HANO SUCKS

~ HOUSING IN NEW ORLEANS ~ RENTS RISING ~ HOUSING INSECURITY ~

    VULNERABILITY, JOBLESSNESS & HOMELESSNESS ON THE RISE

               THE HOUSING AUTHORITY OF NEW ORLEANS - HANO -

Can they be more ineffective???  That's what many folks are wondering these days - the pic above is from New Orleans Indymedia.org 0f a gathering/protest at HANO headquarters -  

Try moving from DHAP to Section 8 in this city...... and you will find out just how ineffective HANO is - get the word out about Friday's board meeting - bring your friends, family and neighbors and let's hold these public servants/arrogant bureaucrats accountable.  New Orleans and its economy will never get better if everyone has to struggle daily with this kind idiocy while also struggling to survive in such an environment of concerted business and government depravity that has brought so many to their knees.  Time to RISE UP! 

WAGE THEFT in New Orleans

I went to the City Council Special Projects/Economic Development meeting last week, where one of the agenda items was Wage Theft in New Orleans.  This item was on the agenda because of the recent study " Under Siege: Life for Low-income Latinos in the South" by The Southern Poverty Law Center.

This was some of the most eloquent, articulate and impassioned testimony I have ever heard in the New Orleans City Council Chambers.  It was sad though that only two members of the City Council were present for this testimony at a time when so many of the residents of the city are dealing with such abuses of the private market and at a time when there is an initiative to form a new public private economic development agency, one that we should all hope will move us past such abuses, past the Plantation-Sharecropper economic model the region has employed for more than 150 years - one whose very foundation is built upon exploitation and continues the poverty-making status quo.  Council members Feilkow and Willard-Lewis were the only members present.

Unfortunately this impending new economic development agency looks to be more of the same.  As I testified at a recent City Council Economic development Committee meeting, if the stakeholder identification, community outreach and public information efforts of the group forming this new agency are any indication of their future efforts, we're in deep shit, as very few people in the city are aware of this important development.  It has not been a democratic or transparent process at all, despite the millions of dollars committed by The City.

CulturePAC, a Public Action Coalition for Economic Equity that is seeking to ensure this new agency is inclusive and citizen-driven and is calling for 30% of the seats on the board go to the low-income, since that is the percentage of city residents living in poverty. CulturePAC contends that those who are able to amass capital and wealth, who have exclusive access to vast amounts of private capital are not always the smartest in the room, and are often times the most complacent.  Our low-income community is made up of many of our best and brightest, our most creative, with new ideas and awareness of beneficial alternative economic pathways, with knowledge, skills and abilities in innovation, adaptability and sustainability.   

Please join CulturePAC in making life in New Orleans better for all, rather than just a select few.  Join CulturePAC in developing inclusive economic development policies, strategies and initiatives that will build a more diverse, just and sustainable economy for our region.   

Old Economy v. New Economy

This is what we're talking about! We need creative cultural producer-worker cooperatives in New Orleans in order for our creative cultural products and services not be appropriated and corrupted, for producer worker autonomy - musicians, artists and activists are an independent and suspicious bunch in New Orleans and across the region and for very good reason-
We need producer-worker cooperatives for an equitable, fair and just economy for New Orleans and our nation - for social and economic justice.

Martin Hess in a 2004 piece titled, ‘Spatial’ relationships? Towards a
reconceptualization of embeddedness, for the journal Progress in Human Geography, cited Karl Polayni, writing:
Activities that began as social i.e. of a non-market economy with their forms of reciprocal and
redistributive exchange, were constituted on the basis of shared values and norms that had
their roots in social and cultural bonds rather than monetary goals, societies based on
market exchange reflect only those underlying values and norms that consider price. They do
not recognize any other obligations. Therefore, Polanyi conceived market economies as
disembedded from the social-structural and cultural-structural elements of society.
...... while historically preceding economies were embedded in society and
its social and cultural foundations, Polanyi argues that modern market economies
are not only disembedded, but ‘instead of economy being embedded in social
relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system’ (Polanyi, 1944:
57).


And that is what New Orleans and so many other regions, cities and towns across America needs so urgently now - an economy that is "reciprocal and redistributive ...... constituted on the basis of shared values and norms", based upon, "social and cultural bonds" rather than - strictly "monetary goals."

For more on the New v. Old Economy go to the Summer 2009 issue of YES! Magazine and the U. S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives (See: Links & Resources section at the right of 

page ) .....

Missin' Snooks

Deacon John and June Yamagishi perform at Snook Eaglin's service at the Howlin' Wolf in New Orleans, Feb. 27, 2009

HOODOONOLA: CulturePAC New Orleans Up From The Streets

HOODOONOLA: CulturePAC New Orleans Up From The Streets

CulturePAC New Orleans Up From The Streets

In New Orleans, the most effective change has always come from the bottom, up from the streets, from the traditions and rituals of the city's people and usually from those most in need of change.
The annual St. Joseph's Night community celebrations on the streets of New Orleans are a perfect example. St. Joseph is the Italian Patron Saint of the Laborer and Families. More than 100 years ago Italians and African Americans neighbors joined their heritage and traditions to celebrate the Saint together every March 19th in one of America's most unique gatherings.
As the sun sets people begin gathering at the sacred ground in Central City at Washington and LaSalle Streets and at Second and Dryades Streets. As the sky turns from pink, to purple to a deep midnight blue, rhythm and chants can begin to be heard.
Soon mutli-colored feathered plumes can be seen floating in the distance and the chants, beats and rhythms become louder as Mardi Gras Indians make their way to the four corners, and the people begin to sing and dance with their arrival on this most special night.

More Hurricane Hoodoo in NOLA

This from New Orleans filmmaker Lily Keber and Jordan Flaherty and Saket Soni from the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial
Justice, Bill Quigley from Loyola Law Clinic, Carol Kolinchak from
Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, and many others on Gustav and the ongoing hurricane hoodoo against the public by the privatization elite ~

KATRINA THIRD ANNIVERSARY * GUSTAV EVACUATION * REPUBLICAN CONVENTION

As New Orleans approached the Third Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we held our breath, boarded our houses, loaded our cars, called 311 for state and city evacuation assistance and prayed and hoped big time. The week before we watched as the Wild Tchoupitoulas, the Meters, Tab Benoit, Walter "Wolfman" Washington and other south Louisiana artists performed for the Democrats in Denver in hopes that the "Change We can Believe In" was in fact change we can believe in... that maybe after 3 years the workingclass, low-income and renters in New Orleans will have their needs acknowledged, addressed and met, rather than see their ranks continue to swell as a result of the failed Katrina response, the failed Road Home program and failed economic policies of Democrats and Republicans alike. It's been a road home filled with potholes and ditches for most. It's also been a Republican privatization program of unprecedented proportions - the first ever domestic structural adjustment program - and one that has seen affordable housing demolished and rents rising more than 46%. It's become harder and harder to live here - and for more and more people. Young urban professionals from elsewhere are flocking here for the 'opportunity' our still devastated city provides as they build their resumes and careers. The good paying jobs are going to these young people, while the rest, folks that have lived here for generations and built and rebuilt this city over and over again, and have paid their dues, are left to flounder, castigated for being poor, had their contributions and opportunity denied...
As the Democratic Convention ended, Gustav began his track through the Gulf. I left on Saturday, August 30th with my son. It was his 30th birthday. We drove up the old Blues Highway 61 towards Memphis. We drove through the night and arrived in Memphis just before dawn on Sunday morning and watched during the next couple of days as Republicans packed bags with toothbrushes and toothpaste for folks on the Gulf Coast, watched as Sarah Palin asserted her hockey pitbull lipstick politics while many folks from New Orleans were shuttled and herded to shelters in northern LA, TN and elsewhere ~ to shelters loaded with cots, cockroaches, bathrooms not working and no air conditioning. Some folks that came to TN on the trains said there were armed guards on the trains not allowing people out of their seats, sometimes not even to go to the bathroom. People were not allowed out of their seats to talk to their friends and neighbors evacuating with them. Their luggage had to go through security never seen at train stations - their belongings checked - because they were poor and had to rely upon the state for their safety they deserved nothing better than to be treated as less than American - at least that is the hidden Republican agenda, to relegate the poor to such status. It will only happen time and again and will grow in arrogance and aggressiveness unless we stand as a people and demand better.
There were a lot of young mothers on those trains.
Palin's daughter's pregnancy shouldn't be political everyone was saying, yet when a poor teenage girl in New Orleans becomes pregnant it becomes very, very political and her life chances and those of her baby become severely diminished by virtue of their address, class, income, skin color and a host of other societal predeterminates that are very political, yet are assigned to the individual.

I think we're all tired of suburban princesses and their overarching sense of entitlement. I know I am and find all this rather disturbing after decades of the superficial Republican family values routine, that is only about their families and screw other families and their greedy consolidation of capital that leaves nothing for most other families, most other young mothers and children, a sense of privilege and entitlement that has contributed to rising poverty, joblessness and inequality in America. Some greedy shit. Just what we need - an 80's beauty queen in the White House - this is the chic that made all our lives miserable in high school and now we're going to have one as Commander in Chief! Oh Lord Help Us! McCain sure seems smitten with her though, as most jocks are with beauty queens. The football star and the beauty queen, except this is a presidential election - The War Hero and the Beauty Queen.
Bristol Palin is one lucky unskilled unwed teenage soon-to-be-mom. She, like so many other pregnant high schoolers, has made an impulsive and ill-thought out life changing decision for which, were she not the Republican VP nominee's daughter would be up shit's creek, unable to take responsibility for such a decision at all. If she were a New Orleans teenager she'd be in big trouble and looking at a life of great difficulty. Let's hope she can be a better parent than her own mother has been. Bristol Palin's mom should have provided the guidance necessary to prevent such impulsive acts. It's well-known that many young teenage girls become pregnant because they are not getting the love and attention at home that they need. It is impulsive and unconsciously manipulative. That's not Bristol's fault, but it is her mother's and her father's too. Neither appears to be a very effective parent - two really ineffective parents, despite having all the available resources to be such.
If you can't parent a teenager effectively and provide such necessary guidance to your child, especially when you have the money and other resources to parent effectively - if you still can't - then you have no right assuming you can run a country - Sarah Palin strikes me as way too impulsive and manipulative herself and I suspect her daughter's sense of privilege and entitlement comes from mommy dearest as well. We do not need these attitudes in the White House. We need change, effective change that is not exclusive and crony driven, such as we have for the last 8 years. Palin is hyper greedy and crony driven it appears, as well as impulsive, shrill, predatory, narrow and small minded and clearly suffering from narcissistic personality disorder, which her nomination as VP will likely only aggravate.
What a nightmare it would be for America were Palin and McCain to win in November - what a nightmare it would be for New Orleans and struggling young single moms here and everywhere. Bristol Palin can sit on her ass and be a bon bon eating stay-at-home teenage mom, but almost all other young moms must work full-time and parent full-time, struggling to make ends meet, become educated, deal constantly with inadequate career prospects and income, inadequate child care services, suffering almost constant housing and job insecurity and a host of other problems that Palin and gang will only make worse.
Even those of us with stellar resumes are unable to find work here in New Orleans.