|
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
*
* * * *
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
* * *
* *
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
* * *
* *
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
*
* * * *
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 * *
* * *
|
The Katrina Papers is not your
average memoir. It is a fusion of many kinds of
writing, including intellectual autobiography,
personal narrative, political/cultural analysis,
spiritual journal, literary history, and poetry.
Though it is the record of one man's experience of
Hurricane Katrina, it is a record that is fully a
part of his life and work as a scholar, political
activist, and professor. The Katrina Papers
provides space not only for the traumatic events but
also for ruminations on authors such as Richard
Wright and theorists like Deleuze and Guattarri. The
result is a complex though thoroughly accessible
book. The struggle with form—the search for a
medium proper to the complex social, personal, and
political ramifications of an event unprecedented in
this scholar's life and in American social history—lies at the very heart of The Katrina Papers. It
depicts an enigmatic and multi-stranded world view
which takes the local as its nexus for understanding
the global. It resists the temptation to simplify
or clarify when simplification and clarification are
not possible. Ward's narrative is, at times, very
direct, but he always refuses to simplify the
complex emotional and spiritual volatility of the
process and the historical moment that he is
witnessing. The end result is an honesty that is
both pedagogical and inspiring.—Hank Lazer
The Katrina Papers, by Jerry W.
Ward, Jr. $18.95
|
*
* * * *
Zippety Doo Dah, Zippety-Ay: How Satisfactch'll Is Education Today?
Toward a New Song of the South
Dr. Joyce E. King on Black Education and
New Paradigms
*
* * * *
music website >
http://www.kalamu.com/bol/
writing website >
http://wordup.posterous.com/
daily blog >
http://kalamu.posterous.com
twitter >
http://twitter.com/neogriot
facebook >
http://www.facebook.com/kalamu.salaam
*
* * * *
*
* * * *
Basil Davidson's "Africa Series"
Different
But Equal /
Mastering A Continent /
Caravans
of Gold /
The King and the City /
The Bible and The Gun
West Africa Before the Colonial Era: A
History to 1850
By
Basil Davidson
African Slave Trade: Precolonial History,
1450-1850
By Basil Davidson
John Henrik Clarke—A Great and Mighty Walk
* * *
* *
* * *
* *
|
The Warmth of Other Suns
The Epic Story of America's Great
Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a
sharecropper's wife, left Mississippi
for Milwaukee in 1937, after her cousin
was falsely accused of stealing a white
man's turkeys and was almost beaten to
death. In 1945, George Swanson Starling,
a citrus picker, fled Florida for Harlem
after learning of the grove owners'
plans to give him a "necktie party" (a
lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
made his trek from Louisiana to
California in 1953, embittered by "the
absurdity that he was doing surgery for
the United States Army and couldn't
operate in his own home town." Anchored
to these three stories is Pulitzer
Prize–winning journalist Wilkerson's
magnificent, extensively researched
study of the "great migration," the
exodus of six million black Southerners
out of the terror of Jim Crow to an
"uncertain existence" in the North and
Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates
sociological and historical studies into
the novelistic narratives of Gladney,
Starling, and Pershing settling in new
lands, building anew, and often finding
that they have not left racism behind.
The drama, poignancy, and romance of a
classic immigrant saga pervade this
book, hold the reader in its grasp, and
resonate long after the reading is done.
|
 |
* *
* * *
 |
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
By Ilan Pappe
It
is amazing, according to Pappe, how the
media had not managed to see the
similarities between the ethnic
cleansing that was happening in Bosnia
with the one that is happening in
Palestine. According to Drazen Petrovic
(pg.2-3), who has dealt with the
definition of ethnic cleansing, ethnic
cleansing is associated with
nationalism, the making of new nation
states and national struggle all of
which are the driving force within the
Zionist ideology of Israel. The
consultancy council had used the exact
same methods as the methods that were
later to be used by the Serbs in Bosnia.
In fact Pappe argues that such methods
were employed in order to establish the
state of Israel in 1948.
The
book is divided into 12 chapters with 19
illustrations in black and white, with 7
maps of Palestine and 2 tables. These
include old photographs of refugee
camps, and maps of Palestine before and
after the ethnic cleansing of 1948.
Pappe continues his writing as a
revisionist historian with the intention
of stating the bitter truth to his
Israeli contemporaries and the fact that
they have to face the truth of their
nation being built upon an ethnic
cleansing of the population of
Palestine. One
can sense an optimistic hope in Pappe’s
writing when he talks about the few who
are in Israel who are aware of their
country’s brutal past especially 1948
and the foundation of the state upon
ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.—PaLint
|
* *
* * *
|
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
|
 |
* *
* * *
 |
Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* * * * *
update 20 April 2010
|
