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Katrina Four Years Later: Iraq Being Rebuilt Faster |
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Four years after Hurricane Katrina killed more than 1,800 people and left thousands homeless along the Gulf Coast, many residents, especially those displaced in New Orleans, still cannot come home, because there are no homes to come back to.
From the beginning, the union movement has sought to aid in rebuilding the communities, with the AFL-CIO’s Gulf Coast Revitalization Program early on committing to spending $1 billion to produce new housing, fund economic development projects and create thousands of new jobs. Already more than 400 workers have been trained to fill those jobs.
But outreach efforts continue to be stymied. Robert “Tiger” Hammond, president of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO, tells Press Associates that local and state officials keep putting up “roadblock after roadblock after roadblock” to building housing for displaced residents.
And the schools are not faring much better. With 120 of the city’s 126 schools under state control or operating as charter schools—and with a post-Katrina state law banning collective bargaining for many teachers—the United Teachers of New Orleans/AFT has filed a wrongful termination class action lawsuit to help hundreds of teachers who lost their jobs.
In St. Bernard Parish, adjacent to New Orleans, Hammond says there is critical need for medical care. Three small trailers with six doctors treat a community of 34,000 people, he says. Before Katrina, St. Bernard had 70,000 people and more doctors.
The AFL-CIO offered to spend the equivalent of $100 million to restore and reopen Methodist Hospital in St. Bernard, Hammond tells Press Associates, as long as it was done under a project labor agreement between contractors and local unions. The agreement would ensure that workers received fair wages and benefits. But, Hammond says:
We hit denial after denial after denial. Can you believe this? Even Iraq is getting rebuilt more quickly.
There have been some successes. New Orleans firefighters this week unveiled 11 fire stations throughout the city that were restored and renovated after being destroyed by Katrina.
More than 200 members of the Carpenters donated more than 8,000 work hours to rebuild the stations. Says Fire Fighters President Harold Schaitberger:
The people responsible for this project have done much more than rebuild fire stations. They have restored a fire department. They have helped ensure the safety of everyone in New Orleans—its residents and its fire fighters. We tried for more than three years to get the [Bush administration] to do its part, but it never did.
During his campaign, President Obama made the federal government’s obligation to rebuild the Gulf Coast a centerpiece of his campaign and agenda. But in a new report, Gulf Coast leaders say that so far the Obama administration has not lived up to its promises.
The report, released yesterday by the Institute for Southern Studies, shows many Gulf Coast advocates give the Obama administration only slightly better marks for Gulf Coast recovery than the Bush administration.
The report is based on a survey of more than 50 leaders from faith, community and environmental groups working in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. They were asked to grade the president and Congress in eight key areas. Many of the leaders said to date, little in Washington has changed: The report also includes a “Katrina Recovery Index” with 80 indicators on housing, health care, coastal protection, hurricane readiness and other measures of Gulf recovery.
The Gulf Coast leaders give the Obama administration’s recovery efforts a grade of “D+.” The only area where the administration ranked higher was in its willingness to “publicly acknowledge the challenges facing recovering Gulf Coast communities,” which earned a “C-.”
The Obama White House, which has been submerged in policy battles over economic stimulus and health care, argues it remains committed to the Gulf Coast. Officials point to “shaking loose” $1 billion in appropriated federal funds, moving people out of temporary housing and creating an arbitration panel to handle disputes that have hamstrung rebuilding projects.
But Gulf Coast advocates say the president’s $786 billion stimulus bill passed this spring as another missed opportunity. The bill created fewer jobs in Louisiana’s hard-hit 2nd Congressional District than any in the nation. Congress and the president also passed on proposals for a Gulf Coast Civic Works program for “shovel-ready” green rebuilding projects. Click here to read the full report.
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This article discussed symptoms that have been painfully obvious for years now.
Perhaps there is no profit to be made in helping fill the needs of even desperately poor people in this country. The billions of dollars spent in war is easily supported because these billions of tax payers money goes into the pockets of millionaire CEOs and investors. These same corporations own the allegience of both Republican and Democratic Parties with campaign contributions and by employing a small army of lobbyists in Washington. There are at least six lobbyists in Washington for every member of Congress.
The needs of the people are forever obliterated by the vast corruption that now rules Washington.
There is no help for poor people in New Orleans because there is no profit from impoverished people. No housing and no jobs for the people but rebuilt hotels for tourists are built.
Throughout the U.S. today, the essential needs of the people are not being even considered, let alone being met. Public education is being methodically destroyed. Public health care is being “reformed” with Obama’s phony “health care reform” that is only concerned about maintaining and maximizing profits to the health care parasites. “Single-payer” is not allowed to be seriously considered and is kept “off the table” in Senate discussions.
This country is rapidly approaching complete economic and social collapse.
But where is the leadership of organized labor today when they are needed so much? Are they going to be a part of any solution or will they remain a part of the problem?
Is this article yet another grim indicator of what we can expect:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/aug2009/hugh-a28.shtml
Union official takes the helm at New York Federal Reserve
By Bill Van Auken
28 August 2009
This week’s naming of New York State AFL-CIO President Denis Hughes as the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York speaks volumes about the evolution of the union bureaucracy in America.
…
“….“The union doesn’t run the fed. [The appointment] is more symbolic.” Indeed, Hughes will hold the post only until the end of this year, when a new chairman will be installed.
However, this still raises the obvious question: symbolic of what? On the surface, it would appear that the selection of Hughes represents an attempt by the Federal Reserve—and the Obama administration—to use the elevation of a union official to chairman of the New York bank’s board to mask the essential role that it has played over the entire past period as the servant of Wall Street. First it adopted monetary policies that facilitated the speculative bubbles that have produced the greatest crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and subsequently it has poured trillions of dollars in taxpayers’ money into the banks and finance houses to save them from their bad bets.
All of this has been done at the expense of working people, the vast majority of the population, who have seen no similar effort to save their jobs, homes and living standards from an ever-mounting assault.”
Our empire is first classist and then racist. Most of the poor black former inhabitants of New Orleans have already resettled elsewhere. By not making the necessary improvements to the dike walls and allowing the destruction of the protective wetlands they were patiently waiting for a hurricane to “gentrify” New Orleans. There wont be any more crime in New Orleans to ruin what is to be rebuilt as a nice white tourist capital.
As far as Iraq goes, wake up and realize that this is now a military empire whose only remaining industry is the armaments industry which must have wars in order to survive.
As far as the working class of this country goes it’s days are numbered in terms of unions and even jobs. Look to Brazil or Russia with their large numbers of impoverished people to see what the ruling class has in store for this country.
As far as we go we’re irrelevant. The candidates of both parties are vetted beforehand by the ruling class. The election extravaganza
is a show to make you feel franchised but in reality no one here counts any more than do those poor, mostly black, former residents of New Orleans.
http://groups.google.com/group/bnooz_2007
No doubt New Orleans isn’t being rebuilt the way it should, but I don’t really understand the comparison to Iraq. Iraq has been totally devastated by US sanctions through out the 90’s and the invasion and occupation over the past 6 years. Efforts to “rebuild” Iraq have been more focused on lining the pockets of US corporations than compensating the people of Iraq for the destruction of their country. Perhaps Robert Hammond should raise the real issue here - not that money is being wasted on rebuilding Iraq while New Orleans is being ignored, which is totally untrue. The real issue is that money is being wasted on the continued military occupation of Iraq while New Orleans residents are left to suffer.
Mr. Wells, Your comments are correct. Unless there is profit to be made no one, especially big corporations, wants to help. Sounds like the New Orleans area has been written off by many agencies. It is sad that these things are happening in the richest country of the world. Attended an Organizing for America bus tour rally about health care reform in Albuquerque, NM. Of course it was to applaud the public health insurance option. However, a very vocal group for single payer made their voices heard. As a nurse, I have been a single payer supporter for a long time. The AFL-CIO had a strong presence there also. AFT, AFCSME and SEIU folks were also in the crowd. I hope it got the attention of Mitch Stewart, Obama’s head of OFA. I intend to keep up the fight for single payer until it is accomplished or I pass from this life. Insurance companies are the problem not the solution.
I have heard that the Republican Party is trying to block or steal money from people or places that are supposed to receive federal aid from the Recovery Act. This needs to be looked into wherever the Recovery Act money is supposed to go.
Maybe it isn’t the federal governments job to rebuild a city in louisiana? After four years you would think people might learn to innovate and take care of their own business, instead of waiting for big brother to do it for them. What a sad article, but for an entirely different reason than the slant it was presented in.
Well, well, well. It’s nice to see that the plight of the downtrodden and the dispossessed hasn’t fallen completely off the radar screen.
There is, however, go-along-to-get-along hypocrisy in play here.
When the AFL-CIO and its HCAN bunk mates like MoveOn and True Majority sent out their sham health care reform “talking points” here is an example of what was suggested:
“Remember that the vast majority of middle-class Americans are insured. Thus, talking about access for the uninsured immediately makes the conversation about “them” and not about “us”. For the largely insured middle class, their concerns are not about access to coverage but its costs.”
Translation:
Make sure the invisible people remain invisible. Make sure our public discourse ignores the downtrodden, the dispossessed, and the forgotten ones. Make sure we do not shed any light on the plight of those trapped in abject poverty. Out of sight out of mind is the way to go!
That’s what is happening to the still-suffering victims of Rita, Katrina, Bush, and a [still] uncaring government apparatus. It’s a case of “out of sight, out of mind”. Their suffering continues, but its being kept quiet. There is no public discourse on those people. They suffer in obscurity.
Several lousy HCAN “talking points” are antithetical to true working class consciousness. One of them was to ignore the invisible people. It’s nice to see this website call attention to their plight. But, c’mon. the pie cards can’t have it both ways!
Denial after denial is probably a matter of “it’s the law.” Or to put things a bit differently, “Why, we can’t make people join a union just to get a job.”
Once again, those who most could use unions in their lives have been “protected” against them by law and propaganda.