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Rebuilding
New Orleans Who Decides
Do New
Orleans Folk Have a Choice?
"No
choice . . . It ain't nothing nice" -- "Forgetting"
"Are we getting ready for the
Holiday?" It
Ain't Nothing Nice
i
don't think folk understand... people ain't let them do
nothing... there is no choice. they starve your ass and then
offer you food and water and a ride on a bus, and when you wake
up you are wherever they sent you... and then they put you on a
plane and you are in utah and what you got... you ain't got
nothing, you don't know where you at, you're totally dependent
on... you got no choices. no choices. no.
that's the name of that game and it ain't nothing nice.
kalamu
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Miriam on Forgetting
Rudy, I've just now had time to
reflect on your statement, and I agree with you that forgetting
is not the problem. I applaud your optimism where the
American people are concerned, for I, too, am an optimistic
person who believes that human beings are basically good.
I also believe that it's the act and not the thought that is
important right now; we need praxis and not theory.
Thus, I have argued with some of my
intellectual friends that now is the time for SURVIVAL.
Some of us tend to spend too much valuable time and energy on
theorizing, blaming, criticizing; of course we have to do
that too—eventually—but right now we have to concentrate on
the matters at hand: locating the lost, reuniting the
dispersed, finding housing for the dislocated, creating jobs for
the unemployed, healing—both physically and
psychologically—the aged and infirm, donating to grassroots
organizations (church, health, labor, environmental groups) that
are working hard, usually unpaid and often unheralded, and
reaching out in whatever way we can to help someone.
Now what I mean by "forgetting" is
the deliberate loss of memory that occurs with denial (i.e.
hiding our heads in the sand and returning to Main Street USA
where the livin' is easy because we can't or don't want to deal
with the horrible images: corpses in the street, lost babies,
Black folk crying for food and water, old people cast aside like
detritus) and then the implications of those images:
racism, classism, poverty, corporate greed, criminal neglect by
the government, and an unjust war that diverts human and
material resources.
That type of "forgetting" or denial is
evident in the recent polls. Last week, 39% of the
American people polled supported the administration's handling
of Katrina, while 70% did not. In a poll released this
morning, it was 48% to 48%. What happened to the 10% who
changed their minds? Did they forget? Are they in
denial? Or did they willingly fall for Bush's public
relations campaign—photo ops, trips to New Orleans, overnight
off the coast, "acceptance" of
responsibility, and "French Quarter chat to the
nation" tonight. Has the P. R. campaign outweighed
the cyberspace truth? Only time will tell. --Miriam
Let's Get Ready
for the Holiday
A Note to Miriam
Yeah, you right, as they say down in New
Orleans. You speak for true. Americans have forgotten to do what
they supposed to do—out of self-blindness, negligence,
selfishness, and downright meanness. We have historians who can
point your message out in detail. There’s been a continual
history of this betrayal, much more poignant than that which the
old plantation Southern aristocracy whines about. And moves of
betrayal are now afoot.
The task before us is enormous. We agree and
there’s a lot of detailed, daily work that got to be done, and
some oversight of what plans are being made to reconstitute or
as they say rebuild New Orleans. For that struggle to get it
done as it should there’s gone to be a need for “theorizing,
blaming, criticizing.” Bush has already outlined his plans.
Are we ready to counter what the wise boys, the neo-cons got
planned for us.
Mr. Bush will not make this lost of an
American city, and a devastated region a national problem. He
will not allow it to rise, in his rhetoric and policies, to a
national mandate, with the federal government in the lead, to
reconstruct, not only the region of Hurricane Katrina, but the
rest of America. This gonna be the 1875 plan. Federal government
cannot deal with the problems of all these displaced Negroes. So
the feds are not gonna rescue us, they won’t be looking out
for us. They gonna give us back to the States.
In his vision Mr. Bush intends to scatter the
forces of resistance. The problem has been gently lobbed into
the courts of state governments. The good-hearted Senate
Republicans, fulfilling a tradition, have always wanted to make
the impoverished, slave-ridden South a federal problem. But they
were never able to sustain that position. They had the right
impulse, which suggests that Middle America itself might want to
make it a national problem. Why? They see how the failure in one
region can impact all the rest of us.
So there’s one masterful stroke. How so?
The feds are not forced into a position of setting national
standards for pertinent matters like wages. We need a more
equitable income distribution. There ain’t no doubt about it.
That means a severe raise in minimum wage, a $10 minimum for all
reconstruction work. We need this minimum for all city, state,
and federal contracts, tourist or otherwise. We must do this for
New Orleans. So he doesn’t want to deal with the matter of
race and poverty, not as a national priority. The question
becomes how we counter the master’s stroke.
I ain’t in for doing a critical sweep of
black leadership. But I’m not for allowing Nagin to escape
responsibility or any of the former black mayors of New Orleans
including the Morials. The blame should fall where it’s just.
But, you right, we must go farther than pointing fingers. The
thing is what Nagin gon do now, hang out in Texas. He got a plan
for his city that he’s sharing with anybody. Or is he looking
for a big-money corporate job? What I want to know is what they
got ready for the battlefield.
I know the forces are arrayed against us. I
don’t expect Middle Class America just to roll over and be
entirely different from the way we were two weeks ago, in a
mind, a thinking that allowed an American city to be destroyed.
They/we have to be won over. They/we have to be shown the error
of neo-con ways. They/we must be convinced that New Orleans’
folks should have a say in how their city should be rebuilt. We
need to develop a means for these folks to speak for themselves
and when they can’t speak in their interest.
I think each of us has a role to play in this
matter. What can we put on the table. I ain’t got no money and
I ain’t in the region. I can help broadcast what the folks are
saying. And what people are saying about what the folks are
saying. Expose what I see is the plan for our folks and as much
as I can inform them and others what’s the deal. I don’t
think we can give up before the Battle for New Orleans begins.
Before we know clearly what the plan is and whether that Plan
can be modified in the interest of the black and the poor.
If most New Orleaneans want to return to
their neighborhood and houses they should be allowed to do so.
We should not allow the neo-cons to raze one house until that
family determines what he or she wants to do. Taking people
homes, on spurious constructions standards, that kind of
rebuilding policy should not be decided by state officials or
federal officials. The poverty is not in the houses, but in
opportunities that pay "living wages." These New
Orleans folks should decide for themselves. In that struggle, we
ought to be. And we can win, this one, if we willing to go out
on the battlefield.
If I were New Orleans, I wouldn’t let’em
get me too far from Louisiana. The State should be able to
support all of its citizens. If I were them I’ll hold up
wherever – Baton Rouge, Monroe, Lafayette, Covington,
anywhere, hold on to stay on top of New Orleans and the
“plans.”
I would plan for Mardi Gras in Baton Rouge. I
would use it as a political staging ground to rebuild New
Orleans in their image. In this we all can play a role. We can
all meet next year in Baton Rouge to perform the official
ceremony of our allegiance to the long distance struggle to
right race and poverty in America. Our goal is to establish a
renewed seeing and thinking in America? -- Rudy
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Bush Vision for Rebuilding New Orleans?
Bush to Focus on Vision for
Reconstruction in Speech Tonight.
--NYTimes (9/15/05)
Outline of Mr. Bush' Vision for Rebuilding of New Orleans
and the Gulf:
1) feds will play "supportive role" rather than a
lead road
2) there will be no Marshall Plan as Senate Republicans
desired (Bill Frist)
3) each state has to presents its own plan
"home-grown" plan that must be created by city and
state authorities.
4) New Orleans must have stricter construction standards
5) Karl Rove will coordinate the present reconstruction
efforts
What are the implications of the
"plan." I know our black economists, socio-economic
analyzers are busy doing their tabulations and have other plans
that they can put before the Congress. Is anybody geared up for
the struggle to rebuild New Orleans?
I wonder what implication 4) will have
for the future of those houses in the Ninth Ward and the Seventh
Ward, Treme, and other places -- these old wood-framed houses
that have withstood numerous storms and are generally owned by
black families.
Will there be assurances to labor? To
displaced workers like school employees? Will wage standards be
raised. Here's where the thrust has to be given. Morial seems to
want to be the Reconstruction Czar. They should be ready tonight
to offer a counter proposal. Or will they just go along to go
along? Are they willing to go down on the battlefield?
Or will we have business as usual? Everybody
struggling to get his cut of the pie, that dwindling 10 percent?
-- Rudy
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economic spirit of rebuilding
Will social justice be the spirit of the
rebuilding of New Orleans, that's the heart question for Mr.John
William Templeton, Editor, BlackMoney.com. What role can native New Orleaneans
have in the rebuilding of their beloved city? From disaster
should flow indeed prosperity for the many, Mr
Templeton suggests.
I have no special disregard for black
entrepreneurs. There must indeed be business. My concern is that
it is not business as usual—profit at whatever cost, and the
more the profit the blinder we become. Baltimore native Parren
Mitchell, bless his soul, and our first black congressman from
Maryland, it was he who pushed the Minority Business Agenda,
back in the 1970s, it spawned a certain black business
sensibility and success.
What has become of it? What kind of ethics
flow out of societal generosity and grace. Obviously it has not
spoken well to the issue of black poverty. Many of these
business cats and their political hacks that benefited
from the program have worked consistently against "living
wage" and a $10 minimum. I mean this has occurred in the
very home of Parren Mitchell. And they always talk about
how much they love him, bathing in his light. Parren wasn't
about perpetuating poverty. With these men we should be
wary, and impatient.
I have no problem with pushing the ceiling
up, but those who want us who beg our support in pushing up
the ceiling for the exceedingly talented, these men of business got
to be just as ardent in pulling the bottom up, and not joining
in on the feeding frenzy.
One, the minimum wage needs to be raised
severely. We must set a $10 minimum for all reconstruction jobs
in New Orleans. We can no longer afford programs that perpetuate
poverty among Americans. And we shouldn't support business
proposals of whatever color—from Washington or from New
Orleans-- if they only continuate systemic poverty and crime.
What a waste.
So here's Mr. Templeton: Potential
to Double Black Entrepreneurship
-- Rudy
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templeton's rebuilders
you know the attorney general has already
set up a fraud unit. So you know they expecting the funk to come
on, the carpe diems. It's gonna take a lot of money to put New
Orleans and the Gulf Coast region back together.
A humpty dumpty situation. It ain't
gonna be easy.
They in this darwin thing all right. But it
ain't gonna be that way, not from the get go. Bush and his
cronies gonna cut out about 90 percent and then throw the rest
to the wolves, the sharks, then it gonna be darwin. The fraud
unit will not investigate the 90 percent; they will referee the
10 percent.
Now that's the ruse. Now what this
here brother's talking about is getting a certain cut out of the
10 percent, a guaranteed cut. But what's the incentive for that.
The 90 % ain't got no reason to guarantee the wanna-be-black
entrepreneurs nothing. They'll say all yall go on get in the
ring, and start swinging. So if you ain't ready to organize with
every body else you gonna be in trouble. There's too many wise
guys and not enough workers.
The brother's selling a book. If the book sells or the
appearances multiply, it'll probably matter little whether the
idea works for the wanna-bes, it would have worked for him as a
public intellectual. He points out the potentiality of
government to correct wrongs, to start afresh with higher social
and moral goals. This brother's ideas are ahead of his time. And
he knows that, just like anybody with eyes and ears knows that. --
Rudy
posted 15 September 2005 |
