by James Parks, Oct 23, 2007

ILCA journalists found that homes in the poor, hard-hit Ninth Ward of New Orleans are either destroyed or uninhabitable two years after Hurricane Katrina.

More than 100 labor journalists came to the International Labor Communications Association (ILCA) convention in New Orleans last week with two goals in mind: to tell the real story about what’s happening in the Crescent City two years after Hurricane Katrina and to show the world what labor journalism is all about.

When they left, the things they saw and the stories they wrote dispute the popular media image that the city is back for everyone.

On Oct. 19, the second day of the three-day convention, the journalists heard five New Orleans leaders describe what’s going on in the city behind the headlines that claim a quick recovery. The panel said reactionary ideologues from the Bush administration, and some business and civic leaders in New Orleans, took the damage and dislocation caused by the hurricane as an opportunity to conduct a mass experiment  in privatization and union-busting.

Next, the journalists fanned out across the city to see conditions for themselves and report on what they saw.

ILCA President Steve Stallone says:

Every challenge that this nation’s workers and their unions face is here, but in a concentrated and exaggerated form. Reporting and broadcasting on these challenges and these stories not only furthers their cause, but informs our reporting wherever we live and work.

Vibhuti Mehra, communications coordinator for the Labor Project for Working Families, joined a group of labor journalists who visited the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice. She tells this story: 

We met with Denise, a 20-year-old Latino day laborer who was severely injured on the job. He hasn’t worked for seven months since his injury. However, he is now an organizer for the Workers’ Center. He now educates and informs other day laborers—Latino, African American, Asian, white—about their rights. 

Personally, the experience was very touching, enlightening and humbling. It is very important, in this current anti-immigrant climate, for our unions to stand in solidarity with our undocumented brothers and sisters. Like all of us, they are here not to “steal” jobs, but to work hard and provide for their families back home. 

My goal is to share the stories I have heard using our newsletter and website, so more of us can join the fight against greed, corruption and a blatant violation of workers’ and human rights in the post-Katrina New Orleans. 

Mehra and others wrote their stories and processed their photos in an unprecedented ILCA Labor Media Center created for the convention. You can read many of the stories and view pictures by clicking here. 

Delegates also honored the best in labor journalism with the 2007 Labor Media Contest Awards. The top prize, the Max Steinbock Award, went to the Milwaukee County Labor Council’s Milwaukee Labor Press for “Artist Agnew Sews Up New York” by Dominique Paul Noth.  The article features Terese Agnew, a Milwaukee artist, who labored four years on “Portrait of a Textile Worker,” a tapestry made mainly from thousands of clothing labels supplied by everyday people.

In the midst of creating the tapestry, Agnew suffered and overcame severe tendon damage from her elbows down. Now Agnew’s tapestry has been purchased by the Museum of Art & Design in New York City as part of its permanent collection.

Other speakers at the convention were St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Phil Dine and Wade Rathke, founder and chief organizer of the advocacy group ACORN.

The delegates also re-elected Stallone and Michael Kuchta as president and secretary-treasurer, respectively.

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