What Next for New Orleans?
We are confident that New Orleans will be rebuilt – but by whom? More important, for whom?
We can be philosophical about Halliburton and friends acting swiftly and efficiently to loot the public treasury again. But we cannot accept New Orleans being rebuilt as a theme park, with liberty and condominiums for all – all those with money to spare. We cannot accept this as a divine form of urban renewal. One Republican legislator said that God had gotten rid of public housing when the government couldn’t. We cannot accept this.
The people of New Orleans, mostly non-white, mostly poor, have a “right of return.†There must be affordable housing to replace the housing destroyed or irreparable damaged by Katherine.
This struggle may begin in a neighborhood called Tremé. Tremé is mostly poor and Black – according to the census, 44% of its residents survive on less than $10,000 per year. But Tremé is prime real estate, sandwiched between the French Quarter and Interstate 10. Tremé was one of the first neighborhoods settled by “free†Blacks before the Civil War, It was the traditional terminus of funeral processions, with bands that played sad spirituals on the way to the cemetery and hot jazz afterwards. It was home to the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, which desegregated the Mardi Grass in 1968. Will urban removal and gentrification eliminate poor people?
We would like to share the words of novelist Anne Rice, author of Interview with a Vampire.
“But to my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us “Sin City,” and turned your backs. Well, we are a lot more than all that. And though we may seem the most exotic, the most atmospheric and, at times, the most downtrodden part of this land, we are still part of it. We are Americans. We are you.” Please click here for her complete remarks.