and Robert Caldwell The disaster in New Orleans was a social one. It illustrates the crisis of capitalism accelerated and magnified.
The of New Orleans— so many in the ranks of the working-poor— were abandoned long before Katrina hit.
National news reports of the developing crisis in New Orleans highlighted what is often invisible to media but well known to the women and men who change the sheets in French Quarter hotels, cook gumbo for tourists, and operate the cash registers in the Lower Garden District Wal-Mart: to be poor - especially Black and poor - in the United States, is to live on the very edge of survival.
The many causes of this crisis illustrate the priorities of US capitalism: funding for levees diverted to the war in Iraq; prior deployment of the Louisiana National Guard -the first responders in a "natural disaster" - to Baghdad; lack of an evacuation plan for the poor, who primarily live in flood-prone areas; slow federal response with a focus on securing property over
All this is set on a stage of environmental degradation that has increased the frequency and wrath of hurricanes and the vulnerability of the city.
What becomes of New Orleans - and the displaced people of New Orleans - is tied up in the social causes of the catastrophe, as well as the government, corporate and community response them.
Developers want to create a white-washed French Quarter Disneyland, but the heart of the city - the people of New Orleans - will not cede it without a fight.
But the battle for New Orleans is not merely a local ULIC. The struggle in New Orleans offers an opportunity to promote a different vision for social planning -one that challenges cities developed for profit and not for human need.
In addition to demanding community control over the city's reconstruction, we must link local and national priorities - demanding that the troops come home, so that a burgeoning military budget can be redirected to social priorities.
The crisis in New Orleans was a radicalizing catalyst that further ignited an antiwar movement picking up steam from Cindy Sheehan's stand in Texas
At the September 24th antiwar protest in Washington DC, signs read: "From New Orleans to Iraq: Stop the War on the Poor" and "Make Levees, Not War!" But the challenges ahead are enormous. Even before the water receded, the wellheeled of New Orleans met with government officials, corporate leaders, and developers in Dallas to exploit this "once in a lifetime opportunity" to redesign the city. The Bush administration has handed out dozens of nobid contracts to the same corporate thieves and mercenaries - the Halliburtons and Blackwaters - now in Iraq. The recent executive order to disregard prevailing wage rates guaranteed by the Left adrift: survivors of Hurricane Rita Davis-Bacon Act for federally-funded construction projects ensures that many jobs generated by the reconstruction efforts won't be living wage jobs. New Orleans community organizers and national African American leaders have also come together to fight for the city.
Community Labor United, a long-standing community coalition, has established a People's Hurricane Fund and met in Baton Rouge September 10th and South Carolina September 30th to establish a strategy to organize displaced New Orleanians and demand the city be rebuilt in the interest of the Community organizers and activists are spread out with the New Orleans' diaspora in cities like Houston, Texas, Jackson, Mississippi, and Baton Rouge and Lake Charles, Louisiana.
While demands are still being developed, central will be the right of return for the displaced, as well as training and living wage jobs for New Orleanians and community self-determination in all aspects of the reconstruction process. Saladin Muhammed, of Black Workers for Justice based in North Carolina, called the aftermath Katrina "Black America's 9/11. Indeed, Civil Rights leaders and the Black Left in the US have been galvanized by this atrocity. The labor movement, the Green Party and other progressive forces are also in motion. The movement will become more focused in the months ahead, for what will surely be years of organizing and struggle. We need to rebuild New Orleans, but we shouldn't stop there. • Joanna Dubinsky and Robert Caldwell are members of Solidarity, a socialist, feminist, anti-racist organization in the United States. They are residents of the 9th Ward in New Orleans (currently in exile). They are working with Community Labor United to rebuild New Orleans. Please see www.communitylaborunited.net. They can be contacted at [email protected].