End the War and Occupation! Charge Bush WIth War Crimes!
• Hundreds of Anti-war Actions Mark Beginning of New Year
• City Council Resolution: Arcata Calls for Impeachment of Bush and Cheney
• Cities with Bring the Troops Home Resolutions
Justice After Katrina
• Organizers Step Up Efforts to Defend Rights to Housing and to Return and Rebuild
• January 14 - February 4, 2006: Finding Our Folk Tour
• Common Ground: Women Find Hope at Center
• For Your Information: Updates from New Orleans
• Lower 9th Ward Activists Chase Away Bulldozer Crew
• Buried Lives, Big Easy Profits: Bulldozing the Dead in New Orleans
End the War and Occupation! Charge Bush for War Crimes!
Hundreds of Anti-war Actions Mark Beginning of New Year
Building on the momentum of literally thousands of anti-war actions in cities and towns nationwide just since last July, tens of thousands across the country are marking the New Year by organizing and participating in hundreds of antiwar actions. 2006 promises to be a year of stepped up resistance to Bush reaction.
In one of the first actions of the New Year, on January 4, the Arcata City Council (in California) passed a resolution demanding the impeachment or resignation of Bush and Cheney for violations of international and constitutional law. The resolution reaffirms an earlier demand for impeachment, passed by the Council on October 6, 2004. It lists a series of impeachable offenses, including the criminal failure of the president to respond to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, torturing human beings in violation of the Geneva Convention, ordering the secret surveillance of American citizens, and the crime of misleading the American people and Congress into waging an unnecessary and brutal war on Iraq.
Arcata is also one of 72 cities that have passed resolutions calling for ending the war in Iraq and bringing the troops home now. The resolutions often call on the Governor of the respective state to demand the return of the Guard, something they are Constitutionally authorized to do. A resolution is now before the California Assembly that would require the Governor to call for return of the Guard. Montana’s Governor Brian Schweitzer has called for the return of Montana’s Guard. In Vermont last year, 52 of 60 cities and towns passed resolutions calling for an end to use of Vermont’s National Guard in Iraq and to bring the troops home now. Vermont currently has the highest per capita death rate of soldiers in Iraq (see the list of stats below).
In Honolulu, Hawaii, on January 4, nearly 1,000 people converged at the Church of the Crossroads to unite against the war and demand that President Bush be impeached.
On January 5, women from around the world — from the U.S. to Iraq to Africa to Japan — launched a campaign aimed at ending the Iraq war and all attacks on Iraqi civilians in 2006. As a first step, the Women Say No to War Campaign will gather some 100,000 signatures by March 8, International Women’s Day, when U.S. and Iraqi women will deliver the signatures to leaders in Washington, DC and women around the world will deliver them to U.S. embassies.
The campaign is being organized by the anti-war group CodePink. Its January 5 press release reports that, “The response to our initial call has been overwhelming — we have more than 200 prominent endorsers, and more than 3,000 women have signed on before we even launched the campaign. We’re unleashing a global chorus of women’s voices shouting ‘Enough!’” As of January 12, more than 17,800 signatures have been collected.
During the same week, on and around January 7, Out of Iraq events were organized in more than 160 cities. Protesters demanded an end to the war and occupation and that the Bush administration is held accountable for its crimes. Sacramento, Chicago, and cities in Wisconsin and Michigan had overflow crowds. Places like Tacoma, Washington; Red Bluff, California and Lincoln, Nebraska also had actions.
Many events took the form of town hall meetings that encouraged discussion. In city after city, the main focus of discussion was impeaching Bush and Cheney. Comments included considerable anger with the Democratic Party for its refusal to act. Many specifically called for the Democrats to back resolutions by Michigan Congressman John Conyers calling for an inquiry by Congress into grounds for impeachment of Bush and Cheney.
In a related protest, a citizens’ tribunal delivered indictments alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity, to President Bush at the front gate of the White House on January 10. Named in the indictments are: President of the United States George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Army Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, U.S. Army Major General Geoffrey Miller, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
The indictments result from preparatory work and testimony presented in New York City in October 2005, before the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration. The Commission’s second tribunal will be held at Riverside Church and the Columbia University Law School in New York, January 20-22.
The indictments allege war crimes and crimes against humanity authorized by the Bush Administration including, wars of aggression, particularly against Iraq and Afghanistan; torture and indefinite detention; destruction of the global environment, and the failure of the Bush administration to protect life during and after Hurricane Katrina.
The National Campaign of Nonviolent Resistance is launching a campaign to protest at (and if necessary occupy) the offices of Congressional representatives who refuse to stand against the Iraq war. Their statement says they will speak with representatives but “Should they remain intransigent and continue to fund this administration’s failed and immoral policies of imperialism fueled by lies, we urge antiwar activists to nonviolently occupy their offices. Our two-month congressional campaign will commence on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 16, 2006.”
Numerous actions are also being organized for the end of January and beginning of February by The World Can’t Wait, Drive Out the Bush Regime together with many others. On January 31, the night of President Bush’s State of the Union address, people across the country will rally one hour before Bush’s address to demand an end to Bush reaction. Rally times and locations have already been established in many places in California, Arizona, Georgia and Texas, Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Then on February 4, the Saturday after the State of the Union address, a demonstration is being organized in Washington, DC. Protesters will deliver the people’s verdict on Bush’s criminal regime with the demand: Bush Step Down And Take Your Program with You! Various other organizations, including CodePink and United for Peace and Justice are also calling for organized actions January 31 so that people can stand together against Bush and the government’s path of war and fascism.
Organizing is also underway for -coordinated local actions across the country for a one-week period in March, marking the third anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Among these, on March 13-17, students will hold anti-war actions at high schools and colleges around the country demanding an immediate end to the occupation of Iraq, opposing military recruitment and demanding increased funding for education.
On its website The Campus Antiwar Network brings out that, “The illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq has taken the lives of over 2,000 American soldiers and more than 100,000 Iraqis. It has destroyed the lives of countless more. This war affects young people everywhere, at home and abroad. Iraqis are faced with the brutality of occupation, under threat of bombs, guns, and torture. In the United States, we see our educational prospects diminished and recruitment to the military held up as our only viable future. Now is the time for young people to stand up. And we are joined by a growing majority that sees the lies, the torture, the chemical weapons, and the corruption and arrogance of our politicians and says no more.”
Global days of protest on March 18-19 are also planned. Students and youth will join women, workers and many others in standing against war and aggression and uniting as one with all humanity. Another World is Possible!
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Arcata Calls for Impeachment of Bush and Cheney
A 2006 New Year’s Resolution of the City Council of the City of Arcata Demanding the Impeachment or Resignation of George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney
Whereas, on October 15, 2003, the Arcata City Council unanimously approved a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, requesting an investigation into whether George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney committed impeachable offences in the lead-up to the Iraq War, and
Whereas, on October 6, 2004, the Arcata City Council adopted a resolution demanding the impeachment of George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney, and
Whereas, the Presidential crimes of misleading the American people and Congress into waging an unnecessary war in Iraq, in violation of the US Constitution and International Law, have been further confirmed in the past sixteen months, and
Whereas, George W. Bush let the citizens of the United States of America down when he and his appointed head of FEMA failed to quickly and adequately respond to a major disaster on US soil, Hurricane Katrina, which killed at least 1,383 people in the gulf coast region and left over 78,000 people homeless, and
Whereas, George W. Bush recently admitted to and defended his practice of ordering the secret surveillance of American citizens by the NSA, without any court warrant, and
Whereas, our nation, under commander in chief of the military George W. Bush, has conducted acts of torture against human beings, in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and
Whereas, Richard B. Cheney has defended the war on Iraq, the practice of warrant-less domestic surveillance and the use of torture.
Therefore be it resolved, that the City Council of the City of Arcata reaffirms its demand for the impeachment, or resignation, of George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney.
Be It further resolved, that we request that our Representative, Mike Thompson join with others in Congress to introduce Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney, and that copies of this resolution be sent to Representative Thompson, Senators Boxer and Feinstein and all members of the House Judiciary Committee.
(Resolution NO. 056-34)
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Cities with Bring the Troops Home Resolutions
More cities are organizing to pass resolutions opposing the war in Iraq and calling to bring the troops home now. Many are specifically calling for their state's National Guard to return and to block any future use of the Guard. California currently has a resolution in the State Assembly to forbid use of the state Guard in Iraq. Governor's of each state have authority to refuse to send troops as well as to demand that they be returned, to "provide for the safety" of the people of the state. Below are cities that have passed resolutions.
California
Almanda County
Arcata
Berkeley
Marin County
Oakland
Sacramento
San Francisco
Santa Cruz
Sebastopol
Illinois
Chicago
Evanston
Indiana
Gary
Maryland
Baltimore
Massachusetts
Amherst
Arlington
Cambridge
Leverett
New York
Binghamton
North Carolina
Carrboro
Chapel Hill
Pennsylvania
Philadelphia
Wilkinsburg
Vermont
Bethel
Brattleboro
Burlington
Cabot
Calais
Cavendish
Dummerston
East Montpelier
Fayston
Greensboro
Guilford
Hinesburg
Huntington
Jamaica
Jericho
Johnson
Marlboro
Marshfield
Middlebury
Middletown Springs
Monkton
Montgomery
Montpelier
Moretown
Newfane
New Haven
Norwich
Plainfield
Putney
Randolph
Ripton
Rochester
Rockingham
Roxbury
Salisbury
Sharon
Stannard
Strafford
Thetford
Tinmouth
Waitsfield
Warren
Weathersfield
Westford
Westminster
Weybridge
Wheelock
Windham
Worcester
Woodbury
West Virginia
South Charleston
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Organizers Step Up Efforts to Defend Rights to Housing and to Return and Rebuild
Organizers in New Orleans are taking initiative to block the City from bulldozing homes and demand the right of all survivors to return and rebuild. Various efforts are underway to strengthen the organizing and confront the government for its failure to take up any social responsibility to meet the needs of the people. As occurred in the wake of Katrina, the government continues to organize to block relief and rebuilding efforts while trying to eliminate the very heart of New Orleans, its spirit of resistance and the unity of its diverse population. The people continue to stand firm and organize for their rights. Below we reprint portions of recent calls to action.
The People Will Decide!
- New Orleans Community Meeting, January 10
Call of the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund — Rebuilding Our City, Advancing a People’s Agenda
Survivors, community leaders and organizations: building a united front led by Katrina survivors, with community leadership.
Survivors: Let your collective voices be heard. Expose the injustices you have endured in this tragedy. Let’s build a solution that is based on what the people of New Orleans decide.
Leaders/Activists: What have you been doing? How can we work together to achieve the goals of the community? We must build a United Front.
United to Advance the People’s Agenda!
For Info/directions Call 504-218-9207, www.communitylaborunited.net
Katrina Survivors to Rally in Washington, D.C.
- February 9
Katrina Survivors will rally in Washington, D.C. Feb. 9. The actions will demand the Right to Return and Funds to Rebuild. Survivors of Hurricane Katrina and their supporters from around the country will converge on the nation’s capitol on February 8 and 9.
The ACORN Katrina Survivors Association is organizing the caravan and events to demand the Right to Return and the Funds to Rebuild. Several hundred participants will march, rally, and meet with lawmakers and officials to press for an immediate, comprehensive and inclusive rebuilding plan — and for a voice for low and moderate income hurricane Survivors in the process.
“We are going to Washington to let the world’s people know how the U.S. government has turned its back on us — the ordinary people of New Orleans who have worked hard all our lives,” said Dorothy Stukes, spokesperson for the ACORN Katrina Survivors Association. “Every Katrina Survivor: Get on board and let’s fight for the help we need, and deserve, to return and rebuild our homes and communities.”
Buses to the rally will depart from Baton Rouge, New Orleans, San Antonio, Little Rock, and other cities housing displaced survivors, arriving in Washington late in the day on February 8. The rally and other events will take place on February 9 and will be co-sponsored by a variety of labor, faith and community allies.
Any Katrina Survivor can take part in the trip for $50; other fundraisers are being planned to help cover the remaining costs. Anyone who wishes to participate should call the ACORN Hurricane Hotline at 1-800-790-2290, email katrinarelief@acorn.org or contact their local ACORN office. Visit www.acorn.org for more information.
The Right of Return Demands Public Housing in New Orleans!
Join The Martin Luther King Day March to Rebuild the Gulf Coast and the World. March in New Orleans MLK Day behind these demands:
• Reopen and restore public housing in the Gulf Coast to its 1995 levels.
• Impose a three-year moratorium on all evictions and home foreclosures in the hurricane devastated region.
• Tax the oil companies $1 for every $1 price increase in oil since the run up to the Iraq war. This revenue, among other things, will finance a democratically controlled public works program to rebuild the Gulf Coast region-infrastructure, schools, hospitals and housing at union wages.
• The immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq.
Sponsors and endorsers include: C3/Hands Off Iberville, the Forest Park Tenants Association, CAWI (Baton Rouge), NOHEAT, Harlem Tenants Union, Workers Democracy Network, Campus Antiwar Network (CAN)
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Finding Our Folk Tour
Sat. 1/14 Jackson, MS
Sun. 1/15 Mobile, AL
Sat. 1/21 Atlanta, GA
Sun. 1/22 Birmingham, AL
Sat. 1/28 Baton Rouge, LA
Sun. 1/29 Lake Charles, LA
Sat. 2/4 Houston, TX
Sun. 2/5 Lafayette, LA
Purpose
We seek to raise the voices of Katrina’s survivors and connect them with the voices of America’s survivors, the brothers and sisters in all corners of the country who remain on the margins of citizenship. We seek to use the tools of education, documentation, healing, and organizing to explore and discuss the conditions that led to the devastating impact of Katrina; to join the voices of resistance, the veterans of past and continuing movements, with the voices of Hip-Hop, Blues and Jazz; to celebrate African and indigenous cultures as they have been expressed in New Orleans and through out the world; to find our folk, to reconnect the individuals, families and communities that are scattered across the country, living in exile. In finding our folk, we hope to find ourselves.
For more info www.findingourfolk.org
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Women Find Hope at Center
The Common Ground Women’s Community Center responded to the immediate needs of women returning home to New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina.
The Center’s location in the 9th Ward, on Louisa and North Robertson, is designed to provide support and solidarity with a community that has been historically neglected, lacking government funding, resources, and assistance, before and after the hurricane.
The effort to provide basic needs and services for those requiring them has never been greater. As a community organization, the Women’s Center encourages women to actively participate by initiating new programs, volunteering, or by taking advantage of the programs that are already in place. Current programs include housing accommodation for women and young children. The center has plans to offer women medical resources or referrals for basic clinical health care, self defense workshops, basic electrical home maintenance, and crisis counseling. The dormitory is available to women and children for short term or transition periods, while their homes are -rehabilitated.
With the high demands of New Orleans’ residents to have needs met as they return home, the Common Ground Collective has taken responsibility to implement the necessary support. Common Ground is committed to providing a safe and empowering place for women, as part of an overall goal towards restoration of the Gulf region.
For further information about space availability, directions to the site, volunteer opportunities, or general questions, call: 504-717-5536.
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Updates from New Orleans
Housing
Various organizations are working together in New Orleans to block government efforts to begin bulldozing homes. Residents who have made it back to New Orleans also soundly rejected a plan released January 12 by Mayor Ray Nagin’s rebuilding commission. The two government actions again make clear government efforts to block the return and rebuilding by the people of New Orleans.
The City of New Orleans announced in late December that there are 5,534 homes citywide that the City has “red-tagged” as “unsafe to enter.” Of these, about 2,500 have been designated for immediate bulldozing, branded “in imminent danger of collapse.” All of the homes have been standing since the flooding in early September 2005. City Hall refuses to provide information concerning which homes on the list are scheduled for bulldozing and when. While the City insists that they are not required to notify homeowners, they claim they will do so. However, they have also said they consider the red tags on the homes as “notification.”
The people in New Orleans organizing to defend the rights of the people to return and rebuild succeeded in stopping the first bulldozing. A court hearing, in federal court, is now scheduled for January 19. Activists are demanding that all homeowners be notified before any bulldozing occurs. They also want survivors to be given government assistance to return to New Orleans so they can gather their belongings and inspect their property and decide whether or not to rebuild.
Activists point out that the 9th Ward, one of the areas hit hardest, has one of the highest levels of homeownership by African Americans in the nation, with many of these families living in the area for generations. It is also the area with large numbers of “red-tagged” homes.
As part of defending the right to housing, activists are putting “No Bulldozing” signs up in the 9th Ward. They have also developed an SOS network to alert various organizers as soon as any bulldozing starts. Meetings and demonstrations are also being held under the banner “The People Must Decide.” Efforts are also being made to have public housing reopened and made available to returning survivors.
The rebuilding plan put forward by the Mayor’s commission specifically targets the 9th Ward and other low-lying areas. Dividing the City into 13 “planning districts,” it calls for whole communities to be bulldozed if 50 percent of residents do not commit to returning within four months. This is being demanded even though it is well known that the City itself, with state and federal resources, has not shown it will even be able to contact all registered voters in time for an election by the end of April. How then are individual neighborhoods to do the same?
The commission plan also requires a “rebuilding plan” for each of the 13 designated areas. The City, as well as the Louisiana Recovery Authority and the White House, must approve these plans. According to the commission, those areas where the -rebuilding plans are not approved will either be designated for “large commercial, industrial or residential development,” or returned to marshland.
Joe Canizaro, a banker and developer who chairs the Mayor’s Commission said New Orleans must have a “smaller footprint.” He added, “I’m hopeful that [the planning process] will bring people together to understand what is best for them.” Sean Reilly of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, which controls federal funds designated for relief, said: “Every neighborhood in New Orleans will not be able to come back safe and viable. The LRA is speaking the truth with the money it controls.” In addition, the authority decided not to spend money on any rebuilding that does not conform to federal flood maps, issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The flood maps designate certain areas as unsafe for rebuilding, and others require homes to be elevated. Homeowners, not the government, would be forced to pay the tens of thousands of dollars needed to elevate the homes. Both requirements are mechanisms to prevent homeowners from rebuilding and to secure federal and state control of the rebuilding.
Elections
Local elections in New Orleans, for mayor, city council and other local offices, were supposed to be held March 4, 2006, with new terms beginning May 1. A primary had been scheduled for February 4. As part of the government-organized disaster in the wake of Katrina, the elections were canceled. Louisiana Secretary of State Al Ater announced that elections would not be held until September 2006, giving those currently in office an additional six months past their four-year terms. Governor Kathleen Blanco agreed to have elections postponed “indefinitely.” There was widespread opposition to these actions, including two lawsuits challenging the authority of the state to cancel local elections.
Ater is now putting forward a proposal for elections, likely the primary, for April 29. He is calling for candidates to qualify by mid-March, to have the primary about six weeks later and a runoff four weeks after that. In an agreement reached with residents in one of the lawsuits, the only agreement is that elections be held “on or before April 29” if such an election is “practicable.”
For New Orleans, the City Council is supposed to work out polling places, which are supposed to exist in every precinct. The Orleans Parish clerk of criminal court is responsible for staffing polling places with election commissioners. With 424 precincts, most with more than one polling place, commonly 2,000 commissioners are needed. So far there are fewer than 200 signed up. The Orleans Parish registrar of voters is responsible for compiling the list of eligible voters and handling absentee voting — which for this election could involve the majority of voters. The City had to go to court simply to get the list from FEMA as to where residents are currently living.
Families were commonly separated, sometimes at gunpoint, and forced to unknown destinations across the country. Many families still do not know where other family members are living or even if they are living. Survivors across the country are extremely angry about the situation and see elections as one means to express their rejection of government refusal to meet their needs and treat them as human beings. Many think an effort is being made to use the current difficulties to set precedents concerning elections.
For example, the state legislature recently voted for, and the federal government approved, a law that gives the Louisiana Secretary of State “emergency powers” to cancel elections and to take them over and decide how they will be run. This serves to eliminate the role of local governance and includes, for example, authority to reduce and consolidate polling places and bring in outsiders as election commissioners. Both of these actions will likely disenfranchise even larger numbers of voters. As well, the legislature, Governor and Justice Department have to concur with the Secretary of State, giving them a more direct role in canceling elections.
At this time, no date has been set. It also remains unclear if the elections scheduled for September and November, which include the Governor and other state and federal offices, will be held.
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Lower 9th Ward Activists Chase Away Bulldozer Crew
With a cell phone crooked in her ear and scores of activists cheering her on in the 2000 block of Reynes Street, lawyer Tracie Washington sent a backhoe and its crew packing from the Lower 9th Ward Thursday morning.
It was more than a seemingly symbolic victory for Washington and her group, the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund, which is representing homeowners in the Lower 9th Ward and will ask a federal judge today to stop up to 2,500 demolitions of homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters. The teardowns apparently are being contemplated by Mayor Ray Nagin's administration.
Washington and her colleagues raced to the corner of Reynes and Galvez streets after a tipster called in an SOS that the bulldozing had begun -- in clear violation of an agreement the city made Dec. 28 not to demolish any homes until a hearing in Civil District Court, she said. "The order says no bulldozing," Washington said of the court-sanctioned agreement, which expires today. "If you're demolishing part of a home you're bulldozing. We want this stopped."
A phone call to the city attorney's office made the hard-hats disappear for the day and led to the scheduling of a meeting today before U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman. "Now we're going to federal court to ask a judge to stop it," Washington said of all demolitions ordered by the city and not at the owners' request. "It's obscene."
More than four months after the levees collapsed, New Orleans has yet to develop clear rules of engagement for what housing advocates call "bulldozing" -- the city's removal of badly damaged homes in hard-hit neighborhoods including the Lower 9th Ward.
The city on Thursday released a list of more than 1,900 homes it says are in imminent danger of collapse, many in the Lower 9th Ward. But Nagin insisted Thursday that the city is going after only the most severely damaged homes on the list, and only for reasons of public safety. The Lower 9 has become a living museum, he said, drawing sightseers and other traffic to lots still holding threadbare, rickety structures.
"We are only going to move forward on those that are wrecked, those that are severely damaged or in the public's right of way," Nagin said. He fixed that number at less than 100, and said he expected them to be gone by this weekend.
Precisely which homes are slated for demolition -- and when they'll be knocked down -- is unclear, thanks to mixed signals coming from City Hall.
Two weeks ago, Chief Technology Officer Greg Meffert, who oversees the Department of Safety and Permits, said that inspectors had marked 5,534 homes citywide with red tags, indicating the buildings are unsafe to enter.
Of those, Meffert said then, roughly 2,500 -- the structures deemed in imminent danger of collapse -- would be demolished within weeks by crews under contract with the Army Corps of Engineers.
Meffert took a different tack Thursday before the City Council, in an appearance Nagin characterized afterward with a smile as "kind of cute politically." When council members grilled him on the city's demolition plans, Meffert said that only about 120 homes were to be torn down immediately. Most of those homes, he said, were ripped from their foundations and stand in public rights-of-way. He said the first ones to be torn down are not in the Lower 9th Ward.
Meffert emphasized to council members that no homes would be torn down without the consent of their owners.
Part of list released
But after he spoke, Chief Deputy City Attorney Evelyn Pugh reminded the council that city law allows structures deemed in imminent danger of collapse to be torn down without consent, or even notification, of the owner. A Nagin spokeswoman later also said the city does not need an owner's permission to demolish some homes.
After Meffert announced the planned demolitions in late December, The Times-Picayune requested copies of the lists of all buildings marked with red tags and all those slated for immediate razing.
But no list was released until Thursday, when the city gave the newspaper the addresses of 1,957 properties in what officials called the Red Danger List. Officials said the group was essentially a winnowed-down version of the initial 2,500 endangered properties Meffert cited earlier.
The list released Thursday is available at www.nola.com, the Web site affiliated with The Times-Picayune.
City officials could not say which of the 1,957 are in public rights-of-way and thus scheduled for immediate removal. The city has yet to provide the full list of red-tagged properties.
Late Thursday, a Nagin spokeswoman said the list of properties recommended for demolition will not be finalized until it is reviewed by Safety and Permits Director Mike Centineo.
The city's demolition plan will be submitted shortly to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to interim City Attorney Penya Moses-Fields. It will cover removal of structures in public rights-of-way, demolition of properties in danger of collapsing and, in some cases, demolition of homes that may not be in danger of collapse but that the owner wants demolished, she said. Moses-Fields added that the plan will be designed in hopes of receiving full reimbursement from FEMA. That agency has said it will pay for 100 percent of debris removal only through June 30. […]
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Buried Lives, Big Easy Profits
Bulldozing the Dead in New Orleans
Joyce Green died on the roof of her Lower 9th Ward home as her New Orleans neighborhood flooded during Hurricane Katrina. Helplessly, her son watched her die as the water rushed dangerously below them. Just last week he was able to return to their collapsed house on Tennessee Street for the first time, and found her skeletal remains amidst the ruins. He was able to identify them because they were wrapped in the clothes she was wearing the day she died.
During Katrina, the Lower 9th Ward was deluged due to breaches in the Industrial Canal levee. Additionally, an enormous barge that was illegally left in the canal was launched into the neighborhood, destroying lives and property during its reckless trajectory. Four months later, many questions remain unanswered regarding the destruction in the Lower 9th Ward, including the question of possible criminal negligence. However, before those questions have been fully investigated, let alone answered, the City of New Orleans is rushing to bulldoze much of the neighborhood--without informing homeowners.
On the eve of the holiday season, Greg Meffert, the city's chief technology officer, revealed that the city would immediately demolish about 2,500 "red-tagged" homes in the Lower 9th Ward. Before Meffert's announcement, a red-tag merely meant that a home was unsafe to enter. The City of New Orleans website specifically states in bold italicized text that "a red sticker does not indicate whether or not a building will be demolished, only that the structure is currently unsafe to enter."
Yet the City decided to bulldoze red-tagged homes without informing homeowners of the new meaning of the red tags or the demolition order. This is a clear violation of due process, guaranteed under federal and state constitutions, which protects property owners from the unlawful destruction of their property. It is also a clear, opportunistic attack on the Lower 9th Ward community, whose historically black roots run deep in the neighborhood. Boasting the highest level of black homeownership in the nation, the area is also where many black New Orleanians have traditionally been able to purchase their first homes.
Due to the massive destruction of the Lower 9th Ward, neighborhood survivors have been scattered across the country. Most residents have not been able to evaluate the damage to their homes due to their displacement. FEMA's fly-back program for evacuees, which could have been expanded to allow homeowners the opportunity to return to New Orleans in order to view their property, expired on New Year's Eve. Furthermore, the Lower 9th Ward was closed until December 1st, making it impossible for residents to visit their homes until quite recently.
Residents missing loved ones know that there are more dead yet to be uncovered in the debris, whose bodies would be wrongfully buried by demolition. Adding insult to injury, a history of redlining has left the land in the Lower 9th Ward not only low-lying, but also lowly valued. Leveling homes would not only further demoralize a diasporic community that has had no voice in the decision-making process concerning their property, it would also strip them of most of their assets, render them gravely vulnerable to speculators, and raise the threat of eminent domain.
Considering how slow the City has been to respond to the needs of its citizens during the four months since Hurricane Katrina, we must ask why it is now rushing to bulldoze the Lower 9th Ward. Is it to cover up unlawful tampering with the levees during Katrina? Is it to avoid an accurate body count of the area? Is it because the City intends to forcibly remove residents from their land to make way for a glitzy Cajun Casinoland? Or is it simply due to the blatant racism and classism that characterizes so much of this tragic disaster?
Concerned community members are not ceding their rich cultural heritage without a fight. On December 28th, Kirk v. The City of New Orleans won a temporary restraining order against the City to halt the demolition of property until the court hearing to be held this Friday. Ishmael Muhammad, an attorney working on the suit for The People's Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Coalition, summed up community sentiment by saying that "there can be no justice in the rebuilding process unless the residents and homeowners can fully participate."
If New Orleans is to rise from the piles of rubble strewn unevenly across the city, the often-drowned out voices of poor blacks must dictate the terms of the rebuilding process. City planners and developers who may attempt to capitalize upon a disaster largely manufactured by negligent funding, poor planning and a criminal response must not further desecrate the memory of those silenced in its wake, indiscriminately bulldozing over unclaimed bodies and haphazardly demolishing what remains of the Lower 9th Ward. To do so would be the final insult to a community deluged not only by floodwaters, but also by injustice.
Much more than the ubiquitous cookie-cutter houses that characterize suburban sprawl, homes in the Lower 9th Ward are the historic connections to a multigenerational community that has deep roots laid in the land presently under threat. Bulldozing a person's most emblematic tie to that land without their consent is not only plainly unlawful, it is a covert step towards the ethnic cleansing of New Orleans. Turning a natural disaster into an opportunity to whitewash one of the world's most multiethnic cities is not only the lowest form of racism, it would also spell municipal suicide for a city whose integrity resides in the preservation of its most dynamic neighborhoods.
No other neighborhood better exemplifies the cultural uniqueness of New Orleans than the Lower 9th Ward. Fats Domino lives there, as do many Mardi Gras Indians, and countless French Quarter musicians, mimes and waiters commute to Bourbon Street from their Lower 9th homes. These people should decide if and when demolition is necessary, and they ought to determine the future of one of America's most vibrant neighborhoods. If any American city exemplifies the genius of everyday people, it is certainly New Orleans. And if the city is to truly recover from this disaster, the local people who created its international reputation must lead its reconstruction.
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