Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » Louisiana Recovery

Video Series: Wade at the Center on Wisconsin Strategy

jstuart — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:03:54 +0000

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The Coming Campaigns in Post-Disaster Katrina Clawbacks

Chieforgasst — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:49:55 +0000

New Orleans At the Fair Grinds Coffeehouse book launch for The Battle for the Ninth Ward, we asked a number of activists gathered on the second floor to share their perspectives and experiences. It was a rich and sometimes painful reminder of how much Katrina is still a daily experience in New Orleans six years later. For many living in the city Katrina is not a question of fatigue, but an advanced syndrome.

Some of the discussion sounded more like battle reports from ongoing fights. Brad Ott with the Save Charity coalition talked about almost 200 lawsuits still outstanding with individuals and others around the hospital construction and closing. Vanessa Gueringer, a leader of A Community Voice in the Lower 9^th Ward, detailed a litany of promises still waiting fulfillment in her community and at one point commented that the only physical evidence of the city’s rebuilding effort to date “was a bicycle path.” Rebecca Sloboda Theriot shared her challenging experiences on the front lines teaching in a charter school in the severely broken school system. Perhaps these are old stories after six years, but each telling opens raw wounds and I could see tears in some eyes.

The report by Mark Moreau, director of New Orleans Legal Assistance Corporation (NOLAC), was the most stunning and sobering to me though because the crises he raised are still ahead of many families and communities and would likely erect insurmountable barriers for some families not only to return to the city but to live securely in the future under any circumstances. From earlier published reports by the states Road Home authorities there has seemed to be an effort to constructively work with families who were still trying to assemble the resources to rebuild, but might have missed some of the deadlines and technical requirements to do so because of loan issues, contractor scams, and the impact of the recession.

Mark and his legal staff though were already finding cases that indicated that FEMA was back in New Orleans again, but was back this time trying to collect monies they had given earlier to families where these families had failed to complete the rebuilding. He gave a number of examples in this area that included efforts where people were still building, but also where FEMA was tracking down families is the diaspora to wrest back refunds of FEMA money, since they were not back home yet. Mark predicted that within six months there might be a deluge of suits that NOLAC would be handling on FEMA related clawbacks. He already had two lawyers working virtually full-time on the problem.

One of the lessons of disaster turns out to be that there is no real end to the disaster. It is a tragedy that keeps reverberating into the future; even as the ripples become smaller they continue unremittingly to hit people over and over. The Katrina Clawback Campaign will be painful, and in this mean spirited political and economic time, will be difficult to win where mercy collides with justice.

No Account and No Accountability Charter Schools

dine — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:41:17 +0000

New aOrleans Few do not know that New Orleans schools are “ground zero” in the so-called “reform” movement to privatize public school systems with charter schools. With the excuse of Hurricane Katrina the State of Louisiana, which had never run a school (never, ever!) in a wink-and-nod deal took a $20 million federal carrot to clobber the Orleans Parish School Board, which was slow to reopen, and gobbled up almost two-thirds of our schools to reopen as charters. This was supposed to be a five year deal. These schools usurped democratic accountability since they were no longer responsible to a citizen elected school board, and essentially got to “invent” their own boards. Now at almost Katrina Plus 6 (K+6), both the city and the experts are split over the analysis of whether or not the schools have gotten better or not with the States Recovery School District (RSD) czar swearing so, and former superintendents and other researchers looking at the same data and saying, “no!” Worse, some of these charter operators are solidifying their control with new 10-year extensions of their original takeovers.

That’s the necessary background for you to understand that now the wheels are totally coming off of this pimpmobile!

Two months ago the New York Times ran a front page story raising a wide variety of disturbing questions about a Turkish-related company (Cosmos Foundation and Atlas Texas Construction and Trading) connected to a religious movement in that country running a vast network of charter schools in Texas and others states, including in Louisiana and specifically Abramson Science and Technology Charter, a local high school. Nothing stirred in New Orleans at this news, not even a mouse. Suddenly, a whistleblower report inside the state Department of Education came into the hands of the local paper, The Times-Picayune. Some pretty serious allegations involving potential bribes, possible rapes, cheating on science projects by teachers, teachers missing in action, and more all came out as grist for the mill. Oh, and then the state and the city seemed to realize that this school was also linked to the Turkish movement and acted surprised. The state and its puppet, the RSD, reversed course and suspended the charter, leaving parents and students scrambling with only weeks to go before the opening of the 2011-12 school year.

Today the state fired the whistleblower, who had raised questions about Abramson and its operator over a year ago, along with his boss. What?!? No explanation given of course, just a call for a “change in direction.” Egads!

Critics, or frankly anyone who thinks about any of these no account and no accountability charters, have long questioned how in the world the state could effectively supervise thirty (30!) different school charter operators under either the RSD or the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) Board. Now it is clear from the squirming that the DOE didn’t really bother to tell the BESE board or others about the problems they were finding here. And, remember there is no elected school board control and the charters appoint their own, self-perpetuating boards who never face the citizens.

This is a prescription for disaster, so who should really be surprised when disaster unfolds?

Now everyone who should have known and should have acted is playing “he said, she said,” and I dunno nada! The local RSD superintendent is now claiming Abramson will reopen in a month or so with some kind of new operator, but there still are no assurances that anyone is on first, and I’ll guarantee that no one is on second. Meanwhile these are all taxpayer supported playgrounds for so-called reformers and play-pretend “experts” who know better than parents and citizens, while flaunting and making a farce of democratic standards and traditions.

Hasn’t New Orleans suffered enough already?

If Not Japan, Then Nobody is Ready

jstuart — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 14:41:15 +0000

New Orleans After Katrina a group of us who were community organizers with ACORN in New Orleans were given tickets to go to Japan to see what lessons had been learned from the Kobe earthquake a little more than 10 years before Katrina in 1995 and their recovery as well as precautions Tokyo had taken to protect the parts of that city that were as much as 15 feet below sea level. Looking particularly at Kobe which in the almost dozen years between the disaster and its fires killing more than 6000, had recovered its population and rebuilt, we could not help but be impressed. Walking on the super-levees of Tokyo that dwarfed anything in the American imagination for prevention and protection was also encouraging. Talking to professors, community organizers, and others, it was clear that if anyone had learned something and was prepared to get it right, Japan was the place.

All of which makes the scenes from the one-two punch caused by the 8.9 level earthquake and tsunami in the prefectures of northern Japan, even more disturbing to me. In Kobe the Japanese government had responded with billions for relief within a month of the earthquake and the priorities were first the poor and elderly and their return, all of which was opposite the USA response to Katrina, always too late, and usually too little, and never the poor first, regardless of the images embedded forever in our minds from scores of camera angles. Even with such rapid response, Kobe officials were frank with us that once the elderly and poor were relocated, even though population had returned in absolute terms to the city, a huge percentage of those populations had not been able to come back.

As always, we fool ourselves it seems. The early CNN reports mentioned the rapid response, the preparation, and the improved building standards post-Kobe, which would keep the death toll and damage estimates down. Now only days later the speculation on deaths dwarfs Kobe and is estimated between 10,000 and 20,000, which we can only pray is an exaggeration. And, though building standards may have been improved, there is no way to read about the nuclear plant generations being set at ground level on the assumption that the seawalls were adequate protection, and not feel that our hubris continually tempts fate and returns disaster.

The government in Japan still seems to be doing the right thing time after time, but the Cassandra warning here once again is that we have to have vital and robust governments willing and citizens willing to pay the prices to support adequate infrastructure protection if any of us can ever really feel safe for our families and future.

“The Greatest Mardi Gras Illusion: The Happiness of the Poor”

jstuart — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 14:56:04 +0000

March 8, 2011 In the Bywater – New Orleans Cheyenne, my old, arthritic Australian cattle dog, needed walking so we jumped out on the street early in a light, warm drizzle hoping to beat the crowds moving towards parades in a couple of hours. No such luck. Within a block from the house we ran into a curious tribe of more than 100 marchers with halloweeney kinds of shirts, calling themselves “The Bones,” accompanied by clanging street signs, pots and pans, noise makers, and smoke bombs.

They went to Rampart and I continued on course on my normal route towards the Press Street railroad tracks, the dividing line between Bywater and Marigny. A straggler group of twenty or so ended up somehow behind me so it seemed as if Cheyenne and I were acting as Spy Boy for this crew. Reaching our old shotgun double, I saw my daughter, Dine’, in the living room and called her out for a look. She hipped me to the fact that the Bones were trying to revive an old Mardi Gras tradition in the African-American community of neighborhood marchers.

The bigger news was the front page story on the thinly disguised police riot a couple of blocks from where I was standing on Sunday night around 10:30 PM that disrupted the Krewe of Eris. The Times-Picayune front page headline had been: “Police, marchers clash in Marigny: Six officers injured in melee.’ Dine’ had told me the story early Monday morning. Police had chased down marchers and bystanders and in several cases brought them to the ground and hit them with tasers. The end of her story had been that “it was one of the first times I was ashamed of New Orleans,” and that’s serious stuff in our family. The article didn’t spin the same cover-up as the headline had advertised, and quoted at length from a participant about the police’s unruly behavior. Another observer told the reporters about the police provocation with “ear splitting sirens.” Dine’ had seen a couple of marchers flick bits of their costumes at a police car, but that’s hardly damage. The police version has not come out yet, which local observers know always means that they are monitoring the story to see what they can get away with. In New Orleans only a fool would ever believe the police version of anything at this point. There is no sign despite and new mayor and a new chief that the police are anything but out of control still, despite tough talk and drum banging downtown.

At the end of her block all sides of the march converged. As Cheyenne and I tried to get by, we finally saw the Bones banner leading the way and both of us had to nod in resigned agreement as we read the white letters on the homemade black background: The Greatest Mardi Gras Illusion: The Happiness of the Poor.”

The folks uptown and in what’s left of city business will have their parties and toast each other at the balls. The hotels and restaurants are touting the late date as a boon for business.

Otherwise in the Crescent City, same ol,’ same ol.’

Bywater Bohemia

dine — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 15:19:15 +0000

Bywater's McCarthy Square Arch

New Orleans Having been on extended home-leave of almost a month before I hit the road again soon for Toronto, New York City, and DC, it’s been interesting taking the new measure of my neighborhood in New Orleans. Bywater has morphed from what the New York Times called a “working class neighborhood” several miles east of the French Quarter to something they now describe as “bohemian.” What to make of all of this?
Some of it is actually true. Some of it is even a good thing. Not all of it, but definitely some of it.
A couple of days I tagged along with my daughter and a bunch of her gal-pals to something called a “pizza speakeasy.” Basically a couple of fellas had built a big adobe looking oven in their backyard, cleared out the first couple of rooms in an old house in the hood for benches and a band, built a campfire surrounded by plastic chairs in the backyard, flung swirling dough high into the naked branches of their one tree, sold pizzas for $12 with some simple drinks, and packed the place out. Interestingly, the hometown paper had reported on new Mayor Mitch Landrieu eating at a similar pizza speakeasy called “Pizza Delicious” at the end of last year without qualms or hesitation. License? Don’t’ ask anyone about a “stinking” license in the post-Katrina young hipster magnet the greater Bywater area had become. This was a party-scene pure and simple, not a health department concern. A couple of guys make their rent and groceries for one night of long work over a hot fire for a night, and a 100+ twenty-somethings warded off the cold with weak drinks, a small fire, and two-hour waits for pizza that was at best “fair.”

Welcome to my Bywater, 2011 version!
Yesterday an itinerant barber was giving haircuts in the sun on my patio for $20 a pop, carrying his tools like a jornalero. The same day a big time developer who built his house on the corner of the next block, one-hundred feet away from me, was featured in the paper’s Saturday real estate section showing off his place and its many unique features, many from Mexico and the East, as well as the two voodoo altars. None of that was a radical as his saying that this wildly expensive Bywater mansion had been built without air-conditioning. Now that is radical in New Orleans! He finished the story by saying he liked looking out his window at our street sometimes and seeing something like a clown riding a high-seated bicycle up the street. Maybe he can make it here after all?

After Katrina the hip coffee spot was the “Sound Cafe,” but it was actually across the Press Street railroad tracks in Faubourg Marigny, closer to the Quarter. Now, it’s Satsuma Cafe on Dauphine serving eggs and sandwiches as well with a long, well behaved lines and great service but a slow kitchen that the youngish customers don’t seem to mind as part of the price of the new Bywater scene. Even Elizabeth’s has finally gotten it right again after a couple of bad post-Katrina years, and once again, the crowd there is also a smattering of the new neighborhood and the old standbys like me enjoying a cheap hamburger steak with onions. Add in the new barbeque place “The Joint” on Poland and the suddenly wildly popular Bachannal wine bar on the same street, and we’re what’s happening!

It’s not exactly gentrification, because hardly anyone can afford to buy in the neighborhood since Katrina proved how high and dry we are. Property taxes and insurance have both doubled and tripled since the storm as well, and rents are still two and three times what they suddenly were after the storm. But it is gentrification in the sense that it’s all whiter-than-rain in the Bywater now, compared to the almost statistically pure racial balance that existed here more than 30 years ago when I moved back to the city. The younger set is willing to “camp out” in $1000 unit rentals, each pitching in their share, in a way that the usual service-sector working family just can’t afford.

Even the affordable rental housing being built from old warehouses in the neighborhood by the new neighbor developer are not straight up section 8’s, but “art lofts” for the Richard Florida crowd, and hugely white in this still majority black city. An item in Saturday’s paper recorded a $1.2 M real estate transaction for more Art Lofts expansion across the street on Dauphine in this area that was one of the scenes in John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces and the site of a textile workers strike led by my old friend Bill Becker before he ended up in Arkansas for years as president of the state’s AFL-CIO.

The neighborhood library, a half-a-block from me, is filled with young black students early on a Saturday morning doing homework and projects but by the afternoon is hipsters, tattoos, piercings and nose rings, using the computers to check emails and surf the net. All good!

On the other hand a warehouse fire in recent weeks was the most lethal in 40 years, killing 8 people and a couple of dogs, almost all in their 20’s, and mostly train hoppers and pan handlers at stoplights in the area. A cold night and an open fire seem to have been the death sentence for the squatters, but this is also part of the bohemian magnet of the Bywater area now in a city desperate for new blood and new people and without the infrastructure or resources to be too prissy and delicate about any of this.
The streets are safer now in a weird way. Dog walkers are about on Burgundy at all hours of the night and day. Bicyclers are the same way moving up and down the street to service jobs or friends’ places or whatever all of the time.

I should have known we were knocking on Greenwich Village’s door when I stopped and listened to the lies of the bicycle tour guide at the McCarty Square Arch the first time I saw them. The tourists ate it up and he wove fact and fantasy about the neighborhood together, hardly noticing that they had to walk around the arch to see the names of the “colored” soldiers memorialized for their service in WWI on the back side while the white soldiers occupied the front. Now, when I’m around I will see four or five bike tours at the Arch, the only difference is whether or not they ride with or without helmets, otherwise they give the same stories in the city of tall tales.
We’ve crossed over into a new, strange, disturbing and exciting place in the evolution of Bywater. Better to be growing than dying, but who knows what this chapter will really end up meaning.

Oil Spill Tar Balls on Orange Beach

dine — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 16:40:38 +0000

Orange Beach It’s hard to beat the white sands and rolling dunes of the “Redneck Riveria” in southern Alabama. It’s Alabama, but once you cross the bridge at the Pass to the East you are only 2 or 3 miles from the small sign that says “Florida” at the western tip of the Panhandle. The Alabama state park system has done a good thing through this gorgeous stretch and taken control of miles of beach and acres of sand between the South Beach Wannabe Condo developments sprouting in between.

50 degrees feels colder than it should along the water, but the sun was bright and the waves rolling, so a walk on the beach was mandatory early Sunday morning. Walking along it was surprising in the quiet to see something that looked like stick figure humans east towards the Pass.

Coming closer it turned out to be 8 or 9 men in chartreuse vests and one woman in a Tyvek suit with 4 WD buggies including a tractor pulling two porta-potties . All of them were waving long necked nets towards the water’s edge. I asked them what was up.

The foreman said they were picking up tar balls washing up from the British Petroleum oil spill that went on endlessly during the summer. I had to take off my sunglasses. It wasn’t easy to spot them. Their nets were hardly 1/3^rd filled as they poked the water in a desultory fashion.

How long will you be out here on the state park beach? “As long as it takes until we get it all,” he replied in a matter of fact tone.

“It looks pretty good at this point,” I offered, “so you must be making progress.”

He replied, “It’s better than it was.”

Months ago and months to go, the cleanup is off of the headlines, but here on Orange Beach far to the east of the spill, every day is still filled with the workaday tasks of the picking tar balls out of the Gulf at the water’s edge.

Gulf Coast Hospitality Workers Need to Sit on Oil Spill Santa’s Lap Now!

dine — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 16:51:52 +0000

New Orleans My darling and brilliant niece’s husband, an Australian bloke who we dearly love, was working this summer running a high end, specialty bar at the W Hotel on Poydras Avenue in New Orleans during the time of the terrible British Petroleum Gulf Oil Spill. My daughter, Dine,’ now a mainstay of the Local 100 United Labor Unions organizing staff in New Orleans and ever alert to both injustice and opportunities started telling me a couple of weeks ago about huge, wild settlements going to bartenders in the French Quarter, CBD, and even in our Bywater neighborhood. The amounts were amazing: $7000 to one, $17000 to another, and so on! I was skeptical. She cited Will Miller as an impeccable source, so I was moved, but wanted to know more. Maybe this was just a benefit being sought and received by a secret society of New Orleans bartenders, rather than part of the Kenneth Feinberg compensation and damages program, official called the Gulf Coast Claims Facility?

With the deadline hard on us for emergency claims to be submitted (Close of business on Tuesday 11/23!), I didn’t’ want to start an irresponsible gold rush, if this was nothing more than rumor fueled by alcohol coming from the hands of the same bartenders. I know not to trust the hometown paper as the ultimate authority on these matters, but all of their storylines had focused on oil workers, fishermen, and others barely staying afloat with graphic photos from the beautiful and damaged bayou country south of the city. Why were we not seeing pictures of lines trailing out into the streets here in broke ass New Orleans, if money was falling from BP trees, especially in the always hospitality hard luck and humidity summer season?

My daughter – the organizer – felt the issue was that not enough people knew this was possible and were going to apply and get the compensation. Pressed this week for more information, she confirmed that other conversations with hospitality workers in her haunts, I mean after more outreach and research, she had turned up servers and other “line” workers who had applied and gotten payments also ranging in the thousands of dollars. Ok, I’m there!

In an abundance of caution I made one more last minute call before spreading the call for hospitality workers to rush the BP pay windows. I reached out for Darrin Browder, one of the managing directors of the Restaurant Opportunities Center in New Orleans (ROC/NOLa) certain that he would have the down-low. I missed him on the phone a little after 5PM, but within minutes Darrin was replying via email on his I-phone. Yes, he had heard the same thing, and, yes, ROC had helped some of their members apply. No, he did not know of any of their members that had received money yet, but he had also heard the big numbers that I was hearing. In a further email exchange that evening, Darrin also reported that he knew a number of French Quarter restaurants had gotten anywhere from “hundreds of thousands to millions” of dollars from the BP claims fund. He was skeptical about a number of them sharing their award with their workforce, but cited Emeril’s as the hero of this story. The nationally famous restaurant in fact did share the award by giving their entire workforce a check when Emeril received his payment. (Emeril had a famous misstep after Katrina where he was reported as publicly doubting the recovery, but this is a class move, showing the brother has learned something about live in our fair city!)

Finally to put an even finer point on it, there was a puff piece by Joe Nocera in the Times this morning that I saw as I was writing this, where he reported that he was chowing down with Kenneth Feinberg at one of those $20 per plate, $100 expense account breakfasts at the fancy Carlyle Hotel in New York City, and Feinberg was trying to organize a pity party for himself about how hard his job was giving out the BP $20 billion pot of claims money fairly. Another fancy pants diner a couple of tables over – love these stories of the big whoops having a “class crises”! – overheard Feinberg’s loud moaning, and loudly yelled and repeated: “Just.Pay.Them.” (Buddy, if you read this somehow, send me your name and your breakfast is on Local 100 at Emeril’s!) The whole bottom line of Nocera’s “talking business” column was “claim up,” “go for the gold,” and the heck with court. Right on! That was the final straw for me!

Find the claims office. Google “Gulf Coast Claims Facility.” Get your act together with your bank deposits and pay slips, and get your app in Monday or Tuesday rather than diddling around. Feinberg can have his pity party about his tough job, but if there’s a check for a couple of thousand waiting for you for lost wages and tips and work during the Spill Summer, it’s time to cash in.

Here’s how:

Through the Website: You can complete the Claim Form online by going to the www.GulfCoastClaimsFacility.com website and selecting “Claim Form.” The online instructions will tell you how to complete a Claim Form and how to submit the form and the supporting documents online.
By Visiting a GCCF Claims Site Office: You can complete a Claim Form and submit documents in person at one of the GCCF Claims Site Offices, where a Claims Evaluator will help you fill out the form. You may obtain a list of the GCCF Claims Site Offices near you by visiting www.GulfCoastClaimsFacility.com or by calling the GCCF toll free number, 1-800-916-4893. TTY: 1-866-682-1758.

There’s some information on the website that indications a “regular payment” may be available for paperwork by August 2013, so don’t piddle, but there may be some play in this, too.

In the old HOTROC days we would be cranking out the Xerox machine with flyers telling people to CLAIM OIL SPILL MONEY NOW! We would be making sure workers knew the score and were ready to roll. In fact that’s not a bad idea.

Stella! Chaco! Where are you!!!! We have work for you on Monday!!!

It’s Santa time!

Bring Back 1st Time Tax Credit

dine — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:01:21 +0000

New Orleans Shaun Donovan at HUD is clearly having problems getting his arms around the fact that America is not New York, the evidence starting with the horrible failure of the mortgage modification program or rather the lack of a mortgage modification program. Now throwing more words at the housing crises this weekend in pronouncements he reheated the money transfer scheme to the states for unemployed borrowers, postponing rather than solving problems, and talked about something with the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) about refinancing, details unknown.

I’m going to sign up for bringing back support for the 1^st time home buyers program that ended in April even though it is a tax credit of $8000 rather than direct support at the point of sale, which would really get the sales charts soaring in the dead-in-the-water real estate market. So far other than bailout and boost up banks, the Administration hasn’t had much success with anything else in the housing field and fall is usually not the hot season for sales in that industry with winter’s bite not far away in many markets.

Driving down Franklin Avenue returning from visiting the Mom yesterday afternoon, I was surprised by the number of for sale signs on this street where a ridge and houses built higher off the avenue had allowed recovery more quickly in the midst of the Gentilly deluge. A betting man would believe that the prices are still based more on wishes than reality, but I’m not sure who would take the plunge even on Franklin where an ex-Mayor of New Orleans is one of the neighbors without a little bit of love from the federales. Milne Boys’ Home, where Louis Armstrong was partially raised during its time as an orphanage, continues to sit in sullen scandal with blue tarps flying frayed as the flags on Franklin, but there’s good news even there as several million was announced recently to finally rebuild.

Something has to move the inventory here and elsewhere, and at least the 1^st time homeowners program is something even HUD knows how to handle.

Moving the Money: Kartina Plus Five

dine — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:33:06 +0000

Vanessa's picture in the Times Picayune by David Grunfeld

New Orleans These things all take time.

I finally am bothering friends and family about how to make our fishing camp on the bayou abutting the Big Branch National Wildlife Refuge a mile up from Lake Ponchartrain useable again without rebuilding. A pontoon and pulley operation rather than a bridge, decking with temporary structures or tents or yurts, rather than a house-like thing, and adding ducks to fish as part of the attraction, are finally real discussions and plans.

I finally am starting to clean out the damage in the garage this weekend. Throwing away or salvaging tools that the water seeped in and rusted in the tool cabinet. Putting wrenches and sockets where they belong. Looking at the whole in the overhang floor and getting out the tape
measure to face the problem head on.

I’ve got a lot of feelings about the tons of articles, films, and whatever on the 5th anniversary. I’m mulling. I’m worried. We’ll cover that later.

I looked long and hard at the Times-Picayune’s picture today of Vanessa Gueringer, the
leader of A Community Voice in New Orleans, a pillar in the Lower 9th, and a woman whose
courage, conviction, and true grit have made her a personal hero of mine.

In a meeting in the lower 9 with city officials only a few days ago, Arnie Felkow, one of the city wide elected at large members of the New Orleans City Council, admitted that over the last year he and others on the council had moved recovery money that was earmarked for rebuilding the lower 9 to Algiers of all places, which was basically untouched by Katrina. How could that have been done? Why was it wrapped in silence? How can city officials be offended at the anger and attack of Vanessa, her neighbors and her organization, when they feel, correctly, that they are still being abandoned?

The big things are like the little things. Just like my work in the garage, rebuilding has a lot to do with removing layers of dirt and grime, and putting things back in their right places, throwing some things away and keeping others, whether it be finding justice for murders covered up in the water and chaos or even today keeping eagle eyes on every dollar to make sure it finds its proper path to people, there’s more to do than has been done, and we’ve only just begun.

Five years is forever and just yesterday when thinking of Katrina.

Sandra Bullock for Louisiana Governor

jstuart — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:07:32 +0000

New Orleans Today Sandra Bullock, recently an Academy Award winning best actress and since Hurricane Katrina a laser focused supporter and annual homecoming queen of Warren Easton High School on Canal Street, demanded her piece on a promo video done by “Women of the Storm” about Gulf restoration be removed because she refused to front and ‘ho for oil companies. No worry, Senator Mary Landrieu, who wears a permanent tattoo signaling her allegiance to oil companies working in the Gulf, was glad to step right, no research needed, to take one for the storm troopers.

Bullock doesn’t like being played for a fool it seems. She just solved a little problem like that in her personal life from what I’ve read. After doing her part, hoping to help Gulf recovery, she came to understand (thanks to www.deSmogBlog.com which I’m putting on my Google Reader, thank you!) that the storm troopers were joined at the hip with America’s WETLAND Foundation, which has been a “soft core” coastal restoration outfit created (according to Bruce Alpert in the Times-Picayune) with state money and slicked down with oil company contributions (which is a little disingenuous given the huge role they have played in coastal destruction!).

Bullock wants to know the “facts” her release said about the connections. To start with the storm troopers have been a vehicle for Anne Milling since Katrina and based on cozy, old school, uptown relationships with the Times-Picayune, Whitney Bank, oil interests, and others have been a favored darling at the fuzzy point of “elite panic” about the city and its future since the storm. Other than fly an almost entirely lily white delegation of upper crust women to DC in a chartered plane to speak for our 2/3rds African-American and poor city, I’m not sure what they ever did at all, but they were the long toothed, debutante ball in a bad post-K season. America’s WETLAND Foundation’s chair is her husband King Milling, a former bigwig at Whitney Bank, the old school and oil field standard in New Orleans. Milling is Mr. Public Relations, having been quoted by me in the past for his refusal to accept pay limits as a bailed out bank and his opposition to rebuilding the 9^th ward and other black majority parts of the city. Of course he’s there as a front for oil and finance interests. No waves will hit them from on his shore watch.

Alpert quotes: “A written statement Thursday from Women of the Storm said America’s WETLAND is listed as a sponsor of the Restore the Gulf effort because it agreed to help with logistics, such as presenting the signed petitions to Congress and the administration.” Huh? What are the storm troopers going to do then? Or the US Mail if planes are not landing at National or Dulles airports? DeSmogBlog says both groups are fronts for a taxpayer bailout for British Petroleum’s cleanup and a full tilt, no change charge to return to business as usual by the oil companies in the Gulf. Neither group has gotten the memo that those days are now gone in the wake of the oil spill.

So, I’m for running Bullock for Governor. She makes stuff happen. She seems like she doesn’t want to shill for either the elites or the special interests. She doesn’t hesitate to walk her own talk. Rather than just politic about education, she rolls up her sleeves and makes change happen. She actually seems to care about both Louisiana and New Orleans and given her deep Austin, Texas roots that must represent a life changing experience, which is also a good thing. Given our constant war with crime as well, her experience with the FBI from “Miss Congeniality” won’t hurt. She’s a huge football fan from what I gather from “Blind Side” and that puts her in good stead with the vast majority of Louisianans smitten with the LSU Tigers and the New Orleans Saints. Given the amount of tax money that the State of Louisiana hands over to the film industry in tax breaks, she would at least make sure we got something on the backside because he has experience watching the books of these film folks.

I’d switch from a clown now to a star tomorrow in a flash: Sandra Bullock for Governor of Louisiana!

Why So Little Change Won from BP Gulf Crisis?

jstuart — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:02:36 +0000

New Orleans Fingers are crossed, breath held, and hopes soaring that finally there may be an interim fix on the British Petroleum BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. An article by David Fahrenthold and Juliet Eilperin in the Washington Post yesterday asked in a timely fashion why this oil crisis has not produced environmental changes and victories? (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/11/AR2010071103523.html).

Good question! They have a lot to say about, some of which is probably on point (general recession) and some of which is not (too far…huh…Louisiana is way closer than Alaska!). I worry that there is more to this though.

Woefully part of the problem has been the total inability of the environmental organizations and the movement as a whole to speak with anything resembling one voice. Many times there seems to be more jockeying for position and resources among the groups that real mobilization of support for change. But, clearly there is a real lack of consensus on what the changes should be.

Perhaps the largest divide is over calls for a ban on oil drilling. The ban is opposed by 77% of the American people who have been sold for decades that there oil is important and it is better for it to come from “home” than the Middle East and elsewhere. The divide is also stark in the Gulf where the support for oil workers and the oil service industry is significant because of the jobs and impact on the economy. The oil companies have also just been better by miles for decades in keeping any of the environmental problems of drilling off of their shoes. The best example is the well documented problem of canal dredging by the companies along the bayous which has led to tremendous coastal erosion with no real consequences to the companies.

The “face” of the workers more often has been the fisherman and the nostalgia for a “way of life” on the coast, but this has been a deep seated problem for years, exacerbated by Katrina and the loss of thousands of boats and jobs over the last 5 years as well. The long term impact on these workers could stretch for decades.

The inability of many environmental groups to find common cause with blue collar workers on the water and on the rigs is not new, but it also means that winning real protections for the environment, the coast, and the future might be part of the price being paid for the inability to forge the real blue-green coalition needed here.

Environmentalists are the only ones unable to pull the switch. Unions have been embarrassingly silent in this crisis. The initial loss of life and the obvious worker safety issues have not given unions and other worker advocates traction in calling for more health and safety measures or even clearing up the OSHA jurisdiction on a rig outside of our territorial waters. The oil patch has resisted unionization for 50 years, but here was an opportunity met in silence once again both on the water and on the rigs.

It almost appears that movements have lost ties to their base so completely and are now so caught on agendas that are based in the beltway, no matter how important or valid, that they are just stuck and scratching when opportunity knows somewhere that is not at their front door in Georgetown or somewhere on a street with an NW fixed firmly. This has to change!