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Rally Calls for New Orleans Marshall Plan |
Saying “Enough is enough!” hundreds of people rallied in New Orleans today to demand that the government create a regional Marshall Plan to restore the city and the Gulf Coast.
Leaders of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO, the United Teachers of New Orleans/AFT and members of the A. Philip Randolph Institute and Coalition of Black Trade Unionists joined with civil rights, community and religious groups for a Day of Presence to bring attention to the failure of the Bush administration to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
Two years after Hurricane Katrina struck the area, killing 1,836 and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless, the Bush administration is using the rebuilding effort to promote its conservative agenda and to push poor people out of New Orleans.
Author Michael Eric Dyson, one of the speakers at the rally, says in a Point of View column on the AFL-CIO website:
They say a rising tide lifts all boats, then where’s the tide of compassion and economic support that should characterize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast nearly two years after Katrina? So I think we need to make a drumbeat about Aug. 29 the same way we do Sept. 11 and generate enough outrage about the surrender to the status quo by many of our political leaders on the national level.
Speakers at today’s rally called on the nation’s leaders to:
- Allocate dollars toward the creation of a regional Marshall Plan that restores New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
- Provide funding for the rebuilding of the levees.
- Expedite housing and job assistance, so 213,000 people who are still unable to come home can return.
- Ensure adequate health care for displaced children and adults.
- Fund mental health counseling and support services for those dealing with the aftermath of their loss.
Not only are ultraconservatives shamefully using New Orleans and the Gulf Coast to push their political agenda, but as Rick Perlstein writes in Common Sense, workers rebuilding the area have been exploited and abused. He cites a report by the Center for Southern Studies that chronicles how a group of immigrant pipe fitters was kidnapped and forced to work on the Gulf Coast.
Meanwhile, a new report says public school students are still displaced two years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the area, and millions of dollars worth of school reconstruction projects remain unfunded.
The Atlanta-based Southern Education Foundation urges the federal government to adopt a “new response” to restore struggling educational institutions.
House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said the findings
should serve as an important tool to Congress as we further our efforts to reconstruct schools in the Gulf Coast region.
The foundation found that only 2 percent of the federal government’s hurricane-related funding went toward education recovery. The costs of hurricane destruction in K-12 and higher education were estimated at $6.2 billion, but only $1.2 billion in federal funding had been committed to restoring physical structures and property. Some rebuilding funds have come from the local and state levels and insurance, but several projects are unfinished.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says the only solution for the myriad problems on the Gulf Coast is strong federal leadership:
The restoration of New Orleans is a loaded train that requires a powerful engine to pull it. Only our federal government has the engine to do it, but so far, it hasn’t left the yard except for public relations junkets. Every day, New Orleans grows into a more shameful chapter in our nation’s history, a bigger symbol of federal leadership incompetence and neglect.
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Katrina laid bare the racism of the class that rules the United States. Their goal is to eliminate Black power in the great cities, to sweep the urban landscape clean for white habitation. The hurricane was a godsend for the corporate nation-planners, and they jumped to the opportunity to exile hundreds of thousands, and create the conditions that made return to New Orleans impossible. Apologists claim the fault lies in “incompetence.” Bullshit. The Diaspora exists, so the killers of New Orleans have accomplished their goal.
Read more at BlackAgendaReport.com
Katrina represents just one on the many failures of the Bush Admnistration - a failure in the minds of good Americans who have a sense of decency - not, unfortunately, in the minds of the Bush Republicans - these people have no compassion for the wokring men and women of this country - they are doing all they can to destroy the middle class - I guess they think “I’ve got mine” - never mind the fact that for the most part they either inherited theirs from others or got theirs due to the blood and sweat of working men and women - its shameful what these people have done to this country and if the rest of us do not wake up and elect some good progressive Democrats to national office our country - the country we all know and love - may be lost forever through outsourcing and downsizing. I think its not only racism but class warfare as well - that’s not what the majority of this country is about and we have allowd them to get away with it for far too long.
I agree with 95% of what johnh3236 has to say. The only thing I disagree with is that the answer is to elect “progressive Democrats”. A “progressive Democrat” today is not what a “progressive Democrat” was in the ’70s or during the time of FDR. Today’s “progressive Democrats” are bought and paid for by corporate cash.
See Bruce Dixon’s scathing research report on corporate funding of the Congressional Black Caucus–historically, the heart, soul and conscience of the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party–in this week’s issue at BlackAgendaReport.com.
John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich are on the right track, talking about getting the corporate lobbyists and funding out of politics. But do we really expect the Dems to do that? Voluntarily? I would say it’s too late for internal reform.
I say we need a Labor Party, funded and controlled by–and ultimately answerable to–the working people of this county, through our trade unions.
In the meantime, there are a lot of hopeful local developments across the country, such as alliances between unions and the Green Party (the Temsters, the Teachers Union and the Green folks on the Seattle School Board, for instance), and many Black activists are now discussing the need for Black independent candidates in the Gulf Coast, in light of the Dems’ complicity in the man-made post-Katrina tragedy and the deep corruption of local Black Dems like Rep. Bill Jefferson.
So I have come to the reluctant conclusion that we won’t be able to bring the Democratic Party back to its roots by working within it, not even with the best of the Dems, like John Conyers. The corruption in D.C. is such that even the CBC is on board the corporate gravy train, unfortunately.
The Bush administration is not the only one to blame here, the blame goes all the way down through the state and local governments to the city that had no emergency plan or even a boat despite being on the Gulf Coast and below sea level. The burden of blame starts with the city and works it’s way up to the Feds, not the other way around as it is so often portrayed.
FEMA pumped billions of dollars into the area initially and continues to do so to this day. It’s not up to the Feds to fix New Orleans, that’s up to the locals. All the complaining, blaming and race baiting isn’t helping to fix New Orleans, what’s needed is a plan and some competent leadership (Naygan excluded) to execute.
Mayor Ray Nagan needs to be removed from office but I fear he will be labor’s choice for governor. Talk about rising above your level of incompetence! Nagan should have decked Bush when he had a chance in 2005.
We need a Reconstruction Party or Labor Party independent of the two parties of war, greed, neglect and lies.
It was “federal leadership” which helped New Orleans attain its present situation. Imagine the mischief Congress could cause if they had a few hundred billion more to curry favors.
I feel for those living in New Orleans. However, they chose to live there, they chose to not insure their property, they chose to return there. As Americans, they have the right to make those choices, but they have the obligation to not force me and other freedom-loving Americans who don’t live in New Orleans to subsidize their choices.
The federal government should not encourage more risky behavior by subsidizing the New Orleans victims with other people’s money. Rather the feds should simply admit that there are some things that even the entire American government can not prevent nor repair.