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William P. Quigley,
Ending Poverty As We Know It: Guaranteeing a Right to a
Job at a Living Wage. Temple University Press, 2003
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Why Are
They Making
New Orleans a Ghost Town?
By Bill Quigley On Halloween night, New Orleans will be very,
very dark. Well over half the homes on the east bank of New
Orleans sit vacant because they still do not have electricity.
More do not have natural gas or running water. Most stoplights
still do not work. Most street lights remain out. Fully armed
National Guard troops refuse to allow over ten thousand people
to even physically visit their property in the Lower Ninth Ward
neighborhood.
Despite the fact that people cannot come
back, tens of thousands of people face eviction from their
homes. A local judge told me that their court expects to process
a thousand evictions a day for weeks. Renters still in shelters
or temporary homes across the country will never see the court
notice taped to the door of their home. Because they will not
show up for the eviction hearing that they do not know about,
their possessions will be tossed out in the street.
In the street their possessions will sit
alongside an estimated 3 million truck loads of downed trees,
piles of mud, fiberglass insulation, crushed sheetrock,
abandoned cars, spoiled mattresses, wet rugs, and horrifyingly
smelly refrigerators full of food from August.
There are also New Orleans renters facing
evictions from landlords who want to renovate and charge higher
rents to the out of town workers who populate the city. Some
renters have offered to pay their rent and are still being
evicted. Others question why they should have to pay rent for
September when they were not allowed to return to New Orleans.
New Orleans, known for its culture and food
and music, is now pushing away the very people who created the
culture and food and music. Mardi Gras Indians live and paraded
in neighborhoods that sit without electricity or water. The back
room cooks for many of the most famous restaurants cannot yet
return to New Orleans. Musicians remain in exile. Housing is
scarce and rents are soaring. Over 245,000 people lost jobs in
September. Public education in New Orleans has not restarted.
The levees are not even up to their flawed level in August.
Dr. Arjun Sengupta, the United Nations Human
Rights Commission Special Reporter on Extreme Poverty, visited
New Orleans and Baton Rouge last week. He toured the devastated
areas and listened to the evacuees still in shelters and those
living out of town with family.
Dr. Sengupta described current conditions as
"shocking" and "gross violations of human
rights." The devastation itself is shocking, he explained,
but even more shocking is that two months have passed and there
is little to nothing being done to reconstruct vast areas of New
Orleans. "The US is the richest nation in the history of
the world. Why cannot it restore electricity and water and help
people rebuild their homes and neighborhoods? If the US can
rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq, why not New Orleans?"
The longer the poor and working class of New
Orleans stay away, the more likely it will be that they never
return. That, some say, is exactly what those in power in New
Orleans and Louisiana and the US must want. Otherwise, why are
they making New Orleans a ghost town?
"...to the end that human rights shall
be regarded as more sacred than property interests."
-Preamble to the NLG Constitution
This is a message from the Loyola University
New Orleans School of Law chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
If you would like to be removed from this email list, please
reply with the word REMOVE in the subject line.
Bill teaches at Loyola University New Orleans
School of Law, Quigley@loyno.edu
posted 3 November 2005
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updated 11 December 2007 |
