UE Convention Resolutions
Justice for New Orleans
And the Gulf Coast
The federal government’s abandonment of the people of New Orleans and nearby Gulf Coast areas to the effects of Hurricane Katrina, and its abysmal failure to rebuild these communities in the two years since the storm, is one of the most disgraceful chapters of recent U.S. history. While many communities of coastal Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama were devastated by this terrible storm, it’s important to remember that the city of New Orleans and its suburbs were spared the wrath of Katrina. The flooding and destruction in the New Orleans area came after the storm had passed and are entirely the result of the failure of the federal government to build and maintain adequate levees and sea walls. The whole world watched televised images of New Orleans residents stranded for days on rooftops, highway overpasses, and at the convention center, without food or water, abandoned by Bush administration officials who pled ignorance of events the rest of us were seeing on CNN.
Thousands of New Orleans and Gulf residents were forced into exile, and two years later there is no end in site for the displacement of many. Some 80,000 families are scattered across the country in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) apartments and trailers. Hardly any of the 77,000 rental units destroyed in New Orleans have been rebuilt, making it nearly impossible for New Orleanians who were renters before the floods – 53 percent of the pre-Katrina population – to return to their hometown. FEMA’s inadequate reconstruction efforts have been a boondoggle for huge politically-connected corporations such as Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) – a subsidiary of Dick Cheney’s Haliburton that has also shamelessly profited from the Iraq war – and the Shaw Group, while local contractors employing local workers have been excluded. While reactionary Republican members of Congress have used alleged political corruption in New Orleans and Louisiana as an excuse to starve the state and city of rebuilding funds, outrageous scandals of double-billing and fraud have occurred in the multi-billion dollar contracts awarded to GOP-favored firms for Katrina reconstruction. Another outrage is the slow and inadequate work of the Army Corps of Engineers in rebuilding the levees. This reconstruction is in effect restoring the inadequate pre-Katrina levee system, leaving New Orleans a sitting duck for the next Katrina.
The charge by U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) that a policy of ethnic cleansing by inaction is being carried out is only partly true. Some very deliberate action is involved as well. Mayor Ray Nagin’s Bring New Orleans Back commission, composed of unelected wealthy businessmen and developers, is the source of plans to rebuild New Orleans as a smaller, wealthier, whiter city. The group has excluded the city’s black city council members from discussions of the city’s future, and the Wall Street Journal reported that its goal, as expressed by wealthy real estate investor James Reiss, is a city "with better services and fewer poor people." Reiss is also chair of the Regional Transit Authority – the guy responsible for the buses that didn’t evacuate people.
The Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) is an agent of this policy of ethnic and class cleansing. Over 5,000 families lived in public housing before Katrina, but less than a quarter of them have been able to return. HANO is refusing to allow former residents return to housing units that were never touched by the floods and remain habitable. Many former residents have offered to fix up their own apartments, but still HANO keeps them locked out. On August 31, public housing tenants and activists took over HANO’s offices, demanding that the agencies reopen the buildings – an important action in the ongoing fight for the "right of return" of working class New Orleanians.
There has also been massive racial and class discrimination in decisions on which neighborhoods of private homes are being restored, and which are being left in ruins with the obvious intent to keep some homeowners from returning. It is clear that the wealthy elite want to see working class African American neighborhoods such as the Lower Ninth Ward abandoned.
Public services in post-Katrina New Orleans have become a playground for opportunist profiteers and union busters. Public education in the city has been practically destroyed, as well as its teachers’ union, and what remains of the education system has been largely privatized. Trash collection in the French Quarter, which was formerly done by unionized city workers, was contracted by FEMA to a scab out-of-state company.
New Orleans workers are resisting the effort to take their city away from them and make it a theme park for the rich. Organizations such as Common Ground, ACORN, the NAACP and unions are fighting to restore jobs, hire locals in the recovery effort, and defend workers rights.
They are demanding the full range of housing options to restore working class New Orleans. Residents have shown up in large numbers at public hearings when elitist plans to abandon entire neighborhoods are discussed. As one citizen pointedly asked elected leaders, "Are we going to allow some developers, some hustlers, some land thieves to grab our land, grab our homes, to make this into a Disney World version of our homes, our lives
On August 29th through September 2nd 2007, an International Tribunal was held in New Orleans. Expert witnesses (survivors) provided testimony regarding human rights abuses and crimes by the government at all levels (federal, state and local). This testimony was heard by an international panel of judges from seven countries and a prosecution team of leading attorneys from across the country.
Besides the federal neglect of the levee system, New Orleans has been made increasingly vulnerable to hurricane damage by the destruction of the coastal wetlands of South Louisiana, which used to provide a natural shock absorber protecting the area from storm surges. Major culprits in this environmental devastation were the owners of oil companies, and the federal government, which carved the wetlands up with canals to give them easier access to oil reserves. Any true reconstruction of New Orleans must include restoration of its natural defenses.
New Orleans is a great American city with a vibrant history and a rich and unique culture that has given much to our country and the world – including its music, its food, and its festivals. The best of that culture is the product of the city’s working class communities. New Orleans jazz pianist and educator Ellis Marsalis once explained why jazz originated in his hometown: "New Orleans is a proletarian city, a poor man’s town." The suffering that has followed Katrina will become a permanent disgrace and tragic loss to our country, unless we act now to rebuild this city, for all its people, especially its working class people.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 70th UE CONVENTION:
- Calls on Congress and the 2008 presidential candidates to support massive federal rebuilding effort for New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina. This must include job creation and rebuilding housing to enable pre-Katrina New Orleans residents of all races, classes and income levels to return to their city and communities and rebuild their lives, as well as rebuilding the levee system to protect New Orleans and its suburbs from a Level 5 hurricane;
- Calls on the federal government to enact a program for the restoration of Gulf coastal wetlands, with the oil industry and other corporations who have undermined these resources required to foot the bill;
- Demands that federal, state and local officials reverse the privatization of the New Orleans public schools and other public services, and fund the restoration and improvement of public services, including public hospitals;
- Expresses its solidarity with unions and other working class organizations in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast struggling to restore their communities;
- Sends a copy of this resolution to the leadership of the U.S. House and Senate as well as the Congressional Black Caucus.