Looking into the future the Pelican feeding its young from a self-induced wound in its own breast (as depicted, mysteriously, on the state flag of Louisiana) is accepted as an appropriate symbol of both self-sacrifice and rebirth. Through his selfless efforts, man is raised from the slavery of ignorance to the condition of freedom conferred by wisdom. Given the current state of affairs in Louisiana, one hopes that the understanding of the Pelican as a symbol shall point the way towards a new consciousness of ourselves as a whole, and lead us to face our futures with strength, grace, wisdom and faith, to learn from our mistakes and carry our successes and zest for living to future generations.

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Katrina's Early Landfall: Exclusionary Politics Behind the Restoration of New Orleans

December 12, 2005
By Kristen L. Buras
Reprinted from: Z-Mag-online

Hurricane Katrina may represent an unprecedented episode of displacement and destruction within the United States, but it has not washed away forms of exclusionary politics that existed long before it made landfall on the Gulf Coast.

The current unfolding effort to rebuild New Orleans cannot be understood apart from this history of class- and race-based marginalization. Perhaps more than any account, the story of the St. Thomas Housing Project and its “redevelopment” in the late 1990s illuminates the struggles that will need to be fought in the years ahead.

I was born and raised in New Orleans, and came to know many residents of the St. Thomas Housing Project through my work at nearby Andrew Jackson Elementary School and Kingsley House—a turn-of-the-century settlement house converted into a community center where energetic youth and senior programs served predominantly low-income, African American families in the neighborhood. The housing conditions that prevailed in St. Thomas were unspeakable. Decades of deprivation by local and federal housing authorities meant that families lived in dilapidated, roach-infested buildings with broken staircases, missing door knobs, and leaky roofs. It looked like a war zone and many residents lived in fear of the police as well as local drug dealers and gangs.

Greater public investment directed toward empowering members of the community was not envisioned as the best course of action for rebuilding the neighborhood, at least not by the city’s political and business elites. The St. Thomas Housing Project, in fact, rested on a prime piece of real estate in the lower Garden District, just blocks from the mansion-lined St. Charles Avenue and the crescent-shaped Mississippi River.

In 1996 Historic Restoration Incorporated (HRI), a real estate development company based in New Orleans, submitted a grant application for federal funding to redevelop St. Thomas through the Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE) VI program. At least officially, the program was intended to improve living conditions for public housing residents by supporting the development of mixed-income communities in poorer areas. While the original proposal drafted by HRI included 80 percent public/low-income housing units and 20 percent market-rate units and small resident-owned shops, a very different redevelopment plan emerged after the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued a grant of $25 million.

With the cooperation of the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) and the New Orleans City Council, HRI set out to raze St. Thomas and build River Garden, a complex consisting of only 22 percent public/low-income housing units and 78 percent market-rate units—a virtual inversion of the original mix. Moreover, it also planned to profit by selling land purchased from HANO to Wal-Mart and to lobby for the use of sales taxes from Wal-Mart to subsidize its for-profit, market-rate units, including upscale rentals, condominiums, and homes.

A class action lawsuit by St. Thomas residents and a lawsuit by various non-profit organizations, such as Smart Growth for Louisiana and Urban Conservancy, aimed to stop the reconstruction. By 2001, however, most of St. Thomas had been demolished. By 2002, the New Orleans City Council had approved the plan to use tax revenues from Wal-Mart to fund the project and even sought a pre-emptive ruling that such actions were beyond the pale of legal challenge. A legal notice published in the Times-Picayune captured the divide between the local masses and the city’s ruling elite when it named the contending parties: “The council of the city of New Orleans versus all taxpayers, property owners, citizens of the city of New Orleans and non-residents owning property subject to taxation.” Meanwhile, a fair housing complaint was filed with HUD by former St. Thomas residents against HANO and the city of New Orleans. A conciliation agreement was reached in 2003 that increased the number of public/low-income housing units on and off site to a total of 38 percent, still less than half the number originally promised.

In a report entitled “Hope VI and St. Thomas: Smoke, Mirrors, and Urban Mercantilism,” Brod Bagert—a native of New Orleans whose research focused on the St. Thomas debacle—revealed that Phase I of the redevelopment project displaced 806 families from St. Thomas while it planned to extend tenancy to only a margin of them once River Garden was built. He also documents that initial public investment in this private redevelopment project totaled nearly $40 million.

Restoration or Displacement?

Historic Restoration Inc. is rather ironically named. Facilitated in its actions by HANO, the New Orleans City Council, and HUD, HRI did not “restore” history in the St. Thomas Housing Project. Instead, the redevelopment of St. Thomas symbolizes a profound break with history, particularly with those policies set down in the 1930s as part of the New Deal. St. Thomas was the first project to be approved by President Roosevelt under the Wagner Act, which created a funding mechanism to support the development of low-income public housing across the nation. The displacement of residents from St. Thomas, and its subsequent destruction and resurrection for private benefit, characterize a much broader pattern of right-wing attacks on the public sector and the welfare state by neoliberal and neoconservative forces over the past several decades.

Even before Katrina flooded much of the city, class and race discourse around the “rebuilding” of New Orleans was advanced. Describing the River Garden complex on its website, HRI boasts, “Old New Orleans living is new again…. But the old is…much improved.” Never mind that part of what “improved” the neighborhood was the forced removal of poor African Americans. Such a proclamation eerily resonates with the sentiments of Joseph Canizaro, one of the most powerful developers in New Orleans, who indicated that Katrina presented New Orleans with a “clean sheet to start again” (New York Times). Even more to the point, James Reiss—who lives in the preeminent and private community of Audubon Place, runs a booming business serving the shipbuilding industry, and holds a position in Mayor Ray Nagin’s administration—declared to the Wall Street Journal just a week after the hurricane, “Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, politically, and economically.” Having corresponded with a critical number of New Orleans business leaders, Reiss stressed, “I’m not just speaking for myself here. The way we’ve been living is not going to happen again, or we’re out.”

Interestingly, President Bush also spoke of an improved New Orleans when he stood in Jackson Square on the evening of September 15. “We’ll not just rebuild, we’ll build higher and better,” he said. But he also departed from the prevailing discourse by acknowledging “deep, persistent poverty in this region” and “a duty to confront this poverty” and “rise above the legacy of inequality.” These startling words from the mouth of an ultraconservative president, alongside his advocacy of initiatives such as an Urban Homesteading Act, which would make federal property available cost-free to low-income citizens for the purpose of building a home, have inspired some to conclude that Bush is the FDR of our times. We might, it has been suggested, witness the emergence of a “new” New Deal.

Let’s look at this so-called new deal. The Gulf Opportunity Zone that the president has proposed is hardly new or progressive. In actuality, such entrepreneurial innovation falls squarely in line with free market approaches premised on incentive and tax relief, the same approaches that have looted the tax base of major cities for years. Suspending the Davis-Bacon Act and thereby compromising the wages of workers involved in the rebuilding effort, we are told, represents another innovative step. Bush has also called for Worker Recovery Accounts of up to $5,000 to aid displaced families with job training and associated child care expenses. While families can undoubtedly use these financial resources, such accounts do not constitute a truly groundbreaking effort to ensure wider access to better schooling, a living wage, stable employment, or higher education. If anything, job training has too often been viewed as an antidote to “welfare dependency” and its provision used as a justification for discontinuing needed social services and undermining entitlements to more genuine educational opportunities. Since Katrina, Bush has even stepped up his advocacy of school vouchers by requesting $500 million for displaced students to exercise educational choice. Funneling public money to private and even religious schools presents no problem for this Administration, which also aspires to reimburse “local houses of worship” for the expense of helping evacuees.

It is also imperative to recall the no-bid contracts awarded to companies such as Halliburton, the same entities that have pillaged Iraq, to rebuild New Orleans. With 40 percent of the businesses in Louisiana either disrupted or destroyed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the pillaging continues. As of late October, only 2 of 140 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) contracts had been awarded to Louisiana-based companies—inspiring enough criticism to compel FEMA to promise opening 4 of the largest existing contracts to competitive bidding, with special consideration given to businesses from the affected region. Even more disturbing is the fact that the governor and mayor of Louisiana—elected officials—have themselves encountered difficulties in obtaining information from FEMA about the contracts issued (Times-Picayune). Inquiries have been ignored by the Bush administration, which proceeds to spend federal monies without any accountability to the public. The current regime has not only failed to propose public works; it will not even inform the public about who precisely has been contracted to do work and how much they are being paid. A stroll through City Park in New Orleans, however, makes one thing clear: while prime contractors sleep behind guarded fences in comfortable trailers, subcontracted workers sleep in trucks and tents, report making very little money, and are charged high prices for access to showers and meals (New York Times), much like laborers in company towns during the industrial era of the 19th century.

Elected state officials have likewise begun the process of determining what will be required to rebuild the New Orleans they envision. Senators Mary Landrieu and David Vitter put together a proposal —the Hurricane Katrina Disaster Relief and Economic Recovery Act—which requested an investment of $250 billion. Many have criticized the bill, pointing out the heavy involvement of lobbyists in its drafting. With such narrow participation at this crucial stage, one wonders whether or not Landrieu will stand, in the long run, by her recent assertion in the Washington Post: “Let us be clear: Louisiana will be rebuilt by Louisianians. New Orleans will be rebuilt by New Orleanians. And the rest of southern Louisiana will be rebuilt under the leadership of the people who call it home.”

Landrieu has undertaken a symbolic campaign—one that is both racist and nativist—attacking Latino workers whose exploitation is becoming the bedrock of the rebuilding effort. “While my state experiences unemployment rates not seen since the Great Depression,” she asserts, “it is unconscionable that illegal workers would be brought into Louisiana aggravating our employment crisis” (Times-Picayune). Operating under the assumption that such laborers are “illegal,” Landrieu called in the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which detained over 100 workers. When it comes to repopulating and rebuilding New Orleans, Latinos are viewed as another demographic “problem.”

There is also the governor of Louisiana and her initiatives. While Kathleen Blanco’s administration helped shape the senators’ bill, Blanco has also been busy assembling her own cast of movers and shakers. The moving and shaking, however, has often occurred in private meetings with business leaders—one of which occurred at the State Capitol on September 29. Words like “financial inducements to companies,” “tax credits,” “grants and low-cost loans,” and “individual tax holiday” filled the air. Filling the seats at the meeting were corporate administrators from banks, shipyards, investment and management firms, real estate, construction, architectural, and lumber companies, energy and chemical industries, restaurants, and other business entities.

Among those initially invited to advise Blanco were James Reiss, who early articulated a desire to change the “demographics” of New Orleans; Ron Forman of the Audubon Institute, who expressed support for HRI to the City Council during the St. Thomas dispute; and Ralph Brennan, member of a well-known family that owns various upscale restaurants in the city and whose members, according to Salon, remained in the days following Katrina with their chef at Brennan’s Restaurant “sleeping on air mattresses, drinking Cheval Blanc, and feasting on the restaurant’s reserves of haute Creole food.” With the assistance of the New Orleans police department, which commandeered the Royal Omni Hotel after the hurricane, relative Jimmy Brennan reported, “The police let us go over...to take a shower, freshen up, and we cooked them some prime rib.” All of this, of course, while the citizens of New Orleans were dehydrating, starving, and dying in the streets.

“This has been working out real well for us,” Brennan concluded at the time. One wonders what standard Barbara Bush had in mind when she quipped that “many of the people in the [Astrodome]…were underprivileged anyway,” so accommodations were “working out very well for them.” Clearly, what works well for the Brennans and their associates is considered apart from the issue of what works well for displaced commoners.

Indeed, there was an absence of “commoners” among those whose views were privately solicited by the governor. That tradition continues with the Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA), established on October 17, to formulate redevelopment plans for the state. Times-Picayune journalist Lolis Eric Elie has lamented the absence of cultural representatives, such as musicians, dancers, and museum directors, on the LRA, questioning: “What are we seeking to recover? If the makeup of the governor’s commission is any clue, the most important thing Louisiana needs to recover is our oil and gas business. Four members of the governor’s 23-member commission have ties to that industry.”

The day after Governor Blanco first met with her preliminary team of advisors, Mayor Nagin announced his Commission for the Future of New Orleans, or what has come to be called the Bring New Orleans Back Commission. The task force consists of 17 individuals and plans to work with a range of subcommittees. This effort, in part, is tied to political efforts that predate Katrina.

In 2000, when Nagin was the general manager of Cox Communications, he participated in creating a Blueprint for a Better New Orleans—a project initiated by business and community leaders, including Joseph Canizaro. The Blueprint was actually a project undertaken jointly by two groups, one of which was a biracial group—the Metropolitan Area Committee—that had focused on various social and racial issues since the 1960s. A more diverse assemblage of representatives than those currently on Blanco’s team (and perhaps, time will tell, Nagin’s), those working on the Blueprint formed six task forces—each headed by one black and one white member. They made policy recommendations in the areas of city management and finance, economic and workforce development, education, housing and neighborhood development, public safety, and transportation. The draft was then subjected to public dialogue in a number of sessions.

It is undeniably the case that members of the Blueprint initiative included traditional business elites. Pres Kabacoff, the president of HRI, for example, sat on the housing task force. But the initiative also benefited from the participation of community-based activists, religious leaders, parent-teacher association members, union leaders, leaders from arts councils, the YMCA, the Urban League, the NAACP, and institutions of higher education, child welfare, homeless, and fair housing advocates, and community book center affiliates. Using this experience as a springboard for his commission, the mayor has before him an opportunity to even further democratize the process involved in rebuilding a better New Orleans. How “better” gets defined and who has a voice in shaping the process remain to be seen.

At this juncture, things do not look promising. Although the current Bring New Orleans Back Commission does reflect the Blueprint effort in its assemblage of a more racially balanced group—and even includes some of the same individuals—few core members are affiliated with community-based groups. Much like Blanco’s Louisiana Restoration Authority, Nagin’s commission largely consists of wealthy business elites associated with shipping, energy, real estate, banks, and even advertising. While commission members such as community organizer Barbara Major and well-known jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, for example, may assist in raising particular issues around education, culture, and health, one wonders how pivotal social issues will be addressed by a venture capitalist, shipyard magnate and servant on the National Petroleum Council, expert in corporate sales and marketing, or owner of McDonald’s restaurants.

There are, of course, the subcommittees in which a presumably broader array of groups might gain a voice in shaping the rebuilding process. As late as October 12, however, the Louisiana Landmarks Society reported that although the deadline to submit subcommittee nominations was October 14, “no information about the deadline or the process, much less contact information for any of the 17 commission members has been posted” on the city or commission websites. This prompted a call for both an extension of the deadline and “a concerted effort to involve New Orleans citizens in this vitally important process.” Whether or not the call for wider involvement will be heeded is still unclear, although an Internet-based form for volunteers interested in joining particular subcommittees has since been established.

On one hand, politicians have embraced a language of inclusion and restoration and used it to legitimize their efforts. On the other hand, there has been an ongoing and retrogressive campaign focused on obstructing the return of traditionally marginalized groups to the region. An unsigned, undated declaration by Mayor Nagin threatened to suspend the powers of various agencies responsible for reviewing applications for demolitions in historic neighborhoods. Moreover, the mayor also indicated at one point that the wisdom of rebuilding the 9th Ward and New Orleans East—areas heavily populated by African American and Vietnamese American communities before Katrina—was questionable (Times-Picayune). While both statements have since been revoked, serious concerns remain.

Nearly two months after Katrina, New Orleans East remained without water, electricity, and sewage services—a state of deprivation that made returning complicated and that some contended was racially motivated. To compound concerns, the destruction of public housing engendered by long-term government neglect was made complete by the hurricane and levee breaches. In seeking to understand the implications of all this, it is essential to recall the struggle around St. Thomas, eventually rebuilt as River Garden. It is River Garden, after all, that the mayor envisions as the model for New Orleans’ future. “You can look down around the new Wal-Mart uptown where there are new homes built,” Nagin explained. “That’s what I have in mind for areas that will have to be rebuilt” (Daily Journal of Commerce). With the processes of displacement and redevelopment already historically interconnected in the city, it would be naïve to overlook the writing on the mildewed walls. If we look closely, we find that the Urban Land Institute—a real estate think tank invited to advise the Bring New Orleans Back Commission—has developer Joseph Canizaro and the vice president of HRI on its Board of Trustees and President Pres Kabakoff profiled as one of its community builders.

Meanwhile, Representative Richard Baker has introduced legislation to form the Louisiana Recovery Corporation, which would be controlled by a board of directors appointed by Bush and “would be empowered to offer payout opportunities to property owners with options for future ownership, settle loans with lending institutions, make infrastructure improvements to tracts of land so they are suitable for sale and development, and use its profits from the sales to return to the federal treasury.” In an October 27 posting on the progressive Rebuild Louisiana Coalition website, one activist characterized the legislation as, “It looks like a major land grab. The section on eminent domain gives [the board] free rein to develop what they choose without input of any significance from residents…. Areas like the 9th Ward are particularly ripe for exploitation through this initiative.”

Resistance

Speaking in Madison, Wisconsin, Kalamu ya Salaam—a New Orleans native, former director of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, and poet—emphasized that the processes unfolding in New Orleans raise fundamental questions about the nature of governance. Rather than settling for what he called “Status Crow,” he underscored the pressing need to solicit the concerns and experiences of the many peoples of New Orleans, including poor whites, women, African, Honduran, and Vietnamese American communities, gays and lesbians, the incarcerated, and others. In fact, his Listen to the People Project aims to create an Internet-based archive of the Katrina-related experiences and life histories of the New Orleans diaspora.

Other grassroots efforts are also beginning to emerge, all of which aim to let the people have a voice in defining the future of the city and some of which build on activism underway in New Orleans before the storms. The newly-formed Louisiana Coalition has brought together a plethora of New Orleans groups to collaborate over a range of pressing issues. ACORN’s Katrina Survivors Association placed hundreds of “No Bulldozing” signs on homes throughout the 9th Ward, has organized in Baton Rouge, and hopes to mobilize 100,000 members in the coming year. In a statement of demands, the association asserts, “We must be able to return to our homes and our city. We will not let ourselves be shut out, either by deliberate attempts to change the make-up of New Orleans, or by neglect which gives the richer and more powerful first access to choices and resources.” Other organizations once based in the city, such as Community Labor United and a chapter of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, have resumed meetings through conference calls, out-of-state retreats, and gatherings in Baton Rouge. East New Orleans United and Whole was recently formed and has begun meeting in a Baton Rouge Baptist Church with the goal of commanding government attention and securing resources for rebuilding neighborhoods. Habitat for Humanity has likewise initiated a campaign to build homes for low-income residents throughout the New Orleans area.

Recognizing the immense challenges of mobilizing under current conditions, Times-Picayune journalist Lolis Eric Elie has proposed, “The truth is, it may already be too late. The mayor and the governor have already named their blue ribbon commissions. Representatives of community-based organizations have not been given a seat at the table.” Yet oppressed groups have always lacked a seat at the table. Conditions for mobilizing are never ideal and they are admittedly even less ideal now as communities have been scattered and families deal with the immediate crises generated by total loss and displacement. It may even be the case that many will be unable to participate in grassroots organizing at this time. But a significant number are prepared to fight, as the people of New Orleans have never been predisposed to keep their mouths shut. There are myriad ways to confront injustice, even when official channels have been closed. The history of the south—a history defined by slave resistance, black abolitionism, contests over Reconstruction, and the civil rights movement—reminds us that struggle is possible under even the most oppressive conditions.

The story of St. Thomas is part of this history. It inspired, for instance, Hands Off Iberville, a grassroots effort to protect another public housing community in New Orleans from the same fate as St. Thomas. An activist involved in that effort recently emphasized, “The struggle to defend and expand public housing [and other public entitlements], and reverse the…privatization agenda has not ended with the hurricane, but has only entered a new stage.” In contrast, the president of American Vision, a Christian right organization, has argued, “The evacuees, local governments, and Washington politicians have a choice. They can re-engineer the same failed welfare policies that trapped and warehoused the poor in New Orleans or they can advance a strategy of personal, family, social, and moral redevelopment. This is as good a time as any to dismantle the welfare state.” Framed by these competing visions, the struggle over New Orleans continues.

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Kristen L. Buras is a Wisconsin-Spencer Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has written on conservative school reform in the Harvard Educational Review and has co-edited The Subaltern Speak: Curriculum, Power, and Educational Struggles.