrina have been abandoned disenfranchised relocated evicted and disowned. I do not care how you slice it, dice it or dissect it the way many people affected by Katrina have been treated stinks to high holy heaven and is still a national disgrace. All they Really want to do is COME HOME!!!
Peace
S Murph
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Now please don’t think for once
Now please don’t think for once that I believe that no one here in New Orleans has come across dead ends or governmental bureaucracy because they have. I personally believe that you need to shine the spotlight on the progress that has been made here in New Orleans as well.
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