Voice of Revolution

Reject The Failed U.S. State

Step Up the Work to Defend Katrina Survivors

The government is once again launching an all-sided attack against Katrina survivors and their right to return and rebuild. The federal government is again organizing to evict Katrina survivors, both from the small trailers they forced people into and from apartments. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) claims more than 17,000 people in apartments and many thousands in trailers are now "ineligible" for government assistance. It is organizing to make Katrina survivors homeless, again.

The federal government also organized to massively disenfranchise large numbers of voters in the recent local elections. The majority of registered voters, most of them African American, are still scattered in cities nationwide. The government refused to provide satellite voting, which they provided for Iraqis for the Bush-organized election in Iraq. The government refused to bring people back for the vote and refused to guarantee absentee ballots for everyone. The large majority of voters were openly blocked from voting by the government, yet the election is considered valid.

The broad and open impunity the government is exercising, again, against people who have already been evicted, forcibly separated, often sent to fenced and guarded concentration camps and then moved, over and over again, and now evicted again, shows the complete failure of the U.S. state. This failure includes the fact that the federal government is organizing to put in place arrangements where government has no responsibility to the most vulnerable, no responsibility to national minorities, no responsibility to workers, no responsibility to society as a whole. The direction, as seen with immigrants and Katrina survivors is for the government to make everyone illegal and "ineligible" for assistance, social services, voting and more while also making everyone subject to being excluded from simply living and existing in society.

This same failure of government can be seen in the complete breakdown of relations between the local, state and federal governments. The federal government is organizing to eliminate the role of these levels of government and imposing its dictate, including securing more and more of the public treasury at the federal level. This includes using hired mercenaries like Blackwater, KKK-like terrorist groups and military troops on the Gulf Coast and all along the border with Mexico.

People across the country alongside Katrina survivors are rejecting this failure and organizing to defend the rights of all. Rebuilding is going forward, house-by-house. More and more families are returning and insisting that the New Orleans of the people, the New Orleans that is one with the millions of workers marching on May Day, with the united resistance of all to create a society that guarantees the rights of all, that that New Orleans will be.

Now is the time to step up the work to defend Katrina survivors. Volunteer for projects in New Orleans, join in actions to block evictions, organize meetings to inform people and discuss this vital work to defend rights.

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Justice After Katrina

Common Ground Calling for Summer Volunteers

Common Ground Relief, one of the main organizations defending the rights of the people and New Orleans' spirit of resistance is calling for summer volunteers. There are a number of different projects requiring all variety of volunteers, and all are welcome. The types of work include gutting homes, journalism, assisting at the medical clinic and women's center and more. Those interested should register with Common Ground (www.commongroundrelief.org).

The Common Ground collective came into being immediately after Katrina as a collective volunteer effort and continues to organize to meet the urgent needs of the people. Below is information from Common Ground for anyone who wants to volunteer for work in one of the hardest hit areas, the Lower Ninth Ward project.

Project Description

The Lower 9th Ward project is a community driven initiative which strives to meet the needs and wants demanded by the residents of the lower 9th ward. We work in solitary with this community, and maintain all project areas as open to community involvement. Since January 1st, when the project began, we have opened and operated a distribution center, a tool lending library, a community media center, a fist aid station, two temporary housing spaces, a community kitchen.

In addition, we run a bulldozer defense campaign, roof tarping, tree cutting, and house gutting services. We are not here to define, shape, or dominate the evolving post-Katrina communities of the Lower 9th, we are here to work with them, and support them in their efforts. The challenges of this task are great, and will challenge volunteers physically, politically, and emotionally. However, we must meet this challenge with grace, humility and passion, as the work requires a grand coming together.

Volunteers Needed

. House-gutters - need up to 200 each day. House gutting is by far the most requested service of Common Ground in the 9th ward. It has reached a new imperative by the recent City Council resolution to seize any home that has not been gutted by August 29, 2006. As such, it is vitally important that we Completely Gut All Homes That Remain On Our List.

Instead of providing financial or logistical support to evacuees to help them gut their home in compliance with this new ordinance, the city has instead simply referred everyone to non-profits who are already operating at maximum capacity. Every home we gut is a home that will not be seized by the city and bulldozed. That being said, this is manual labor in the dead heat of a Louisiana summer. It is hard, but immeasurably rewarding work.

Expect to wake up at 4am and be on site by 5am, working until 11am. The work itself consists of removing the flood-damaged contents of these homes (personal affects, furniture, appliances, etc.) along with sheetrock and some flooring. The weekly schedule will likely be that you work for two days, take one day off; then work for three days and take another off. There will be lighter work to do later in the afternoon (such as mold abatement, site maintenance, phone banking, etc.). If you would like to sign up for house-gutting, you should be physically fit and not have asthma, respiratory disorders, or a weakened immune system.

. Work Crew Leaders - People experienced in either house-gutting or basic carpentry to lead crews of general laborers cleaning out severely flood-damaged homes. There will be one work crew leader for every crew of 5-10 laborers.

. Roof Tarpers/ Roofers - 5 tarpers needed each day. Need to be comfortable walking on pitched roofs, and have a proper pair of boots. General familiarity with carpentry and/or roofing is preferred, but not necessary. Will train. (Be aware that it is going to be rather hot on these roofs over the summer,which will likely dictate that you be on site close to dawn.)

. Tree Removal - 5 people each day that are experienced using chainsaws and/or heavy machinery.

. Plumbers, Electricians, and Carpenters - 15 skilled workers each week for various projects both within Common Ground, and for Lower 9th Community members.

. Cooks - 5 cooks needed each week to work in the community kitchen. Cooks in this space will work alongside residents to prepare meals for the Lower 9th Ward community

. Community Outreach Workers - Mobile information source for community members. We need 6 per week.

. Distribution Workers - 2 people are needed each week to support Ms. Carol, a resident who runs our distribution center. Access to a truck is essential for this job, as are a love of conversation, organization, and canned goods.

. Facilities - 3 people are needed each week to maintain temporary housing, the kitchen, and storage spaces. This job will include being a resource for residents, cleaning, and general maintenance.

. Research/Media Aid - 1 person will be needed each week to help residents use the community media lab. This person may teach classes in computer and Internet use, as well has help residents navigate commonly used websites (FEMA, the city of N.O., job searches, etc.) As such, a basic but sound understanding of computers is key.

. Administrative Worker - 1 person needed each week to do phone banking, administrative work, and general site maintenance of the Blue House.

. Child Care - 2 people needed each week to help care for children that are around the properties. Spaces and toys may be spare, so creativity is key.

. Health Professionals - Blue House is home to a first aid station. We are looking for 2 health professionals that can operate this first aid station, do screenings, immunizations, and public health education.

Application process for all volunteers: Register on line and indicate any skills that you bring. (http://www.commongroundrelief.org/taxonomy/term/9/9)

CONTACT: Sierra Wilde at (415) 497-1408 or sierra.wilde@gmail.com

Minimum Time Commitment: 2 weeks

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Class Action Suit Filed

Katrina Survivors Oppose FEMA Evictions

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is again evicting Katrina survivors. People are being evicted from the small mobile trailers FEMA provided after the government-organized disaster in the aftermath of Katrina and from apartments. They are doing this despite broad opposition among the people and from local officials.

No one has forgotten that the federal government first refused to evacuate people before Katrina hit, then left them to die on rooftops during the flooding of New Orleans, then forcibly evacuated people to cities across the country, including forcibly separating families. FEMA paid huge sums to cruise ships and hotel monopolies for housing but largely refused to provide federal rental vouchers so people could get longer-term apartments. Thousands of FEMA trailers - paid for by the government - still sit empty. Yet FEMA claims the "fraud" that exists is people in the trailers and apartments who FEMA has determined are "not eligible." They claim the evictions, which will make thousands of families homeless, will "save money."

Lawsuit Against Evictions

Numerous demonstrations and actions opposing the evictions have taken place in New Orleans, Houston, San Francisco and elsewhere where there are concentrations of Katrina survivors. In addition, six Katrina survivors are demanding that the courts order FEMA to continue housing assistance for the thousands of survivors FEMA claims are "ineligible."

The class action lawsuit, filed on behalf of all Katrina survivors, emphasized that FEMA's response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita has been "wholly inept." The lawsuit states that, "tens of thousands of the most vulnerable Americans - among them the elderly, the disabled, children and the poor - are faced with the real threat, through no fault of their own, of becoming homeless." It reiterates concerns of housing advocates, legal defense teams and others that the agency unlawfully disqualified thousands of evacuees from its housing programs and provided confusing and contradictory information.

For people now in apartments, FEMA has decided to shift survivors from a locally administered voucher program, which pays rent and utilities, to an individual assistance program that pays only rent and has stricter eligibility requirements. FEMA claims the move is to "save money." They are also leaving local officials holding the bag, as they were told FEMA would fund the vouchers for a year and now they are refusing to do so.

FEMA claims that an estimated 17,000 households nationwide, now receiving assistance are ineligible for the individual assistance program. This includes 7,000 Houston survivor households, one of the largest concentrations of Katrina survivors. After broad resistance in Houston, including from the Mayor, FEMA mandated a deadline for June 30. The rest of the country has a May 31 deadline. Evictions take place even when families are still appealing their cases.

The lawsuit gives representative examples of the arbitrary and unjust FEMA actions. Nicole Alston, 30, a single mother of three was forced out of her rental house in River Ridge, LA, when a tree fell on it during Katrina. Alston is now in Houston and signed a one-year apartment lease based on FEMA's assurances that it would cover her rent and utilities for a year. FEMA now says Alston is ineligible for further assistance because the Louisiana house has been repaired. But the house is unavailable because the owner rented it to another family for a much higher rent than Alston was paying. When Alston appealed FEMA's decision, the agency "denied rental assistance with no further explanation." Alston is among those furious with the government and fighting the evictions.

If the federal judge agrees to certify the case as a class action suit, the outcome will apply to all survivors in the voucher program now branded ineligible for assistance.

Trailer Evictions

The situation facing families in FEMA's small, 240 square foot trailers is similar. FEMA is making arbitrary decisions concerning eligibility. Families are being evicted, for example, because more than one person from the family's previous residence applied for a trailer. FEMA includes extended family in this category. So, for example, a family in a trailer crammed with people will not be eligible if another family member, say a father-in-law, also applied for a trailer that is also crammed full with family members. Both could be evicted as well, given FEMA's arbitrary actions. This is one of the more common reasons for evictions, even when family members have finally succeeded in finding jobs and getting children in school.

Louisiana has an estimated 68,000 families in trailers and Mississippi 38,000. Already 3,000 Mississippi families have gotten eviction notices. It is not known how many more in both states, as well as Texas, will also be evicted.

It is also the case, well known by the government, that affordable housing is in short supply and rents have soared about 25-30 percent. More than half the Gulf Coast's subsidized housing stock was still uninhabitable as of mid-April. Only one shelter on the coast is open, and it accepts only men. As an activist with a homeless services center in Biloxi, Mississippi said, "We're two weeks before the resumption of a new hurricane season and FEMA is making a catastrophe worse. It is taking people and putting them on the street."

Katrina survivors and housing, legal, immigration and many other political activists are joining together to resist the evictions and the on going government-organized disaster. Through their efforts they are putting front and center the failure of the government and the way forward - strengthening the people's own organized resistance and rebuilding work.

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Florida Farmworkers Sue FEMA For Refusing to Provide Aid

A coalition of Florida farmworkers has sued the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for the government refusal to help farmworkers displaced by hurricanes in Florida in 2004 and 2005. In 2005 alone, four hurricanes - Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma - caused massive damage to homes and communities.

Many farmworkers were denied federal help after their homes were destroyed and they were forced to live in cars and other dangerous situations. As exists in Louisiana and Mississippi, thousands of FEMA trailers intended for emergency housing remained empty while the government forced hurricane survivors to remain homeless.

The Florida farmworkers filing the suit were denied disaster housing during the hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005, including relocation to mobile homes or hotels, because they are immigrants that have been denied documents by the government. The Coalition of Florida Farmworker Organizations and the Farmworker Association of Florida said in the suit that federal law unjustly blocks short-term non-cash emergency disaster relief based on immigration -status. Emergency aid from the -government would have mitigated the effect of the storms on farmworker communities, according to the lawsuit, which asked the court to review FEMA's actions in withholding or delaying relief to undocumented farmworkers.

Hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 ravaged much of the housing used by farmworkers and the -rural poor. In one instance, FEMA brought 92 trailers to a mobile home park destroyed in 2004, but more than 40 of them were left unoccupied because of FEMA restrictions. The same situation was repeated with Katrina, with FEMA trailers remaining empty and tens of thousands left homeless. FEMA refused to house people, and they are now evicting those in the trailers according to their arbitrary restrictions, including immigrant status.

The Florida suit seeks a permanent injunction restraining FEMA from denying emergency assistance to undocumented farmworkers and a judgment that the policy violates current federal law.

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Displacement, Poll Taxes Block Voters

Massive Disenfranchisement of New Orleans Voters

Municipal elections took place in New Orleans, Louisiana on Saturday, May 20. Current Mayor Ray Nagin secured the majority of votes cast. New Orleans has about 299,000 registered voters and many more eligible voters. About 38 percent of registered voters, 113,591 people, voted. Nagin secured 52.3 per cent of those able to cast ballots, 59,460 people, while his opponent Mitch Landrieu secured 47.7 percent, 54,131. More than 20 percent of the votes, 24,848 were by absentee ballot, cast by those forced out of New Orleans by the government-organized disaster in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The election followed a primary in April, where more than a dozen ordinary people ran, expressing the anger of the people of New Orleans with the current situation. In the primary, no one secured even 40 percent of the ballots cast, while those running against Nagin collectively secured a majority of votes cast. About 36 percent of registered voters participated in the primary.

There is broad anger with this latest election fraud. The existing setup systematically blocks people from deciding the program, choosing their own candidates and from voting. With this election, as has been occurring, the federal government went further and openly organized the exclusion of registered voters on a massive scale. An estimated 185,000 registered voters did not vote, in large part because they were blocked from doing so. The large majority of these voters were forcibly scattered across the country by the government and thus not able to get to the New Orleans polling stations.

The government refused to provide satellite voting for all those with no means to return to New Orleans. This could readily have been done, as demonstrated by the satellite voting provided for Iraqis living in the U.S. to vote in the Iraqi elections.

The federal government refused to fund transportation for all those requiring it. The federal government refused to even guarantee that all the people scattered by the government and currently under the jurisdiction of federal government agencies, like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) got absentee ballots. As a result, only about 25,000 of the more than 120,000, if not 150,000 or more, registered voters living outside New Orleans cast absentee ballots.

While the norm in U.S. elections is for the state to have control over providing the means to vote - the polling places, machinery, absentee ballots, and so forth - for Louisiana and a number of other states the federal government has final authority and must approve state plans for elections. The federal government has jurisdiction over Louisiana elections in part because of the history of blatant disenfranchisement of African Americans. This disenfranchisement has long been done through outright state-organized terrorism, such as by the Ku Klux Klan, as well as through poll taxes, requiring special "knowledge" tests and more.

Alongside the refusal to provide satellite voting, for both the April and May elections, the government poll tax took the form of whatever it cost voters in Atlanta, Houston, Detroit, San Francisco and many other cities to take a car, bus, train or plane to New Orleans to vote, once in April and again in May. It took the form of requiring that displaced Katrina survivors have the time and resources and knowledge to ask for an absentee ballot and/or return a form sent out by Louisiana asking if a person wanted an absentee ballot, securing the ballot and information it required, returning it, and doing all of it twice at a time when most of these voters have no permanent address, have moved 2-3 times during the mailing period and are contending with finding loved ones, jobs, identification, food and more.

The federal government was given authority, for Louisiana, Florida, Texas and other states, supposedly to prevent disenfranchisement. This has not been the case, as the experience with elections, including the last two presidential elections, readily shows. Indeed, the federal government has ensured the continued disenfranchisement of voters, especially African Americans. What is different about the New Orleans election is that the government disenfranchisement was directly and openly organized.

New Orleans as a city had a population of about 455,000 before Katrina, with 67 percent of it African American. It is also known for the "gumbo" that is New Orleans, with Filipino, Vietnamese, Mexican, Acadian, Irish, and many other nationalities. Nearly all are working poor and fighting to return and rebuild New Orleans. The election was organized in part to exclude and discouraged Katrina survivors, but it has failed in doing so. More working families are coming home despite continuing government efforts to keep them out of New Orleans, such as by refusing to provide housing, healthcare, schools and funds to return. The current population is now about 220,000, up from the 150,000 in the aftermath of the forced government evacuation.

The struggle of the working people of New Orleans together is making clear that the election will not determine the fate of New Orleans. The people fighting for their rights and defending the spirit of united resistance that is New Orleans will decide the outcome.

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Government Paid $30 million to Protect FEMA

Blackwater Mercenaries in New Orleans

- Jeremy Scahill -

Tens of thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims remain without homes. The environment is devastated. People are disenfranchised. Financial resources, desperate residents are told, are scarce. But at least New Orleans has a Wal-Mart parking lot serving as a FEMA Disaster Recovery Center with perhaps the tightest security of any parking lot in the world. That is thanks to the more than $30 million Washington has shelled out to the Blackwater USA security firm since its men deployed after Katrina hit. Under contract with the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Federal Protective Service, Blackwater's men are ostensibly protecting federal reconstruction projects for FEMA. Documents show that the government paid Blackwater $950 a day for each of its guards in the area. Interviewed by The Nation last September, several of the company's guards stationed in New Orleans said they were being paid $350 a day. That would have left Blackwater with $600 per man, per day to cover lodging, ammo, other overhead - and profits. [ ]

According to Blackwater's government contracts, from September 8 to September 30, 2005, Blackwater was paid $409,000 for providing fourteen guards and four vehicles to "protect the temporary morgue in Baton Rouge, LA." That contract kicked off a hurricane boon for Blackwater. From September to the end of December 2005, the government paid Blackwater at least $33.3 million - well surpassing the amount of Blackwater's contract to guard Ambassador Paul Bremer when he was head of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. And the company has likely raked in much more in the hurricane zone. Exactly how much is unclear, as attempts to get information on Blackwater's current contracts in New Orleans have been unsuccessful.

[Blackwater has been given contracts with no open bidding process, which has been questioned by a handful of Congresspeople. DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner began an inquiry.]

In letters to Congressional offices in February, Skinner defended the Blackwater deal, asserting that it was "appropriate" for the government to contract with the company. Skinner admitted that "the ongoing cost of the contract...is clearly very high" and then quietly dropped a bombshell: "It is expected that FEMA will require guard services on a relatively long-term basis (two to five years)." Two to five years? Already most of the 330 federally contracted private guards in the hurricane zone are working for Blackwater, according to the Washington Post. Another firm, DynCorp, is also trying to grab more of the action, offering its security services for less than $700 per day per guard.

The hurricane's aftermath has ushered in the homecoming of the "war on terror," a contract bonanza whereby companies can reap massive Iraq-like profits without leaving the country and at a minuscule fraction of the risk. To critics of the government's handling of the hurricane, the message is clear.

"That's what happens when the victims are black folks vilified before and after the storm - instead of aid, they get contained," says Chris Kromm, executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies and an editor of Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch. "If officials really cared about protecting the people of New Orleans, they would not be giving millions to scandal-ridden contractors. They would have given the city money to rebuild their levees to withstand more than a Category 2 hurricane. They still have not done that - and hurricane season is upon us."

Kromm brings out vital projects that have "gotten zero or little money" in New Orleans include: job creation, hospital and school reconstruction, affordable housing and wetlands restoration. Even in this context, DHS continues to defend the Blackwater contract. In a March 1 memo to FEMA, Matt Jadacki, the DHS Special Inspector General for Gulf Coast Hurricane Recovery, wrote that the Federal Protective Service considered Blackwater "the best value to the government."

While companies like Halliburton may have raked in more profits since George W. Bush took office, few have seen growth as dramatic as Blackwater's. The firm has been at the front of the line at the domestic and international taxpayer-funded feeding troughs and has recently hired some high-profile former government officials, like Cofer Black, former chief of CIA counterterrorism, and former Pentagon Inspector General Joseph Schmitz. In March Black represented Blackwater at a conference in Jordan, announcing that the company was seeking to broaden its role in even more conflict zones.

Blackwater is rapidly expanding its operations, creating a new surveillance-blimp division, launching new training facilities in California and the Philippines, and increasingly setting its sights on the lucrative world of DHS contracts. It is clamoring to get into Darfur and has also hired Chilean troops trained under the brutal rule of Augusto Pinochet. "We scour the ends of the earth to find professionals," company president Gary Jackson told the Guardian. "The Chilean commandos are very, very professional, and they fit within the Blackwater -system." [ ]

Blackwater's ascent comes in the midst of a major rebranding campaign aimed at shaking its mercenary image. The company is at the forefront of the trade association of mercenary firms, the International Peace Operations Association, which lobbies for even greater privatization of military operations. [ ]

As one Congressperson put it, "Ask any American if they want thugs from a private, for-profit company with no official law-enforcement training roaming the streets of their neighborhoods. The answer will be a resounding No!"

(From The Nation, June 5, 2006)

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Rebuilding on Poisoned Ground

- Oskar Cole and Cleo Woelfle-Erskine -

At Momma D's home in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans, a network of generators and car batteries powers several houses, a radio station, and-at night-a string of lights spanning the street between two live oaks. They're the only lights for blocks in a pitch-dark, eerie cityscape, strung in effort to stop police harassment. A curfew restricts people to their homes after dark in unlighted areas; electricity has not been restored to the mostly Black and Black Creole Seventh Ward. Momma D-Diane Frenchcoat-has lived in her grandmother's house on Dorgenois Street since the early 1950s. She's worked for decades to protect her neighborhood from police brutality and redevelopment, and after 1965's Hurricane Betsy, she organized her neighbors to survive and rebuild. Bringing back her flooded neighborhood this time around will be complicated by new, unprecedented toxic contamination.

Most people here assume that Coastal Louisiana's longstanding toxicity has worsened in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Testing by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and independent scientists confirms their fears. Lead, a severe hazard to children's development, was stirred up and moved around by the floodwaters. Arsenic, highly carcinogenic, leached from car batteries, pressure-treated wood and disturbed landfills. In St. Bernard Parish, a giant storage tank ruptured, and 800,000 gallons of crude oil spilled into the town of Mereaux. The oil-slicked floodwaters released carcinogenic volatile gases, including benzene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

The Louisiana Bucket Brigade, the Deep South Environmental Center and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN) have demanded that the EPA and other federal agencies manage the toxic deluge's aftermath and monitor and treat exposed residents scattered by the evacuation. The EPA's inadequate and, some suspect, distorted sampling and public information has contributed to a situation where rebuilding continues without sufficient attention to toxicity or protection especially for poor people of color-a situation not that different from what it was before. Given the health risks of exposure to toxic substances, and the unknown danger of their combined burden in human bodies, frustrated advocates suspect the EPA is refraining from more extensive sampling to minimize its liability from any public health issues caused by quick reoccupation.

Compounded Damage

In New Orleans's low-lying neighborhoods, vile floodwaters, so thick with sewage, chemicals and rotting flesh as barely to qualify as water, twisted through houses for weeks after the hurricane. Once the floodwaters were pumped out, houses stood empty for more weeks by official fiat. Closed up, the houses festered in the heat. A quick response could have prevented this compounded disaster, but by the time residents were permitted to return, near-irreparable damage was ensured.

Walking into a flooded house, you choke on the air and it takes your eyes some time to adjust. The windows-boarded-up, or obscured with residue-don't let in much light. Anything water soaked into now crawls with mold. Spores have spread and fruited, crept up walls from the waterline to the ceiling. Roaches, gnats and flies swarm over swollen cans and soaked dry goods. Reeking floodwater fills shoes, pots and pans, tubs and toilets. Particleboard has disintegrated and dresser drawers have swollen shut; papers and books are stinking gray pulp.

As the water rose, garages and kitchens hosted their own small toxic spill. Bleach, gasoline, rat poison-any toxins with compromised containers-now saturate or slick the rooms. Some of the mold the wet houses incubate is deadly, and all of it is irritating.

Information on how to enter this toxic and bewildering mess is hard to come by. The Red Cross hands out brooms and bleach, but no warnings about the dust clouds or poisonous fumes caused by their use. One flyer issued by the Centers for Disease Control warns of lead and asbestos present in residual dust, then suggests to "consider wearing a dust mask" while cleaning-when no mask could protect against those dusts. Respirators and chemical-proof gloves had sold out for miles around.

At Mary Queen of Vietnam church on Chef Menteur Highway, the congregation of first- and second-generation immigrants gathers in a wind-torn building. Like people in the Seventh Ward, they have no power, no water. Their doctors evacuated and can't be reached. The creek that backs the suburb is strewn with fishnets, but people shake their heads in horror when asked whether they'd eat the fish now. They do not know how to judge the danger, or how to lessen it, since they have not received any health advisories or toxicity information.

No Advice You Can Trust

Immediately after the storm, the EPA bypassed severely contaminated residential areas to focus sampling efforts on City Park and the shore of Lake Ponchartrain. A three-week delay surely allowed many volatile chemicals to evaporate, thus falsely minimizing the dangers of earlier exposure. As more residents returned, the EPA and CDC's ongoing failure to provide clear and detailed risk advisories seemed a flagrant disregard for long-neglected communities' livelihoods.

In late October, a month after people started coming home to New Orleans, the EPA at last released initial results. They analyzed 300 sites; 77 toxic substances were found. But it's hard to glean an understanding of the complex scatterings of lead, arsenic, cadmium, chromium and petroleum by-products from the cryptic databases. The agency's own interpretations have earned accusations from environmental watchdogs of data manipulation and risk distortion. In one instance, the EPA declared benzene levels "slightly elevated" and no dire threat to human health. The standard they would used was a 24-hour exposure risk calculated for short-term, emergency workers. The reported benzene levels were forty-five times the residential standard for two-week exposure, according to environmental advocates.

In November, the Dallas Daily News published the first comprehensive layperson's analysis of EPA data, including interactive maps showing the scope and degree of the eight probable or known carcinogens. Like LEAN and the Bucket Brigade, the Daily News emphasized the need for more extensive sampling.

In early December, the EPA still had no neighborhood-specific health advisories and says it will take months to determine the contamination's scope and risks. The federal agencies insist that they can only advise elected officials, not tell people whether to return. But if they will not do that, who can? "There are some times when a situation is so serious that it calls for the federal government, and this is one of those times," said Anne Rolfes, organizer with the Bucket Brigade. "We need to have a definitive recommendation as to whether this is or is not safe."

Scrambling to Fill the Vacuum

In FEMA's absence, rural and small-town Cajuns organized the only relief efforts they would encounter. Houma tribal members, likewise, looked out over stagnant floodwaters for a month but saw no emergency federal aid. As the EPA dithered, returning renters, uninsured homeowners and contracted migrant workers did the work of haz-mat teams without training, safety equipment or adequate pay.

Independent scientists with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and Common Ground Relief tested sites the EPA had overlooked, hoping to call national attention to the federal response's inadequacies. They found that parts of Ninth and Lower Ninth Wards, and St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes were contaminated with cancer-causing compounds. Other areas appeared to contain similar levels of contaminants as before the flood-still hazardous, sometimes deadly, but nothing new.

Breached levees and a botched evacuation leave New Orleans' Black, Black Creole, and recent immigrant communities with a torturous choice: rebuild hurricane-vulnerable neighborhoods amidst unknown poisons, or watch from distant cities while developers swarm in and reshape the city to exclude them. Common Ground founder Malik Rahim, of Algiers, is one of many local activists who believe that health worries are scaring Black residents from returning.

Robert Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, summed up the most pressing concern of longtime New Orleans community activists when he addressed the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity. "Environmental racism can not only affect health," he said, "it can affect political strength and political power The way you can kill a community easily is to not clean it up."

A Century of Corporate Toxicity

Coastal Louisiana was a disaster zone before Katrina hit and had been for generations. Depletion of the rich wetlands with their wildlife and decimation of Gulf fisheries by commercial vessels are common conversation topics. The region's ambient toxicity is generally taken for granted. At the heart of this disaster, people's bodies and livelihoods are chained to the Gulf Coast's economic reliance on oil and chemical manufacturing.

Regulatory agencies have been notoriously complicit in the poisoning of Coastal Louisiana. Environmental justice advocates' criticisms of government response to the hurricane's toxic aftermath are no surprise; they echo long-time challenges to the racism entrenched in regulatory process. Senate Bill 1711 proposes to expand the EPA's power to suspend state and federal regulations. Introduced last September by Senators James Inhofe and David Vitter, it would allow the EPA's appointed director to waive civil rights, labor, tax, wage and public health laws for the crucial eighteen months after a disaster. Other bills before Congress aim to roll back drinking water standards; environmental discrimination laws; and air, water and landfill regulations. [ ]

Dumping Grounds

After Hurricane Alicia struck Houston in 1983, people returned to strip out their homes and businesses. In the Black neighborhoods, where flooding had been severe, the trash piles sat moldering on the streets for weeks before local outrage brought trash collection services in.

Houston's rubble was carted off down back roads to a Black sawmill town so rural and so poor as to lack pavement and electricity. There, it was dumped and burned, sickening the mill-town dwellers, for whom the hurricane's short-term disaster was followed by the permanent and unlivable one of toxic incineration.

In the Press Park area of the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, the Agriculture Street Landfill-a city dump closed in 1961 after decades of neighborhood pressure-was recommissioned after Hurricane Betsy to receive 1965's version of the urban toxic encyclopedia. Forty percent of the landfill was never capped. Warning signs hang on the chain-link gate to a weedy expanse that shares a fence with Moton Elementary School's grass playgrounds on one side and houses on another. All sit atop the huge dumping ground declared a Superfund site in 1990 because of high lead levels in the blood of neighborhood children.

The landfill flooded seven feet deep after Katrina. Any houses reclaimed in the area will have to be gutted up to the waterline. The sheetrock, carpet, furniture and clothing are saturated with the Industrial Canal's oil slick and the resurrected poisons first loosed 40 years ago, and they will sit on the street until somebody figures out a place to haul them off to and bury them.

One chosen site is the Old Gentilly Road landfill, not far from Mary Queen of Vietnam Church. It is unlined, previously decommissioned, and, in the words of local organizer Darryl Malek-Wiley, "a Superfund site waiting to happen." On October 31, the Sierra Club and LEAN filed a lawsuit to prevent the dumping of Katrina's toxic debris in this methane-filled former marsh. Four days later, the new trash heaps caught fire and burned for several hours. Smoke plumes, undoubtedly toxic, drifted for miles.

From Color Lines, Spring Issue 2006, Oskar Cole and Cleo Woelfle-Erskine are Oakland-based writers and greywater designers.

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