Six months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, we speak
with two activists about what many call the worst natural disaster in
U.S. history. Jordan Flaherty is an organizer with the New Orleans
Network and an editor of Left Turn magazine; Kevin Powell is a
journalist and author who is helping to launch Katrina On the Ground,
an initiative which will bring student delegations from around the
country to the Gulf Coast to work with local aid organizations.
[includes rush transcript]
Democrats have renewed calls for an independent investigation into
the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina following the release of
new video showing the Bush administration was warned of a catastrophe.
On Wednesday, the Associated Press released confidential video footage
of President Bush’s final briefing before Hurricane Katrina struck the
Gulf Coast. The President was given dire warnings the storm could
breach levees and threaten the lives of residents of New Orleans. Yet
days later, President Bush said the breach of the levees hadn’t been
anticipated.
The news comes six months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf
Coast in what many call the worst natural disaster in US history. The
storm displaced some 770,000 residents and destroyed over 300,000
homes. Nearly 2,000 people are reportedly still missing in Louisiana
alone, at least 130 of whom are children. In the city of New Orleans,
whole neighborhoods remain obliterated. In the city’s hardest-hit
areas, such as the Ninth Ward, there is still no power or running
water.
Meanwhile on Wednesday, hurricane evacuees in nearly 3,000
hotel rooms nationwide were faced with a dreaded choice: either remain
in their hotel and pay the bill with their own money or other federal
assistance, or check out and find a new place to live. It was the last
day FEMA directly paid hotel bills for many evacuees outside Louisiana
and Mississippi. Storm survivors in about 7,400 hotel rooms in those
states have been granted another extension through at least March 15.
- Jordan Flaherty, an organizer with the New Orleans Network. He is a longtime activist and editor of Left Turn magazine.
Jordan was in New Orleans when the hurricane hit in August. He returned
to the city soon after being evacuated to help with relief efforts and
to report on what was happening on the streets, particularly to the
poor, black communities that were most effected by the hurricane.
- Kevin Powell, long-time activist, journalist, and
hip-hop historian. Powell traveled to New Orleans the week after the
Hurricane and is currently helping to launch Katrina On the Ground,
and initiative which will bring student delegations from around the
country to the Gulf Coast to work with local aid organizations.
Links:
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AMY GOODMAN: We're joined in our Firehouse studio by two
people, by Jordan Flaherty, an organizer with the New Orleans Network,
long-time activist and editor of Left Turn magazine. Jordan was
in New Orleans when the hurricane hit in August. He returned to the
city soon after being evacuated to help with relief efforts and to
report on what was happening in the streets, particular in poor black
communities that were most affected by the hurricane. And we're joined
by Kevin Powell, long-time activist, journalist, hip-hop historian.
Kevin traveled to New Orleans the week after the hurricane, is
currently helping to launch Katrina On The Ground, an initiative which
will bring student delegations from around the country to the Gulf
Coast to work with local aid organizations. We welcome you both to
Democracy Now!
JORDAN FLAHERTY: Thank you for having me.
KEVIN POWELL: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Kevin, let's begin with you. What are you doing?
KEVIN POWELL: Well, you know, we saw that, with the
exception of a lot of local folks, like the brother sitting right here,
a lot of our so-called national leaders have been really missing in
action. I'm talking about elected officials, people who run civil
rights organizations, etc. And as we were responding to Katrina with
the benefits, folks going down there and whatnot, we said, you know, we
need to do something that's going to be very significant and probably
in the sense of what happened in the 1960s, where you had a lot of
students going down. A lot of college students were asking us, “What
can we do?” And so, we put together Katrina On The Ground. We have
about 1,000 students coming down. I know there are other students
already down there, but this is actually going to start on a Sunday in
Selma, Alabama. We’re going to train them every Sunday and Monday in
Selma, and then they're going to go to Biloxi to New Orleans and to
Mobile, Alabama.
AMY GOODMAN: So this is for their spring break?
KEVIN POWELL: This is an alternative spring break. And
part two, God willing, will be Freedom Summer 2006. We’ve been talking
to a lot of people about that – I certainly want to get your
information -- because this is something that we feel has to bring the
spotlight back to what's going on. I mean, we were just fighting here
in New York City the other day with the nine families being kicked out
of the Kensington Hotel. Luckily, we got a stay, but you’re absolutely
right. This is a problem that’s going on around the country in terms of
social justice not being done for these displaced victims, particularly
poor people in this country, and we're not going to settle for that.
AMY GOODMAN: Jordan, talk about on-the-ground efforts right now in New Orleans, the different groups and the different issues.
JORDAN FLAHERTY: I feel like I learned a lot about what
community means by living in New Orleans, and there's a lot of amazing
organizers, folks from what I would say is the Ella Baker school of
organizing, who came up out of that movement and have inspired me so
much and taught me so much. Great organizers that work with the
People's Hurricane Relief Fund, Common Ground Collective, Insight Women
of Color Against Violence is starting a women of color resource center
down there in New Orleans. Really amazing organizers who are doing
really fabulous work, and folks from around the country have come to
support us, which has been really inspiring, as well. And that is
what's inspiring, which we need, because we were let down by the
federal government, by the state government, by local government, by
the corporate media. All those folks let us down.
You know, Bush knew -- we didn't need to see that videotape to
know that Bush knew. Scientists knew. Journalists knew. It was in our
local paper. It was on television stations. Everyone knew the levees
were in danger. Everyone knew that we needed to do coastal restoration
to protect the city. And Bush did nothing. He cut the funding for
coastal restoration. He cut the funding for shoring up the levees. He
did not care. And that's why we need to do for ourselves and stand up
and fight back.
AMY GOODMAN: What are the key issues that people are organizing around on the ground right now?
JORDAN FLAHERTY: Well, I'll tell you who had a fast
reaction time is the Heritage Foundation, the rightwing think tank.
Within about a week and a half after the hurricane, they put out their
agenda for their hurricane relief, and they said, “We need to cut the
capital gains tax. We need to cut the inheritance tax.” And they also
said, “We need vouchers for schools.” They're attacking our school
system, they’re attacking our healthcare system, they're attacking
public housing system. It's this whole neo-conservative privatization
agenda, and we're being hit with it really hard.
We had in Louisiana -- it might be surprising for people to
know -- we were the only state in the country with a statewide
healthcare system specifically for poor folks: the Charity Hospital
system. And Charity Hospital in New Orleans served 66% of the uninsured
folks in the city. That hospital was closed down under Katrina. Doctors
went in, cleaned it out. They say the hospital is ready to be opened,
but the hospital, the state is not reopening that hospital.
The school system, we had 117 schools, there's now just a
handful open. Most of them have been charter schools, where students
have been given vouchers. We are facing what looks to me something very
similar to the end of open access public education in the city. It
really looks like that. The vast majority of the teachers have been
fired. For some students, things are going to get better, because some
of these students are going to get into charter schools, which will be
improved. And let me tell you, our public school system was not
beautiful to begin with. But some students are going to get left
behind. They’re going to be in the very few schools there left, and
it's going to get even worse for them.
Housing, public housing, there are several thousand units of
public housing that were not damaged, and yet they still have not been
opened. Our At-Large City Councilman, Oliver Thomas, said the other
day, “We don't want any soap opera watchers in these.” The Housing
Authority of New Orleans is going to set up testing. The people have to
have job experience and training to go back into their homes, the homes
that they used to live in. And, you know, we say, “What about the
elderly? What about caretakers? What about women with children? Isn’t
that work if they’re carrying with kids?” Apparently not to Oliver
Thomas. So people are being kept out of public housing, and that's a
tragedy. I mean, it’s painful to me. Six months later, these units
still sit empty. B.W. Cooper Housing Projects, after five months, they
actually got broken into, and we might not find out who did the massive
break-ins and stole people’s stuff, but the fact is, if people had been
allowed to come back into their homes, there would not have been that
widespread robbery.
AMY GOODMAN: We have to break. We’ll come back to this discussion. Jordan Flaherty, long-time activist, editor of Left Turn
magazine, organizer with the New Orleans Network; and Kevin Powell,
long-time activist, as well, journalist, hip-hop historian, organizing
spring break for hundreds of students coming from around the country
and perhaps a new Freedom Summer 2006.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: This week, Mardi Gras celebrations did fill
New Orleans at around half the numbers than usual. Every year, a group
of African American residents dress up in elaborate Native American
garb to pay tribute to the Native Americans who helped blacks during
slavery. Democracy Now! producer Ana Nogueira was in New Orleans on Fat
Tuesday. She spoke with Big Chief Alfred Doucette in the Sixth Ward at
the Back Street Cultural Museum. He talked about the Mardi Gras
Indians.
BIG CHIEF ALFRED DOUCETTE: The Mardi Gras Indians,
you know, like this is our tradition, we do this thing on Mardi Gras.
We do this tribute to the Mardi Gras -- I mean, to the Native American
Indians for the time when, you know, slaves was trying to be free and
they was running around, trying to find a place to hide, and the
Indians took them in and gave them shelter, and this is a tradition
that we try to keep going, just more or less giving praise to the
Indians, you know, because like the Indians was about one and one with
us, I mean, with the suffering and humility and all the stuff that they
went through. You know, we went through pretty much of the same thing.
You know, we try to keep it going. It’s just praise, you know. Thank
you. Thank you for helping us get to this point, because we could have
died off back in the days, but hey, here we are.
This is 2006, after Katrina. New Orleans is in trouble. We
are. We lost so much. A lot of our people haven't come back yet, and
our culture is thinning out. People are trying to hold people
everywhere. For those of us that’s back in New Orleans, it’s happening.
We’re making it happen. You know, this is my tradition. This is my
town. I was born and raised here. I love New Orleans. New Orleans is in
trouble, and it's in trouble by man's hand. Man needs to fix this
problem, and I don't see what's taking them so long, because it ought
to take in some money, you know, like Bush need to get off his hands
and straight on say, hey, before another catastrophe happen, you need
to go ahead on and give us this money, let us go on with our lives, put
our lives back together.
We're going to spend the money back into the economy. I don’t
understand why they won’t give it to us. I need a house. They gave me a
trailer. I don’t want no goddamn trailer. I want my house back. You
know, he just needs to get off his hands and say, well, I'm going to go
ahead and give this to you, this money, let them go build their house,
let them go buy a house, or let them go on with their lives before
another catastrophe happen, and you know, it's going to happen. I’m
sixty-five years old. My life was set, and I was comfortable. You know,
whatever years I have left, I would love to enjoy them like I was
before Katrina. First Katrina, then come FEMA. I don’t know which storm
was the worst.
ANA NOGUEIRA: Where did you live?
BIG CHIEF ALFRED DOUCETTE: I lived in the Eighth Ward. My
street was 2608 North Rushablade Street. I’ve been staying over there
four years. I bought that house, renovated it, I dressed it up. I
thought I was set for the rest of my life. But you know, Katrina came.
I’m not really blaming Katrina, because if the levees wouldn't have
fell down, I'd have been home a long time ago in my house. But the
people that was hired to do their job didn't do their job.
By them not doing their job, they displaced a million or so
people from their homes because of one person didn't do his job. One
person. That one person was bigger than a bomb. Look what he did to my
state. You got to come around my house. I had six feet of water in my
house. Three feet stayed for two weeks. I got a brown line in my house.
It’s racism. It’s prejudice. It needs to stop.
We need to come together as a people, because this city is
screwed up and ain't no one race of people going to fix it. They can
bring all the Mexicans in here they want, but you don't bring my people
back in there, New Orleans is not going to be fixed. New Orleans needs
to be fixed by the people that made New Orleans, and my people are
scattered. They’re out there. They need to get them back home to fix
the problem.
We need this Mardi Gras more than any Mardi Gras we ever had.
This town is dead. My area, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, east is
dead. You can count the people that’s back in my neighborhood, and they
got places for my people to be in my neighborhood, but they're not
allowing the people to come back. They're keeping the gas out. They’re
keeping the electric out. I came on, bought me a generator. I left on
the generator for three weeks -- $20 a day. That didn't last too long,
money wasn’t that long.
You know, everything I accumulated in 65 years I've been here,
I lost it, but I got my life. I got my health. I have a roof over my
head. I have a few dollars in the bank. Still waiting on FEMA to do me
what they’re supposed to do. I need money to live. Everybody need money
to live. This town need money to live, okay? We got people come from
everywhere in the country bringing money to this town. We need those
people to come here to deposit money right here in New Orleans, the
merchants, the business people, and put it back into New Orleans
economy. We need them to come. No, we don't have nothing to really
celebrate, the people of New Orleans, other than asking people come
back here to help us get our town back together.
AMY GOODMAN: Big Chief Alfred Doucette in the Sixth Ward at
Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras Indians, African Americans of New
Orleans honoring the Indians who helped the slaves more than a century
ago. This is Democracy Now!, DemocracyNow.org, the War and Peace
Report. He was speaking with Democracy Now! producer, Ana Nogueira. Our
guests in the studio are Jordan Flaherty, who is working on the ground
with various community organizers, and Kevin Powell, long-time hip-hop
activist, historian, journalist, helped to launch “Katrina On the
Ground,” an activist in the New York area who's working to bring
students to New Orleans, and Kevin, I wanted to ask you about up here
what is happening to the evacuees in the hotels. You mentioned that you
were trying to stave off evictions.
KEVIN POWELL: Well, you know, this has been going on
the last three or four months. This is a group that we've been working
with called Family Dynamics. It’s a New York City coalition supporting
evacuees who are here. And just the other day, got an urgent call that
nine families were going to be evicted from the Kensington Hotel, which
is right on the border of Queens and Brooklyn? Literally, people are
scattered all over the city as you can imagine.
AMY GOODMAN: Near Kennedy airport.
KEVIN POWELL: Exactly, and so, you know, we got a stay of
that eviction, but God knows this is a week-to-week process, and part
of the problem, as Jordan was alluding to, there seems to be this kind
of Katrina fatigue in this country, from the top down, where folks are
not very supportive of these people.
They don't understand that there's a difference between
charity, giving one time, feeling good about it, and justice, which
means this has got to be something we do ongoing, because we're talking
about issues of race and class in this country, and the fact these
people's lives are not valued because they're black, because they're
poor, you know, because they lived in the Ninth Ward, because they
lived in places like Iberville, and so part of Katrina On the Ground is
to say, “We're going to bring the spotlight back to this thing,” and
you know, this is going to go on for as long as necessary.
We see this incredible intersection -- and I'm sure Jordan
would agree with this -- between what happened to these residence,
between the fact that you have on March 14, you may know this, veterans
coming down who are against the war in Iraq, but also in support of
what's going on down there on the ground. The fact that we see the
reproductive rights of women being attacked, and so we feel like this
is an opportune time --
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean the reproductive rights of women being attacked?
KEVIN POWELL: Well, I mean, It's starting now, you know, state by state we can see the fact that --
AMY GOODMAN: Oh, in general.
KEVIN POWELL: Yeah, Roe v. Wade being eroded, and
so what we're trying to say to people, it's not just about Katrina;
it’s not just about New Orleans. This is about democracy in this
country, and we need you to bring all these different social justice
movements together. Otherwise it will continue to be this kind of
isolated thing. You’re doing your thing. I’m doing my thing. We're
saying, ‘”No, this is a serious, serious time we're living in,” and
clearly, as was reflected that in that video with Mr. Bush a couple of
days ago, these folks absolutely do not care what happened down there.
AMY GOODMAN: Jordan Flaherty, the color of New Orleans now?
JORDAN FLAHERTY: I think we're seeing American racism on
hyperdrive right now, with mass dispossession of people from New
Orleans. I'm white, and most white folks I know are back in New
Orleans. Black folks are not back. Even if you compare similarly
destroyed neighborhoods, like the Lower Ninth and Lakeview, right?
Lakeview is mostly white, and people are coming back, by and large.
People are rebuilding. The Lower Ninth, you know, is not back. And so,
it's definitely, you know, it's a racialized disaster.
AMY GOODMAN: And the voting? Last week, a federal judge
ruled against a request for the State of Louisiana to create
out-of-state satellite polling places for evacuees temporarily living
outside Louisiana, and New Orleans is scheduled to hold a primary
election in April. What does that mean? They don't participate in the
rebuilding of their city?
JORDAN FLAHERTY: Exactly. I'm not a big believer in
electoral politics, but one way that you dispossess people of a city is
you take away their voting rights. And we were able to allow Iraqis
living in the U.S. to vote in the Iraqi elections, but we can't allow
the New Orleans people dispersed around the U.S. to vote. This idea,
“Oh, they can do absentee balloting”? If you're moving from place to
place to place, then you're not in one stable address, and that's what
almost everyone from New Orleans is facing, they can't do the absentee
voting. They can’t do that, so we need satellite voting, and it's being
stopped.
KEVIN POWELL: And real quick, six months after you’re
away from a residence, you're no longer a resident in a lot of ways in
that particular area, and so these folks probably won't even have the
right to vote in New Orleans, because it's been more than six months
when April comes around. So we're talking about folks not even being
able to participate in who’s going to be the mayor and city council of
that city.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the prisoners? We were focusing
on this a lot after Hurricane Katrina hit. First, what happened to
those who were incarcerated at the time that the water was rising in
the prisons? But what about where the prisoners are today? Jordan
Flaherty?
JORDAN FLAHERTY: We still have at least 3,000 that are
locked up in maximum security prisons around the state, and these are
people who still have not gotten a lawyer, still have not been
convicted of a crime. This is the kind of thing we condemn Guantanamo
for, right? But it's happening right in Louisiana. In fact, of the 42
public defenders, there's only seven left right now, and they can't
take the cases. In fact, a judge has ruled --
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, only seven left?
JORDAN FLAHERTY: The rest have all been laid off. The
city didn't have money for them, and those that are left, a lot of them
don't have phone service, fax service, the things they need to properly
represent their clients, so these people are not getting
representation. They don't have any time on the horizon, the chance of
even having a court hearing, and I want to remind the Law & Order
viewers out there, that just because someone’s been arrested doesn't
mean they're guilty. Just because they’re convicted doesn’t necessarily
mean they’re guilty, but definitely these folks have not been convicted
of any crime. They have not had their day in court. They're just being
shuttled off to these prisons, and it breaks my heart. Many of the
people who were in misdemeanors have just gotten out now. So these are
people who were there for public drunkenness or unpaid parking tickets.
They spent several months without getting their day in court. It's
heartbreaking to see, and it's being ignored by the media.
AMY GOODMAN: And where are these prisoners?
JORDAN FLAHERTY: They're at Hunt Prison, Angola Prison,
which a former slave plantation, where 90% of the prisoners there end
up dying there. It’s, you know, for death penalty and life-in-prison
places. People still do the plantation labor; they still cut sugar cane
there at that prison, and that's where far too many young black men
from New Orleans have ended up historically. And I want to give a shout
out to Safe Streets, Strong Communities, which is a coalition of groups
in New Orleans that are working on this issue and organizing on this
issue. Organizations like Critical Resistance, at CriticalResistance.org, and people can see more of those organizations at the magazine I work for, LeftTurn.org, which also has more coverage of that, also NewOrleansNetwork.org. And I also want to say that ReconstructionWatch.org
has had a great coverage of breaking down the facts, and they call them
Mardi Gras index, of all these facts on education, prisoners,
healthcare, all that.
AMY GOODMAN: If people are diving for their pens right
now, we'll link it all at DemocracyNow.org, but what about public
schools and also the universities? Tulane opened up, but there were
also the historically black colleges that were hit very hard.
JORDAN FLAHERTY: Absolutely, and you know, we have seen
such a -- I mean, it's heartbreaking for me to see on every level the
way our education system has been hurting, but one thing that's
interesting, I want to say, about Tulane is 90% of Tulane students came
back. Now, people keep saying that we have to be realistic, that New
Orleans people don't want to come back, that they won't come back.
These students, who had much less of a link to the city, they came back
because they were welcomed and they were encouraged to come back. The
people of New Orleans have been kept out. Dillard, which is a
historically black college, still 80% of those folks came back.
KEVIN POWELL: It's absolutely untrue that people don't
want to come back. We’ve talked to residents all around the country.
They just don't know how they’re supposed to get back. They don’t have
the information. They have this sense they're not wanted back in their
communities. And as you said, this is a whole racialized natural
disaster, and the response has been racialized. One thing I need to add
is that what's been frustrating for us as organizers of Katrina On the
Ground is the fact that foundations, corporations, certain people who
call themselves leaders in this country, be it elected officials, civil
rights leaders, have completely turned their back on the fact there's
no plan, no real plan to help these people down there.
AMY GOODMAN: Your website, Kevin?
KEVIN POWELL: KatrinaOnTheGround.org.
AMY GOODMAN: And the students head down?
KEVIN POWELL: March 5th, Sunday, March 5th to Selma for
training, and then they're going into New Orleans, Biloxi and Mobile,
and they'll be going down all month, and as I said, part two throughout
the summer of 2006.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us, and we're going to follow what those students do.
KEVIN POWELL: Thank you.
JORDAN FLAHERTY: Thank you for keeping the coverage alive.
AMY GOODMAN: Jordan Flaherty, long time activist and editor of Left Turn magazine; Kevin Powell, long time activist, as well, currently helping to launch Katrina On the Ground.
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