Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!): Activists Paint Grim Picture of NO

[Jack Rabbit]

From Democracy Now!
Broadcast Monday April 10

"Poor People, Disabled People, People of Color Are Not Welcomed Back to New Orleans" - Activists Paint Grim Picture of Struggling City
By Amy Goodman

Amy Goodman: We're joined by two guests in the studios here at the PBS TV station WLAE. Bill Quigley is a law professor at Loyola University and the director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola. We’re also joined by Tracie Washington, the director of the NAACP Gulf Coast Advocacy Center. And we welcome you both to Democracy Now! It’s very good to have you with us. Well, you have been listening to some of what the residents and the evacuees, your neighbors, your friends, your family have been saying since Katrina hit. Tracie Washington, you have been dealing with housing a great deal. Can you talk about the situation?

Tracie Washington: Well, it’s almost tragic that we have continued this mantra in the city, “We want everyone home. We want everyone home.” We definitely want everyone home, but they’ve got to come back to the city and have a place to live. We need sustainable, affordable housing. This city had a disproportionate share of renters. We didn't have the same proportion of individuals who owned homes in New Orleans. About 60% to 62% of individuals actually rented. Many of those individuals lived in public housing, yet federal and state officials have not sped up the process to open public housing as they should have, and as you heard from one of the guests that was interviewed, rent in this city has gone up astronomically. You can't bring people home unless there is a place for them to live, or folks will do what many of them are doing now, either squatting in public housing or sleeping on the floors of relatives' homes. They want to be back. We’re proud people in this city, but we have to have housing. Housing is the catalyst for everything . . . .

Amy Goodman: How can someone who perhaps has been evacuated to Houston, Atlanta, New York, how could they go home, get their things, and go back if they don't have the financial resources?

Tracie Washington: And that is really the catch-22 and the question that many people face. What happens often is relatives go into the properties. You know, they find a way, Amy, and it just is very difficult to provide that redress for folks through the courts. But what we can do is at least give them time.

Read more, watch or listen.

Thus are refugees from a disaster made political refugees in Bush's America.

[Kashka-Kat]

1. not only housing but some assurance it won't happen again-- what is status

of the levees? Last I heard they werent even back to what they were let alone withstand a cat 5 hurricane.