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.

The Magnolia @ Washington & LaSalle Streets, New Orleans

Magnolia R.I.P. Gone, but not forgotten, 1941 -2008

Wild Tchoupitoulas Mardi Gras Indians heading to Democratic National Convention

The Wild Tchoupitoulas are going to the 2008 Democratic National Convention! An amazing First in America and Big Time Kudos to all the folks that pulled this together, from Rueben Williams of Thunderbird Management, Tab Benoit, Cyril Neville, James Carville, Bill Taylor of the Tipitina's Foundation, the Friends of New Orleans and many others!
Now you know the Republican convention is really gonna pale in comparison. "New Orleans?" they say...."Mardi Gras Indians? " Duh!
The convention is just days before the Third Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and presents a great opportunity for us to remind the nation that New Orleans is a great American city. To remind the nation of what the late great New Orleans artist John Scott said of the city at the end of the PBS American Experience episode on New Orleans ~

"The promise of that city is the lesson that can be learned from that city. At its best, when the people are doing what they do naturally--blending a seamless culture it has a oneness about it that very few places in the rest of this country has. New Orleans' promise is we can teach America how to be America. If anybody's listening."

The Shock Doctrine - The Video

THE SHOCK DOCTRINE ~ DISASTER CAPITALISM

Appearing at New Orleans' Loyola University the Saturday before the 2nd Anniversary of Katrina was writer and activist Naomi Klein, whose forthcoming book (September, 2007) is titled THE SHOCK DOCTRINE: DISASTER CAPITALISM.
We know something about Disaster Capitalism 'round these parts these days as public housing residents and other renters are denied the right to return, and now with huge insurance bills and huge increases in property tax assessments it appears the powers that be in that predatory capitalism realm are trying to force even middle-class homeowners out of New Orleans. Every third house is for sale, while economic opportunity is being denied to all except the elite, it seems........
I think Klein has it right on this one, from the events in NYC on 9/11/01, to Iraq in '03, to Katrina in '05 ~ the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting not only poorer but displaced, forced to be come nomads.......

Naomi Klien speaks at Loyola Law School

RESIST DISASTER CAPITALISM WITH DISASTER COLLECTISM
Share information and resources!
Two years on from Katrina I believe that a social economy approach is necessary to mitigate the abuses of the private market and to hold the disaster capitalists at bay.....
Presently New Orleans Department of Economic Development is in a shambles, with the 3rd Director in as many years having just recently resigned. I don't think this is an accident, but rather a covert initiative on the part of the private marketeers, the neoliberal FREE marketeers...their idea of free markets is lots of profits for them "For FREE" and screw everyone else......
these cats that view the world in terms of a Winner- Loser scenario.....when they talk about how much opportunity there is on the Gulf Coast now they are speaking of the $BILLION$ of dollars in Gulf Opportunity Zone money for rebuilding and manuvering so New Orleans' economic development apperatus is disabled allows them to tap into that money much easier -- to take the money and run.......as they have done in so many other places. And it makes it more difficult for the grassroots to tap into these funds and do something significant - more community and broad-based......
These tactics stifle collectivism at a time when it really needs to be encouraged and facilitated.
With more homeless in New Orleans than before Katrina, we need to think in different terms, outside the capitalist-consumerist box and maybe consider co-housing initiatives and collective and cooperative worker-owned businesses. This is where our economic development funds should be going, instead of funding NFL franchises.........instead they're making it it so ordinary people are worried about trying to rebuild, scrambling every day through low-wage jobs to come up with a few bucks to pay the rent, or for homeowners ~ scrambling to pay hugely inflated insurance and property tax bills....... this way folks are knocked-off balance and can't afford to pay attention to what is really going on, let alone actually exercise their democratic civil rights and liberties to try to organize and work together to make things right for themselves, their families and their neighborhoods and communities. Tactics of racial and economic division are being employed in New Orleans, producing more poverty, classism, racism, economic injustice, crime...........Divide and Conquer tactics that seem to be coming from the Republican White House through U.S. Attorney Jim Letten's office here.......as every well-respected and trusted populist black Democrat is indicted.......as they go after the state's film office as well as ordinary people as 'corrupt'. I believe the White House and the Republican party is corrupt and worse, Sneaky &Predatory, as evidenced by the rich and republican getting richer and the poor getting poorer.................ARM YOURSELF WITH THE TRUTH!
DON'T BELIEVE FOR ONE MINUTE THEY TRYING TO HELP NEW ORLEANS!

8.29.07 A DAY OF PRESENCE - 2nd ANNIVERSARY OF KATRINA - THE CONVENTION CENTER 2 YEARS LATER.....

TRUMPETS IN THE HOUSE! Kermit Ruffins & James Andrews
Social Activist Malik Rahim, the founder and organizer of the COMMON GROUND COLLECTIVE, a group that has done amazing things for survivors in the Ninth Ward and Algiers, from enlisting health professionals to ferry in prescriptions past military immediately after the disaster, to bringing in thousands of volunteers to help gut and rebuild flooded homes...

You might recognize Phyliss Montana (cntr) in this photo. She was the outspoken, heartful and eloquent focus of Spike Lees' Katrina documentary, "When the Levees Broke". Also in the photo is New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin and behind Ray & Phyliss is former City Councilwoman Jackie Clarkson, who it has been said is hoping to get another seat on the council now that Oliver Thomas has been ousted. Clarkson is probably most noted for her initiative to place arm rests in the center of city benches so the homeless could not use benches to lie down on, rest or sleep. Nagin's main agenda these days seems not so much the city's recovery, but rather scouting higher offices to run for, and jetting around the country to raise campign funds. Which is OK by this voter because I think we need some new blood in city government, somebody heartfelt and eloquent. My vote will go to either Rahim or Montana for Mayor...............or maybe they can both serve as Co-Mayors!!!
Nagin is continuing to dis the City Council and this week councilmembers had to subpoena a member of the Mayor's adminstration just to garner a simple meeting........Geez Ray, what is that about????? Stop acting like a spoiled little kid, will ya??? Please try and cooperate with the council and the people --- the city's citizens -- your constituency--- you know the folks that elected ya........

MARCH AGAINST THE RED CROSS

This from the People's Hurrican Relief Fund, posted on the CLU listserv ~


WHY WE MARCH AGAINST RED CROSS

Red Cross has solicited and received billions of dollars to aid Katrina survivors. A large portion of that money (possibly $80 million) was directed toward the Means to Recovery program. Red Cross officials don’t agree on the actual amount and have tried their best to hide the program and make it difficult for desperate survivors to receive these funds.

The Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund and other groups across the nation are protesting on Monday, August 20 at Red Cross offices t0 demand that Red Cross do right by the people these funds were received for.

We are calling for:

1. Immediate disbursal of all funds received for Katrina-Rita Survivors with a target date set for completion

2. Elimination of the Case Manager process and implementation of a swift, simple process for getting funds into the hands of needy survivors

3. Total Accountability for all funds received and disbursed. A ‘dollars-to-demographics’ accounting of funds received for survivors

4. Immediate identification and release of any funds that were directed to other agencies for Katrina-Rita relief

5. Congressional and local investigations into the use of Katrina-related funds by all government and non-profit agencies

My Name Is New Orleans

This is some cool stuff. This guy is great and eloquently speaks ( in New Orleans Speak) for many of us here in HoodooNOLA!
Where Y'at!!
Who Shot The LA LA!! I don't know! But I think it was a forty fo!!

SOMETIMES THEY ARE HEADS OF STATE, PRESIDENTS OR VICE PRESIDENTS

Experts: Terror suspects not brainwashed
By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 24 minutes ago

LONDON - Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaida's No. 2. George Habash of the PLO. Mahmoud Zahar, the Hamas strongman in Gaza. All trained as doctors — as did at least seven suspects in the failed bomb attacks in Britain.

The general public often is shocked to see that doctors — the world's healers — can become militants or even terrorist killers. But some experts believe it is part of a socio-economic trend in which wealthy families highly educate their sons, who sometimes become radical and have the education they need to become leaders.

"People often assume that terrorists are poor, disadvantaged people who are brainwashed or need the money. But the ones who actually perpetrate violence without handlers and manipulation are highly intelligent by necessity," said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College in Stockholm.

................. OR ARE HEADS OF STATE, PRESIDENTS OR VICE PRESIDENTS.............OR LARGE MULTI-NATIONAL CORPORATIONS.....
GENERALLY ANYONE WITH WEALTH AND POWER!! By the looks of it .............

HOW TO KILL AN AFRICAN AMERICAN CITY IN 33 STEPS

Professor Bill Quigley is a brilliant and active member of the New Orleans community, always willing to fight the good fight.
The following is about as real and true as ya get and I thank him for summing it up all so succinctly, for all the laypersons in the hinterlands of America.............

By Bill Quigley. Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans.
You can reach Bill at Quigley@loyno.edu

Step One. Delay. If there is one word that sums up the way to destroy an African-American city after a disaster, that word is DELAY. If you are in doubt about any of the following steps - just remember to delay and you will probably be doing the right thing.

Step Two. When a disaster is coming, do not arrange a public evacuation. Rely only on individual resources. People with cars and money for hotels will leave. The elderly, the disabled and the poor will not be able to leave. Most of those without cars - 25% of households of New Orleans, overwhelmingly African-Americans - will not be able to leave. Most of the working poor, overwhelmingly African-American, will not be able to leave. Many will then permanently accuse the victims who were left behind of creating their own human disaster because of their own poor planning. It is critical to start by having people blame the victims for their own problems.

Step Three. When the disaster hits make certain the national response is overseen by someone who has no experience at all handling anything on a large scale, particularly disasters. In fact, you can even inject some humor into the response - have the disaster coordinator be someone whose last job was the head of a dancing horse association.

Step Four. Make sure that the President and national leaders remain aloof and only slightly concerned. This sends an important message to the rest of the country.

Step Five. Make certain the local, state, and national governments do not respond in a coordinated effective way. This will create more chaos on the ground.

Step Six. Do not bring in food or water or communications right away. This will make everyone left behind more frantic and create incredible scenes for the media.

Step Seven. Make certain that the media focus of the disaster is not on the heroic community work of thousands of women, men and young people helping the elderly, the sick and the trapped survive, but mainly on acts of people looting. Also spread and repeat the rumors that people trapped on rooftops are shooting guns not to attract attention and get help, but AT the helicopters. This will reinforce the message that "those people" left behind are different from the rest of us and are beyond help.

Step Eight. Refuse help from other countries. If we accept help, it looks like we cannot or choose not to handle this problem ourselves. This cannot be the message. The message we want to put out over and over is that we have plenty of resources and there is plenty of help. Then if people are not receiving help, it is their own fault. This should be done quietly.

Step Nine. Once the evacuation of those left behind actually starts, make sure people do not know where they are going or have any way to know where the rest of their family has gone. In fact, make sure that African-Americans end up much farther away from home than others.

Step Ten. Make sure that when government assistance finally has to be given out, it is given out in a totally arbitrary way. People will have lost their homes, jobs, churches, doctors, schools, neighbors and friends. Give them a little bit of money, but not too much. Make people dependent. Then cut off the money. Then give it to some and not others. Refuse to assist more than one person in every household. This will create conflicts where more than one generation lived together. Make it impossible for people to get consistent answers to their questions. Long lines and busy phones will discourage people from looking for help.

Step Eleven. Insist the President suspend federal laws requiring living wages and affirmative action for contractors working on the disaster. While local workers are still displaced, import white workers from outside the city for the high-paying jobs like crane operators and bulldozers. Import Latino workers from outside the city for the low-paying dangerous jobs. Make sure to have elected officials, black and white, blame job problems on the lowest wage immigrant workers. This will create divisions between black and brown workers that can be exploited by those at the top. Because many of the brown workers do not have legal papers, those at the top will not have to worry about paying decent wages, providing health insurance, following safety laws, unemployment compensation, workers compensation, or union organizing. They become essentially disposable workers - use them, then lose them.

Step Twelve. Whatever you do, keep people away from their city for as long as possible. This is the key to long-term success in destroying the African- American city. Do not permit people to come home. Keep people guessing about what is going to happen and when it is going to happen. Set numerous deadlines and then break them.This will discourage people and make it increasingly difficult for people to return.

Step Thirteen. When you finally have to reopen the city, make sure to reopen the African- American sections last. This will aggravate racial tensions in the city and create conflicts between those who are able to make it home and those who are not.

Step Fourteen. When the big money is given out, make sure it is all directed to homeowners and not to renters. This is particularly helpful in a town like New Orleans that was majority African-American and majority renter. Then, after you have excluded renters, mess the program for the homeowners up so that they must wait for years to get money to fix their homes.


Step Fifteen. Close down all the public schools for months. This will prevent families in the public school system, overwhelmingly African- Americans, from coming home.

Step Sixteen. Fire all the public school teachers, teacher aides, cafeteria workers and bus drivers and de-certify the teachers union - the largest in the state. This will primarily hurt middle class African Americans and make them look for jobs elsewhere.

Step Seventeen. Even better, take this opportunity to flip the public school system into a charter system and push foundations and the government to extra money to the new charter schools. Give the schools with the best test scores away first. Then give the least flooded schools away next. Turn 70% of schools into charters so that the kids with good test scores or solid parental involvement will go to the charters. That way the kids with average scores, or learning disabilities, or single parent families who are still displaced are kept segregated away from the "good" kids. You will have to set up a few schools for those other kids, but make sure those schools do not get any extra money, do not have libraries, nor doors on the toilets, nor enough teachers. In fact, because of this, you better make certain there are more security guards than teachers.

Step Eighteen. Let the market do what it does best. When rent goes up 70%, say there is nothing we can do about it. This will have two great results. It will keep many former residents away from the city and it will make landlords happy. If wages go up, immediately import more outside workers and wages will settle down.

Step Nineteen. Make sure all the predominately white suburbs surrounding the African- American city make it very difficult for the people displaced from the city to return to the metro area. Have one suburb refuse to allow any new subsidized housing at all. Have the Sheriff of another threaten to stop and investigate anyone wearing dreadlocks. Throw in a little humor and have one nearly all-white suburb pass a law which makes it illegal for homeowners to rent to people other than their blood relatives! The courts may strike these down, but it will take time and the message will be clear - do not think about returning to the suburbs.

Step Twenty. Reduce public transportation by more than 80%. The people without cars will understand the message.

Step Twenty One. Keep affordable housing to a minimum. Use money instead to reopen the Superdome and create tourism campaigns. Refuse to boldly create massive homeownership opportunities for former renters. Delay re-opening apartment complexes in African American neighborhoods. As long as less than half the renters can return to affordable housing, they will not return.

Step Twenty Two. Keep all public housing closed. Since it is 100% African-American, this is a no-brainer. Make sure to have African-Americans be the people who deliver the message. This step will also help by putting more pressure on the rental market as 5000 more families will then have to compete for rental housing with low-income workers. This will provide another opportunity for hundreds of millions of government funds to be funneled to corporations when these buildings are torn down and developers can build up other less-secure buildings in their place. Make sure to tell the 5000 families evicted from public housing that you are not letting them back for their own good. Tell them you are trying to save them from living in a segregated neighborhood. This will also send a good signal - if the government can refuse to allow people back, private concerns are free to do the same or worse.

Step Twenty Three. Shut down as much public health as possible. Sick and elderly people and moms with little kids need access to public healthcare. Keep the public hospital, which hosted about 350,000 visits a year before the disaster, closed. Keep the neighborhood clinics closed. Put all the pressure on the private healthcare facilities and provoke economic and racial tensions there between the insured and uninsured.

Step Twenty Four. Close as many public mental healthcare providers as possible. The trauma of the disaster will seriously increase stress on everyone. Left untreated, medical experts tell us this will dramatically increase domestic violence, self- medication and drug and alcohol abuse, and of course crime.

Step Twenty Five. Keep the city environment unfriendly to women. Women were already widely discriminated against before the storm. Make sure that you do not reopen day care centers. This, combined with the lack of healthcare, lack of affordable housing, and lack of transportation, will keep moms with kids away. If you can keep women with kids away, the city will destroy itself.

Step Twenty Six. Create and maintain an environment where black on black crime will flourish. As long as you can keep parents out of town, keep the schools hostile to kids without parents, keep public healthcare closed, make only low-paying jobs available, not fund social workers or prosecutors or public defenders or police, and keep chaos the norm, young black men will certainly kill other young black men. To increase the visibility of the crime problem, bring in the National Guard in fatigues to patrol the streets in their camouflage hummers.

Step Twenty Seven. Strip the local elected predominately African American government of its powers. Make certain the money that is coming in to fix up the region is not under their control. Privatize as much as you can as quickly as you can - housing, healthcare, and education for starters. When in doubt, privatize. Create an appointed commission of people who have no experience in government to make all the decisions. In fact, it is better to create several such commissions, that way no one will really be sure who is in charge and there will be much more delay and conflict. Treat the local people like they are stupid, you know what is best for them much better than they do.

Step Twenty Eight. Create lots of planning processes but give them no authority. Overlap them where possible. Give people conflicting signals whether their neighborhood will be allowed to rebuild or be turned into green space. This will create confusion, conflict and aggravation. People will blame the officials closest to them - the local African- American officials, even though they do not have any authority to do anything about these plans since they do not control the rebuilding money.

Step Twenty Nine. Hold an election but make it very difficult for displaced voters to participate. In fact, do not allow any voting in any place outside the state even we do it for other countries and even though hundreds of thousands of people are still displaced. This is very important because when people are not able to vote, those who have been able to return can say "Well, they didn't even vote, so I guess they are not interested in returning."


Step Thirty. Get the elected officials out of the way and make room for corporations to make a profit. There are billions to be made in this process for well- connected national and international corporations. There is so much chaos that no one will be able to figure out exactly where the money went for a long time. There is no real attempt to make sure that local businesses, especially African-American businesses, get contracts - at best they get modest subcontracts from the corporations which got the big money. Make sure the authorities prosecute a couple of little people who ripped off $2000 - that will temporarily satisfy people who know they are being ripped off and divert attention from the big money rip- offs. This will also provide another opportunity to blame the victims - as critics can say "Well, we gave them lots of money, they must have wasted it, how much more can they expect from us?"

Step Thirty One. Keep people's attention diverted from the African-American city. Pour money into Iraq instead of the Gulf Coast. Corporations have figured out how to make big bucks whether we are winning or losing the war. It is easier to convince the country to support war - support for cities is much, much tougher. When the war goes badly, you can change the focus of the message to supporting the troops. Everyone loves the troops. No one can say we all love African-Americans. Focus on terrorists - that always seems to work.

Step Thirty Two. Refuse to talk about or look seriously at race. Condemn anyone who dares to challenge the racism of what is going on - accuse them of "playing the race card" or say they are paranoid. Criticize people who challenge the exclusion of African-Americans as people who "just want to go back to the bad old days." Repeat the message that you want something better for everyone. Use African American spokespersons where possible.

Step Thirty-Three. Repeat these steps.

Note to readers. Every fact in this list actually happened and continues to happen in New Orleans after Katrina.

ISHAK ~ The PEOPLE

ISHAK ~ The PEOPLE, Sunset People & Sunrise People,"Wanne tol hokinul....roads join together"



We in modern day America have much to learn from Louisiana's early native peoples and those of today, their descendants....we can gain an understanding of more effective ways of dealing with our own current struggles through learning of theirs.........( http://www.beau.org/~velmer/atakapa ), especially in terms of preserving our environment, Louisiana's wetlands.
We need to begin efforts of resistance to the destruction to our wetlands by the mineral extractors, Halliburton, et al.....
who claim in billboards that they will stay "...until the Gulf runs dry"!

Indian Downtown Super Sunday, Creole Wild West, May 27,2007

In memory of our Big Chief Sally Cruz, March 22, 1930 - May 25, 2007
For Johnny, Sally, Stella, Eleanor, Jackie, Jack, Zack, Seth, Sarah, Hannah, Emma, Bilbo and the entire extended Cruz Gang of Wild Indians!

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

DANCIN' GROUND

I've been working! Workin' with the Wild Tchoupitoulas & Golden Commanche, Jack Cruz, Big Chief Roderick Sylvas, Spy Boy Juan Pardo, Marilyn Barbarin, Junkyard Dog, Uganda Roberts, and a host of other New Orleans conspirators - the New Orleans Rhythm Conspiracy ---
We have just released our debut CD, "DANCIN' GROUND", below is an audio-slide version of the title cut - check it out....
and ya can buy it at CDBaby.com or the Louisiana Music Factory : www.louisianamusicfactory.com
The tune comes from a little known story, that the original inhabitants called the area Tchoupitoulas, which meant "Dancin' Ground".....we've brought that forward and issued it as a call home to our people, those displaced by Katrina, to come home to the Dancin' Ground.
Another added note ~ The New Orleans Rhythm Conspiracy is a music and cultral collective, a social enterprise......as we believe that taking a more united, inclusive equitable social economy approach to the rebuilding of New Orleans is essential in order to mitigate the abuses of the private market ----- to resist the domestic structural adjustment program ( a WTO Game) of privitization that is happening in New Orleans. As Big Chief says, "We won't bow down, we won't run", ........ and Wildman John, "Do what ya wanna, do what ya Know!"