My RSS Feeds
Forgotten New Orleans After Katrina: Whom Is N. O. Being Rebuilt For? - Tabacco Told You So! - RI10 REPUBLISHED
Forgotten New
Orleans After
Katrina: Whom Is
N. O. Being
Rebuilt For? -
Tabacco Told
You So! - RI10
Originally published here August 28, 2006
To read prior Posts by Tabacco and view my past predictions for New Orleans after Katrina, courtesy of the Bush administration, go to the following Articles:
Hurricane Katrina – New Orleans Blacks Dying – George W. Bush’s Indifference + Reader Comments!
http://tabacco.blog-city.com/hurricane_katrina__new_orleans_blacks_dying__george_w_bushs_.htm
Published September 5, 2005
"Katrina Highlights Bush's Incompetence" by Sheryl McCarthy of NEWSDAY NY
http://tabacco.blog-city.com/katrina_highlights_bushs_incompetence_by_sheryl_mccarthy_of_.htm
Published September 8, 2005
FYI: Hurricane Rita NWS TPC/National Hurricane Center, Max Sustained Wind 140mph - VISUAL ONLY
http://tabacco.blog-city.com/fyi_hurricane_rita_nws_tpcnational_hurricane_center_max_sust.htm
Published September 26, 2005
Truman’s “Do Nothing” Congress Reemerges - Bush Used Michael Brown & FEMA To Escape Katrina Heat - RI10
http://tabacco.blog-city.com/trumans_do_nothing_congress_reemerges__bush_used_michael_bro.htm
Published June 13, 2006
Top Hurricane Expert Says
Officials Threatened His Job
Over Pre-Katrina Warnings
Monday, August 28th, 2006
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/28/1342209
On the eve of the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, investigative journalist Greg Palast reports that a top hurricane expert says government officials threatened his job over his warnings about the impending disaster. [includes rush transcript]
Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina that ravaged the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The storm was the most powerful and expensive natural disaster to hit the U.S- killing more than 1,500 people in New Orleans alone, displacing some 770,000 residents and destroying over 300,000 homes. The federal government's response to the disaster was widely condemned - images of the tens of thousands of New Orleans residents piling into the city's superdome stadium pleading for food, water and aid became symbolic of the government's inaction.
In the aftermath of the storm, it become increasingly clear that the effects of Hurricane Katrina were made far worse by government incompetence and neglect. Warnings about the severity of the storm were ignored and the levees, which were supposed to prevent New Orleans from flooding, were grossly inadequate. And, as investigative reporter Greg Palast reveals in his new report, there were major holes in the city's evacuation plan.
* Greg Palast, investigative reporter and author of "Armed Madhouse" reports from New Orleans. Produced by Jacquie Soohen of Big Noise Films.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The storm was the most powerful and expensive natural disaster to hit the U.S., killing more than 1,500 people in New Orleans alone, displacing some 770,000 residents and destroying over 300,000 homes. The federal government's response to the disaster was widely condemned. Images of the tens of thousands of New Orleans residents piling into the city's Superdome stadium, pleading for food, water and aid, became symbolic of the government's inaction.
In the aftermath of the storm, it became increasingly clear that the effects of Hurricane Katrina were made far worse by government incompetence and neglect. Warnings about the severity of the storm were ignored, and the levees, which were supposed to prevent New Orleans from flooding, were grossly inadequate. And, as investigative reporter Greg Palast reveals in this new Democracy Now! report, there were major holes in the city's evacuation plan
GREG PALAST: Welcome to New Orleans, whose motto is “The City that Care Forgot.” In fact, it's a city that everyone forgot.
BROD BAGERT: Reckless negligence that killed human beings. Old ladies watched the water come up to their nose over their eyes, and they drowned in houses just like this in this neighborhood, because of reckless negligence that's unanswered for.
DR. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: By midnight on Monday, the White House knew. But none of us knew.
PATRICIA THOMAS: Katrina didn't come in my house and put these gates up on my windows and things. Katrina didn't have me walking out here looking for somewhere to stay. Man did this. This was manmade.
MALIK RAHIM: They wanted them poor niggers out of there, and they ain’t had no intention to allow it to be reopened to no poor niggers, you know? And that's just the bottom line.
GREG PALAST: Our president says he hasn’t forgotten a promise he made here.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I want the people down there to understand that it's going to take a while to recover. This was a huge storm.
GREG PALAST: Well, Mr. President, I think people down here know it was a huge storm. Over half a million of them fled the flood. It's been a full year, and only 170,000, far less than half, have come back, almost none to their own homes.
STEVEN SMITH: Stayed three nights here and one night on the bridge.
GREG PALAST: You were three nights stuck in the flood?
STEVEN SMITH: Right here. Yep.
GREG PALAST: And they weren't looking for you?
STEVEN SMITH: We had helicopters, but they -- nothing didn’t pass. At least they passed over us. I’m on a roof, holding my shirt out and saying that we had babies back here.
GREG PALAST: This is Steven Smith. Like 127,000 others in this town, he didn't have a car in which to escape, so he was left in the rising waters. Stranded in the heat on a bridge, he closed the eyes of a man who died of dehydration after giving his grandchildren his last bottle of water.
What kind of evacuation plan would leave 127,000 to sink or swim? It turns out that the Bush administration had contracted out evacuation planning to a corporation, IEM, Innovative Emergency Management. I couldn't locate their qualifications, but I did locate their list of donations to the Republican Party. We went to Baton Rouge to talk to them.
These are the offices of Innovative Emergency Management. They were the ones that were paid a half-million bucks to come up with an emergency evacuation plan for the city of New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina. One problem is, I can't find the plan. So I’m coming here to ask them about it.
So when I showed up at their office, they would only talk to me from behind a glass wall. By phone.
Did you in fact come up with a plan, because it says it’s urgent to come up with a plan? Did you come up -- can you just tell me if you came up with a plan or not? I’m just happy to talk to you one-on-one. You're probably about 12 feet away from me. Or somewhere. I don't know, are you hiding in this office somewhere? I’m happy to speak to you face-to-face.
We can’t find your plan -- neither can FEMA -- that you were paid a half-million dollars for, that at least claimed to here. We can't find this plan. And it’s kind of a problem. I guess it's kind of hard to evacuate a city, if you can't find the plan itself.
IEM EMPLOYEE: Can we -- she's got a lot of experience in evacuation.
GREG PALAST: Is it more true that maybe it was helpful that she gave a lot of donations to the Republican Party? Maybe that's the experience?
IEM EMPLOYEE: Terry?
TERRY AT IEM: Yes.
GREG PALAST: So that's when they called in the guards.
IEM SECURITY GUARD: Security has been called. We ask that you please leave the building now.
GREG PALAST: So, quickly, before security gets here, I just want to tell you that this is Innovative Emergency Management, and it’s very innovative not to have a plan to manage an emergency.
I decided to look for someone with a little more experience in hurricane evacuation. LSU, Louisiana State University, they're just down the street from IEM. LSU has one hellacious football team. They also have the best team of hurricane experts in the nation. I met with Dr. Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the university’s elaborate Center for the Study of Hurricanes. I asked this renowned specialist about the reputation of IEM, prior to their getting the half-million-dollar evacuation exercise contract.
DR. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: I hadn’t heard of them prior to this exercise, no.
GREG PALAST: The LSU scientist already had an evacuation model, but IEM and FEMA refused to use it.
DR. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: We had the science. We had really studied this thing. We knew what was going to go wrong. We had an enormous amount of information, right down to mapping where the gas tanks were and pipelines. Science was basically ignored all the way through the process.
GREG PALAST: The LSU professors warned, for example, that the IEM plan simply made no provision for people -- the old, the sick -- who couldn't escape in a car. I asked him the consequences of this oversight.
DR. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: Well, you know, 1,500 of them drowned. That's the bottom line.
GREG PALAST: Then the professor surprised me by saying that giving us this information put his job at risk.
DR. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: I wasn't going to let them -- let those sort of threats shut me down or any of the other sorts of nonsense that went on, because it was so important that we get out what had gone wrong and why.
GREG PALAST: Apparently, the heat from the university originated with a state official, who now works for IEM.
DR. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: We got a phone call from somebody in the state government who actually now works for IEM. But, I don’t think that was his plan at the time. And he jumped all over me and said, by criticizing their work, I was putting the whole exercise in jeopardy, and if I did it again, I would be banned.
GREG PALAST: Back in New Orleans, former city councilman, Brod Bagert, a lawyer, standing in the gutted wreckage of his own home, did not think kindly of the concealment of van Heerden’s warnings.
BROD BAGERT: Ongoing protection that should have been occurring was done -- it was done negligently. Not only wrong, negligently. And not only negligently, but reckless negligence, the kind of negligence for which an individual would be indicted, prosecuted, tried, convicted, and spend their life in jail. Negligence that killed people, lots of people. Reckless negligence that killed human beings. Old ladies watched the water come up to their nose, over their eyes, and they drowned in houses just like this in this neighborhood, because of reckless negligence that’s unanswered for.
GREG PALAST: So now, we’ve discovered why there was no real plan of escape. But that leaves the question: why did the water flood the city? People drowned. The city drowned.
BROD BAGERT: Destroyed house, destroyed house, destroyed house, destroyed house, destroyed house. Every single house on every single block. Mile after mile after mile of residential urban neighborhoods are completely destroyed and remain destroyed.
GREG PALAST: Bagert took us to a neighbor's house near the levee.
BROD BAGERT: So, look, they have three feet of mud in here. There's a basketball. You know, some children's toys. One day it was somebody's home. The next day, it’s -- looks like a mad monster came through it, a beast.
GREG PALAST: There’s an x on this house. It has a five under it. That means that five corpses were pulled out of here, five people who were killed. And they weren't killed by Katrina. They were killed by this, a levee, which was supposed to protect them from the waters of the Mississippi, and it failed. And they never told the five in there that they knew it would fail.
DR. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: FEMA knew at 11:00 on Monday that the levees were breached. At 2:00, they flew over the 17th Street canal and took video of the breach. By midnight on Monday, the White House knew. But none of us knew.
GREG PALAST: Back at LSU, van Heerden's experts warned the Bush administration about levees, long before Katrina hit.
DR. IVOR VAN HEERDEN: I, myself, briefed many, many senior federal officials, including somebody from the White House.
GREG PALAST: Without the warning that the levees had begun to break, evacuations stopped, until it was too late. But those that survived, where were they? This city is still half empty.
AMY GOODMAN: Investigative journalist Greg Palast. This piece was produced by Jacquie Soohen of Big Noise Films. Part two in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Hurricane Katrina flooded 80% of New Orleans, destroying the city's infrastructure, displacing most of its residents. A year later, only about half of New Orleans population of 450,000 people has returned. Many of those unable to come back are poor and African American. In the ravaged, mostly Black neighborhood of the Lower Ninth Ward, only 1,000 of the 20,000 people who lived there before Katrina have returned. This has drastically altered the demographics of a city that used to be two-thirds Black. Activists and residents have condemned the government's refusal to reopen the city's public housing projects and point out that while tourist areas are being developed, affordable housing is not being built. Many are asking, “Who is New Orleans being rebuilt for?” Here again, investigative reporter Greg Palast, from New Orleans.
GREG PALAST: We drove back to New Orleans to find out what happened to those who tried to return.
What's wrong, now?
DISPLACED NEW ORLEANS RESIDENT: They just messing all over us?
GREG PALAST: What are they doing?
DISPLACED NEW ORLEANS RESIDENT: Putting you out your own house. Now we ain't got nowhere to go. You called them back, saying we could come back home. Then when we get there, they got the police coming in there putting us out and others. They're harassing us. Oh no, this is not right. I'm basically between here and Texas, coming in -- you know, coming to see if I could get my house back. And I'm -- you know, but I'm in Texas, but I'm coming down here to see about my house. But they say they ain't letting nobody in and all this. But where we going to go at, though? Where's we going to go at?
GREG PALAST: What happened?
PATRICIA THOMAS: And then they told us to come back.
GREG PALAST: What happens tonight? Where are you going to go tonight?
DISPLACED NEW ORLEANS RESIDENT: That's what I want to know, mister. I don't know where I'm going, me and my kids.
GREG PALAST: Her friend, Patricia Thomas, was also locked out of her home in the Lafitte housing project. The next day, we helped her break into her apartment, barred by metal plates.
PATRICIA THOMAS: This is my porch, right here. I think I might take me a little break and sit on it for a minute. Yeah, this is my porch here.
GREG PALAST: The city has sealed up almost all public housing. But these apartments were never touched by water. It was nearly perfect.
And this, it's been a year.
PATRICIA THOMAS: It's been a year, and my house looking good like that.
GREG PALAST: I think you and I together, just the two of us, could put your place back together in a week.
PATRICIA THOMAS: You see?
GREG PALAST: No problem.
PATRICIA THOMAS: No problem at all.
GREG PALAST: But they won't let her in. And this has nothing to do with Katrina.
PATRICIA THOMAS: Katrina didn't do this. Man did this. Katrina didn't come in my house and put these gates up on my windows and things. Katrina didn't have me walking out here looking for somewhere to stay. Man did this. This was manmade.
GREG PALAST: This is not what we think of as public housing in America. These places are gorgeous, two- and three-story townhouses with iron porticos. Why would the city spend thousands of dollars per unit to armor these places, kick out the tenants? Well, the answer may be over here. This is the downtown business district. We are halfway between there and the Tony French Quarter. In other words, this is some very expensive real estate. For years, the city and speculators have been trying to get the tenants out of these apartments. Katrina, the perfect storm, was the perfect excuse. So what kind of New Orleans do they want?
WHITE TOURIST: Would you like a beer?
GREG PALAST: This is the new New Orleans, stripped down, downsized, not too Black, just right for tourists. You could call it Six Flags over Louisiana.
They call this drink a “hurricane.”
But across the Mississippi, far from the Quarter, not everyone is thrilled with this brave new New Orleans of tourists and Mardi Gras.
MALIK RAHIM: It's two cities. You know? There's the city for the white and the rich. And there's another city for the poor and Blacks. You know, the city that's for the white and rich has recovered. They had a Jazz Fest. They had a Mardi Gras. They're going to have the Saints playing for those who have recovered. But for those who haven't recovered, there's nothing.
GREG PALAST: Malik Rahim is a leader of Common Ground, a grassroots recovery organization. He explains why Patricia and others are locked out of their apartments.
MALIK RAHIM: They didn't want to open it up. They wanted them closed. They wanted them poor niggers out of there, and they ain't had no intention to allow it to be reopened to no poor niggers, you know? And that's just the bottom line.
GREG PALAST: Malik's group isn't waiting on George Bush to get around to housing the surviving poor.
MALIK RAHIM: This is a unit we are getting together.
GREG PALAST: Common Ground is completing almost as many homes as the Bush administration, but who's left? And who will stay?
This is the Lower Ninth Ward, or I should say “was” the Lower Ninth Ward, an African American working class neighborhood. There's no potable water here. There's no electricity. There's no nothing. There's just no way to return, and a lot of residents feel that's exactly the plan.
This is Mr. Henry Irving, Sr. He has no neighbors, no water, no electricity, but he is not leaving.
HENRY IRVING, SR.: They want you to leave. That's what they want us to do. They want us to get discouraged and leave. So why leave? Where I'm going, then? I'm going to go to another community? I put all my life in this community. I'm going to stay here, and if God's willing, I'm going to be here long enough to see it come back.
GREG PALAST: So can it happen again? Another hurricane? Another flood? Don't worry, because the government has hired a consulting firm to analyze what went wrong with the response to Katrina. It's a little firm from Baton Rouge called Innovative Emergency Management.
AMY GOODMAN: Investigative reporter Greg Palast in New Orleans with producer Jacquie Soohen of Big Noise Films.
Common Ground Collective
Continues to Bring Thousands
of Volunteers From Around
the World to Gulf Coast For
Post-Katrina Relief Efforts
Monday, August 28th, 2006
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/28/1342226
We speak with New Orleans community activist and co-founder of the Common Ground Collective, Malik Rahim, about his continued relief efforts in the Gulf Coast, the racism in the federal government's response to the disaster and much more. [includes rush transcript]
New Orleans Community Organizer Malik Rahim is a veteran of the Black Panther Party there. For decades he worked as an organizer of public housing tenants both in New Orleans and in San Francisco. He also ran for New Orleans City Council on the Green Party ticket.
Malik visited our studio last month to talk about some of the ongoing issues facing New Orleans residents. He spoke about the Common Ground Collective - the community organization that he co-founded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
* Malik Rahim, New Orleans community activist and co-founder of the Common Ground Collective.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: New Orleans community organizer Malik Rahim is a veteran of the Black Panther Party. For decades, he worked as an organizer of public housing tenants, both in New Orleans and San Francisco. He also ran for the New Orleans City Council on the Green Party ticket. Malik Rahim visited our studio recently, here in New York, to talk about some of the ongoing issues facing New Orleans residents. I asked him to start by describing the Common Ground Collective that Democracy Now! visited in the aftermath of the hurricane, the community group that he co-founded.
MALIK RAHIM: In the aftermath of Katrina, what we found is that for about five days, it was basically a organized move to push as many Blacks out of Louisiana. Jefferson Parish, as you know, the home of David Duke, they literally closed their parish to African Americans who was fleeing or trying to find refuge and safety. Gretna literally ran or forced people back into New Orleans. And inside New Orleans, you had different white vigilante groups that was allowed carte blanche, you know, to roam the streets, to kill at will. And it was through this and my confrontation with them that caused Scott and Brandon to come down.
While we was together, we -- every evening, we used to have these dialectical discussions, and one of our main discussions was on why progressive movements have always started with such a bang and then end in such a frizzle. And we kept coming up with that we allowed our petty differences to stop us from working together. Robert King Wilkerson, the only freed member of the Angola Three, three political prisoners that have -- two of them have now been in solitary confinement for 34 years in Louisiana -- he said that the thing that we need to find is the common ground, and so with that, we took that name. I added “collective,” because I'm a firm believer in a collective spirit, and Common Ground was founded. Sharon Johnson, my partner, she put up $30. I put up $20. And with that $50, we founded Common Ground.
AMY GOODMAN: And what are people doing? You now have hundreds of people.
MALIK RAHIM: No, we have thousands. We done had -- since our conception, we done had over 8,000 volunteers.
AMY GOODMAN: Who have come from all over the country?
MALIK RAHIM: All over -- no, all over the world. We even done had an Israeli soldier to come and volunteer with us, you know? You know, one of the things besides the alternative media and media such as yourself, you know, most people don't even know that there's a peace movement in Israel, you know? And so, you know, I mean, that's just been some of the greatness of the things we have done, you know, I mean that I've seen. I wouldn't say that -- when I said “we have done,” I just mean by seeing people from all over the world coming and making a stand for peace and justice that have helped us, Secure Populaire coming from France, that helped us make the transition from a first aid station to a health clinic. We done had doctors from Africa, Asia, Europe, all over, to come over.
AMY GOODMAN: When we first went down, we saw your little health clinic.
MALIK RAHIM: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: In one small building, but it was astounding nonetheless in the midst of the devastation. When we went down again, you had taken over an entire -- was it a school?
MALIK RAHIM: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: An entire school?
MALIK RAHIM: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: With people living there right now at --
MALIK RAHIM: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: In one moment you have, what, about 400 people?
MALIK RAHIM: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: And what do they do?
MALIK RAHIM: We do everything. We have about 15 different operations. To name a few, we have our Ninth Ward Distribution Center, our Lower Ninth Ward Distribution Center, our distribution center that we operate with four directions up in Dulac, which is in Homa, where we assist the Native American community there. We have our legal clinic. We have our -- again, now we operate three health clinics. We operate two: our uptown -- I mean, our West Bank Health Clinic and our East Bank Health Clinic. Then we have one that we assist the immigrant population, who is totally being enslaved in Louisiana, because we have avaricious businessmen that's going around Central America enticing people to come to America, promising them all type of wages.
AMY GOODMAN: Malik Rahim is a community organizer, co-founder of Common Ground Collective. We'll come back to his description of New Orleans today and the story that is still untold of the level of grassroots organizing that has gone on over the last year.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We return to our conversation with New Orleans community activist and co-founder of the Common Ground Collective, Malik Rahim.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m looking at a report right now, “And Injustice for All.” It’s a new report. “Workers’ Lives and the Reconstruction of New Orleans,” put out by the New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition and the Advancement Project. And it says: “In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, several hundred thousand workers, mostly African American, lost their jobs. Since this storm, these workers have faced tremendous [structural] barriers to returning home and to finding the employment necessary to rebuild their lives. Without housing, they cannot work; without work they cannot afford housing. As these pre-Katrina New Orleanians fight to return, the city has experienced a huge influx of migrant workers -- citizen and non-citizen -- who have been wooed to the area with promises of steady, good paying jobs. Yet, these workers, like their local counterparts, are finding barriers to safe employment, fair pay, [and] affordable housing that are driving them further into poverty. In fact, many workers are finding themselves exploited, homeless and harassed by law enforcement. These workers and former residents, mostly people of color, recognize that New Orleans is being rebuilt by them but, not for them.”
MALIK RAHIM: That's right. That's right. And I believe you hit the nail right on the head.
AMY GOODMAN: Or they did, the report.
MALIK RAHIM: Or yes, because -- you know, the type of exploitation that I’ve seen, it just shows that that plantation syndicate that have always ran Louisiana is alive and well. And unless the American public stand up in outrage with the exploitation that is going on --
AMY GOODMAN: The National Guard is back in New Orleans. What does that mean?
MALIK RAHIM: Yes. New Orleans is a city that even during pre-Katrina was gripped in a drug war. No one would speak out against it, because they felt like to say, “Well, hey, New Orleans is in a drug war,” would stop the tourism. Tourism is the engine that drives the city's economy. So no one cared, because of the fact that, one, it was ex-offenders killing ex-offenders, Blacks killing Blacks.
With the high unemployment, the drugs in many community was the economic anchor. In most of your public housing, unemployment was roughly around 80%, 85%. The annual income was less than $7,000 -- between $7,000 and $10,000 a year. There was no opportunities. So most people looked at drugs as the only way of economic upliftment. With this, it have caused a drug war, with when HUD came in and under Hope VI started closing down housing developments, you know, in a city that had an administration at that time that didn't care about the social dynamics of these developments. That’s all they wanted to do, is see these developments torn down and that money brought in.
AMY GOODMAN: You mean the most recent, the -- HUD saying they're going to tear down 5,000 housing units?
MALIK RAHIM: Yeah -- no, I talking about way before that.
AMY GOODMAN: -- public housing units before? Before?
MALIK RAHIM: Yes, I’m talking about ever since in New Orleans when they closed down the St. Thomas housing project, it caused a drug war. And between the time they closed St. Thomas to Katrina, they had roughly about 600 murders in New Orleans that was directly a result of the fact that HANO, the New Orleans Housing Authority, and HUD, of their blatant neglect in understanding the social dynamics that exist in the city. I guess that happens when you have individuals to come in that, you know, don't understand the history of a city, but then they put them in control of our agencies that directly have that type of impact upon a community life, because most of those -- I won't say all of them, but most of them -- came and only looked at these developments as projects. But residents looked at them as a community, as a neighborhood. You know? And they just displaced them. They -- you know, they --
AMY GOODMAN: And what about now?
MALIK RAHIM: Now is even worse, because now there is no longer a market, a drug market, in the Ninth Ward. There is no longer a drug market in some of these devastated areas. These projects are still closed. And then when you see people --
AMY GOODMAN: And now they say they're tearing them down.
MALIK RAHIM: Right. And this creates, especially when you're not offering any hope, you know -- you're not saying that, I’m going to close your development and many of them, you know. And the saddest part about it is when you see people come in, like for the 4th of July, and just look at their house, look at their unit, but cannot go in it to try to salvage what is left into their home. I mean, you imagine, you have been displaced, you have been forced out, because they say it's an emergency, a hurricane, flooding. But now the flooding has stopped. Everybody else is allowed to come in the city to rebuild, to put their lives back in order, except you. And the reason why they are denying it to you and they have fenced off your home is because there's a cry to get your land.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you say to those who say that the rebuilding shouldn't happen in these areas where the water rises, like in the Ninth Ward, that it should happen in other places, that the reason people were first -- that area was first built up was also based on racism, put in the most vulnerable areas, and not that people shouldn't return but they should make place in places that will remain high and dry?
MALIK RAHIM: I mean, I was at a church yesterday, House of -- I believe it’s House of Our Lord, a church in Brooklyn, if I’m not mistaken.
AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Daughtry's church?
MALIK RAHIM: Right. I was there yesterday, and there was a workshop on hurricane preparedness, which I advise everyone in New York or anyone in a flooded area, flooded zone, to start getting prepared. But part of it is in a flooded area. But they're still there.
AMY GOODMAN: Part of what is in a flooded area?
MALIK RAHIM: Part of New York is in a flood zone, you know, but people are still there. So, the thing that we have to do, we have to learn to live within these areas, not trying to control it, not trying to control nature, but to learn to live within nature. The Ninth Ward is there. Regardless of what’s happened, it's one of the oldest African American segments in this country. You know, they have one of the largest rate of homeownership, of African American homeownership, in the country. And I’m not saying homebuyers. Homeowners. And these people have done this with nothing. And they should have a right -- I mean --
AMY GOODMAN: Now, more than half the people have not returned. Is that right?
MALIK RAHIM: Right, that’s because no assistance have been offered to them. You don’t have any banking institutions that’s coming out to help them to recover the way they helped other segments of New Orleans to recover. You don't have the agencies out. In New Orleans, right after the hurricane, you've seen a sea of blue tarps being put up everywhere, except for these areas where you have the poorest, who need it the most. It was the same as during the hurricane, where the Red Cross came and put up a food distribution center in the Garden District, the richest segment of New Orleans, while people were starving in the Superdome. So, you have that same type of thing that's happening, where you’re seeing our people doing without, that’s -- I mean, they're just barely making it. You know, I mean, in our city, we’re a city that's gripped in a mold infestation.
AMY GOODMAN: A what?
MALIK RAHIM: A mold, black mold that's -- everything that was flooded is now covered in this black mold. And no one is offering people Tyvek suits or respirators. So you start seeing people coming in there, cleaning up their homes with just a dust mask. You’re seeing immigrant workers going in there with just a bandana. You know?
AMY GOODMAN: And it's hurricane season again.
MALIK RAHIM: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the levees?
MALIK RAHIM: I’m going to tell you, anyone who put faith in the levees in New Orleans, they don’t live in New Orleans. You know, I don't believe no one in New Orleans have faith in those levee systems. But you have communities that is getting prepared that in case this happens again, that in case one of these levees break, what can we do? To that end, like I was telling you earlier, we have just obtained 350 units, which is also some of the highest buildings in Algiers that we can house people.
And what we're trying to tell everyone is to make the preparations now. The Red Cross do a fantastic job with their plans for families and individuals. But we must now move to another level. We must make preparations now for neighborhoods and communities. You know, where are safe places for our neighborhood? Where is a safe place that a community can find, that safety net that is needed to survive a hurricane? And what we're saying is that a hurricane is survivable. I mean, you can survive it. You know, what happened in New Orleans didn't have to happen. And now we have been blessed with a new city council that is working toward making sure that it never happen again. So, now we’re starting to have some of the elements that is needed to make sure that this time we’re going to be more prepared, that we'll be better prepared.
But, the nation needs to understand exactly what is caused, because almost 70% of the American population live in a flood zone. So they need to come down and see what's happening. They need to come down and learn from the experience that we have, to make sure that any national -- any natural disaster doesn't necessarily have to turn into a national tragedy. And so, if we can avoid the tragedy, you know, then we can live with the disaster.
AMY GOODMAN: Longtime activist and community organizer, Malik Rahim, co-founder of the Common Ground Collective in New Orleans.
Tabacco: I consider myself both a funnel and a filter. I funnel information, not readily available on the Mass Media, which is ignored and/or suppressed. I filter out the irrelevancies and trivialities to save both the time and effort of my Readers and bring consternation to the enemies of Truth & Fairness! When you read Tabacco, if you don’t learn something NEW, I’ve wasted your time.
In 1981's 'Body Heat', Kathleen Turner said, "Knowledge is power".
T.A.B.A.C.C.O. (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization)