Fighting the Theft of New Orleans
The Rhythm of Resistance
by BC Publishers Glen Ford and Peter Gamble
"I don't think it's right that you take our properties. Over my dead
body. I didn't die with Katrina." - Lower 9th Ward resident Caroline
Parker.
"Joe Canizaro, I don't know you, but I hate you. I'm going to suit up
like I'm going to Iraq and fight this." - New Orleans East resident
Harvey Bender, referring to the author of the city commission's
"rebuilding" plan.
The overwhelmingly Black New Orleans diaspora is returning in large
numbers to resist relentless efforts to bully and bulldoze them out of
the city's future. "Struggle on the ground has intensified enormously.
A number of groups are in motion, moving against the mayor's
commission," said Mtangulizi Sanyika, spokesman for the African
American Leadership Project (AALP). "Increasing numbers of people are
coming back into the city. You can feel the political rhythm."
Mayor Ray Nagin's commission has presented residents of
flood-battered, mostly African American neighborhoods with a Catch-22,
carefully crafted to preclude New Orleans from ever again becoming the
more than two-thirds Black city it was before Hurricane Katrina
breached the levees. Authored by Nagin crony, real estate development
mogul and George Bush fundraiser Joseph Canizaro, the plan would
impose a four-month moratorium on building in devastated neighborhoods
like the lower Ninth Ward and New Orleans East. During that period,
the neighborhoods would be required to come up with a plan to show how
they would become "viable" by reaching an undefined "critical mass" of
residents.
But the moratorium, itself, discourages people from rebuilding their
neighborhoods - just as it is intended to do - thus creating a fait
accompli: residents will be hard pressed to prove that a "critical
mass" of habitation can be achieved.
"It's circular reasoning," said the AALP's Sanyika. They talk about
"some level of neighborhood viability, but no one knows what that
means. What constitutes viable plans? What kinds of neighborhoods are
viable? Everywhere you turn people are trying to rebuild, but there is
this constraint."
The commission is empowered only to make recommendations, but with the
help of corporate media, pretends their plan is set in stone. "They
keep pushing their recommendations as though they are the gospel
truth," said Sanyika, who along with tens of thousands of other
evacuees has been dispersed to Houston, five hours away. "There is
confusion as to all of these recommendations, issued as if they are
policy. The Times-Picayune contributes to that confusion. None of this
is a given."
Activists believe the way to play this situation is for residents to
forge ahead on their own. "Trying to figure out the logic of that
illogical proposal is a wasted effort - all you're going to do is wind
up going in circles," said Sanyika. He emphasizes that the
commission's recommendations are not binding on anyone - certainly not
on the majority Black city council, which claims authority in city
planning matters. They're not buying the nonsense. "The city council
has rejected it. Nagin says 'ignore it.' I think it's dead in the
water," said Sanyika.
The city council has attempted to block Nagin's collaboration with
corporate developers - a hallmark of his tenure - voting to give
itself authority over where to place FEMA trailers. (Only about 5,000
of a projected 25,000 trailers arrived, say community activists.)
Nagin vetoed the bill, but the council overrode him. The council has
also endorsed equitable development of neighborhoods, rather than
shrinking the city. "We [[]the African American Leadership Project] are
developing a resolution to that effect," said Sanyika. Odds are that
it will pass - but the question is, who wields power in post-Katrina
New Orleans, where only one-third of the city's previous population of
nearly half a million has returned?
It is in this context that one must view Mayor Nagin's statement to a
mostly Black crowd gathered at City Hall for a Martin Luther King Day
march, on Monday: "I don't care what people will say - uptown, or
wherever they are. At the end of the day, this city will be
chocolate…. This city will be a majority African American city. It's
the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way.
It wouldn't be New Orleans."
Ray Nagin is probably the most disoriented person in the country,
these days - the fruit of his own venality, sleeziness, and
opportunism. A corporate executive, sports entrepreneur and nominal
Democrat, he contributed to the Bush campaign in 2000 (Democrats
dubbed him "Ray Reagan") and endorsed a Republican candidate for
governor in 2003 (see BC November 20, 2003). Now he doesn't have a
clue as to where the power lies or where his base is centered. "Nagin
is playing a game, trying to have it both ways," says the AALP's
Sanyika - but his options are shrinking as fast as the city envisioned
by his buddy, Joe Canizaro, with whom he habitually worked hand in
hand, but whom he now tells Blacks to "ignore."
Who's in charge in New Orleans?
Canizaro is clearly the center of gravity on the "mayor's" commission
which, although integrated, is essentially a corporate concoction. The
commission's slogan, "Bring New Orleans Back," is a euphemism for
bringing the city "back" to the days before Black rule by erecting
multiple barriers to the return of Black residents. Of course, even
when Black mayors hold titular office in New Orleans, Canizaro's crowd
runs the show. His bio, posted on the commission's website, shows
Canizaro to be the major domo of the city's real estate, development,
banking, and pro-business political machinations. Canizaro is also a
Trustee and former Chairman of the Urban Land Institute, the planning
outfit that is determined to turn Black neighborhoods into swamp.
Since shortly after New Years, the commission has been feverishly
working to appear to be an empowered governmental entity, tasking
subcommittees to present reports and recommendations several days a
week on Government Effectiveness, Education, Health and Social
Services, Culture, and Infrastructure. What Black New Orleans had been
waiting for was presentation of the Urban Planning Committee Final
Report, Wednesday, January 11. An overflow crowd at the Sheraton Hotel
hissed Mayor Nagin and booed the hated Canizaro. Others cursed and
vowed that they would be exiled only over their dead bodies.
"Four Months to Decide" read the headline of the Times-Picayune, on
the day of the official unveiling of the commission's recommendations,
a blueprint for the displacement of hundreds of thousands. In the
packed hotel spaces, residents alternated between rage and deep
anxiety at the ultimatum. "I don't think four or five months is close
to enough time given all we would need to do," said Robyn Braggs.
"Families with school-age children won't be able to even return to do
the work necessary until this summer."
Cities with 25,000 or more displaced New Orleans residents include
Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Memphis, and Baton Rouge. Others are
scattered to the four winds. Their children will be enrolled in
far-flung schools until the June deadline.
Former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, currently president of the
National Urban League, called the commission's scheme a "massive
red-lining plan wrapped around a giant land grab." With the situation
so uncertain, and time so short, homeowners will have difficulty
settling with their insurance companies in time. Said Morial:
"It's cruel to bar people from rebuilding. Telling people they
can't rebuild for four months is tantamount to saying they can't ever
come back. It's telling people who have lost almost everything that
we're going to take the last vestige of what they own."
And what about renters, who made up well over half of residents? Such
people have no place in George Bush's "ownership society" - especially
if they are Black. Bush put his smirking stamp of approval on the
corporate plan during an oblivious visit to New Orleans, last week.
"It may be hard for you to see, but from when I first came here to
today, New Orleans is reminding me of the city I used to visit."
Apparently, the president doesn't read newspapers because he is blind
- except to the cravings of his class. Bush's Gulf Opportunity Zone
Act provides billions in tax dodges for (big) business, while the
threatened permanent depopulation of Black New Orleans would eliminate
the possibility of return for the nearly 8,000 (small) Black
businesses that served the neighborhoods.
Self-styled Black capitalists take note: this is the nature of the
beast. Bush fronts for a class for which Katrina is not a catastrophe,
but an opportunity. They believe devoutly in "creative chaos" - the
often violent destruction of the old, so that new profits can be
squeezed from the rubble. Through their Catch-22 ultimatums, they are
deliberately inflicting additional "creative chaos" on the displaced
people of New Orleans. The fact that the victims are mostly Black,
makes it all the easier. Or so they assume.
The Resistance
Grassroots community groups, along with platoons of non-native
volunteers, are refusing to acquiesce to the greatest attempted urban
theft in American history. At a conference organized by Mtangulizi
Sanyika's African American Leadership Project and affiliated
organizations, progressive urban planners explored ways to make the
new New Orleans a better place for the people who live there, rather
than for ravenous corporations and new populations. The experts
included Dr. Ed Blakely, of the University of Sydney, Australia; MIT's
Dr. Phil Thompson, housing aide to former New York Mayor David
Dinkins; and Abdul Rasheed, who helped rebuild the flood ravaged Black
town of Princeville, North Carolina after a hurricane in the Nineties.
The coalition also held a Town Hall meeting attended by leaders of 15
national organizations, including Dr. Ron Daniel's Institute of the
Black World, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, and movers and
shakers from the Progressive Baptist Convention and the National
Baptist Convention USA. National co-sponsors included the Hip Hop
Caucus, Black Voices for Peace, the Black Family Summit of the
Millions More Movement, and the National Black Environmental Justice
Network (NBEJN).
(Dr. Robert Bullard, of the NBEJN-affiliated Environmental Justice
Resource Center at Clark-Atlanta University, has published the grim
but very useful report: "A Twenty-Point Plan to Destroy Black New
Orleans.")
Neighborhood groups are mobilizing to confront the racist/corporate
onslaught. "Every other day some major event is happening," said
Sanyika. Various groups held marches during MLK weekend, carrying
signs such as "We're Back," "Stop Displacement," and "Rebuild With
People."
On February 7th, a National Mobilization of progressive forces will
descend on the U.S. Capitol in Washington to pressure Congress to halt
the juggernaut of expulsion and give substance to the people's Right
to Return. Although there are literally thousands of large and small
Katrina-related projects operating throughout the nation, many of the
New Orleans organizers are handicapped by the fact of their own
displacement. A great moral and political challenge presents itself to
Black and progressive America: Will they rise to the occasion in the
face of a real, imminent, well-defined crisis - as opposed to the
general conditions addressed by the Million Man and Millions More
rallies? February 7th will be a test of Black political resolve and
cohesion. And there will be many more.
Meanwhile, New Orleans in some ways resembles a poignant scene from
bygone wars, when lists of the dead were published on public walls.
The "Red Danger List" is posted in local papers, designating
properties that are "in imminent danger of collapse" and, therefore,
subject to demolition without the consent of the owners. To date, over
5,000 buildings have been red tagged.
The "Flood Map" is a kind of municipal schematic of a cemetery,
delineating the parts of the city that will be caused to die.
Residents on the wrong side of the lines will be unable to get flood
insurance, which certainly means no meaningful investment can occur in
those areas. The map was last published in 1984, and is now being
updated.
You can be sure that Black folks are not in charge of the mapping.
Katrina has shown us many things. One, is the hollowness of the purely
electoral Black strategy (and its cousin, lobbying) that followed the
shutdown of mass movements after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.
It is a great irony that, while we rant at FEMA's inability (or
unwillingness) to respond to the Katrina crisis, Black America finds
itself desperately searching for the "people power" tools to
effectively counter the post-Katrina aggression.
The citizens of New Orleans are paying the cost for the mistakes of
the late Sixties and early Seventies, when aspiring electoral and
corporate officeholders convinced Black folks that mass movements were
no longer necessary. Progress would trickle down from the newly
acquired heights. Popular political capital could be wisely invested
in the few, the upwardly mobile.
What we got was chicken-with-his-head-cut-off Ray Nagin and his many
counterparts in plush offices across Black America. We must invent
Black Power all over again, under changed conditions. New Orleans in
its present state is the worst possible place to start - but that's
where we're at.
BC Publishers Glen Ford and Peter Gamble are writing a book to be
titled, Barack Obama and the Crisis in Black Leadership.
Mtangulizi Sanyika, of the African American Leadership Project, can be
contacted at
Wazuri@aol.com.