What was promised....

Bob McDonnell promised to restore voting rights for nonviolent offenders who have served their time. (VA and KY are the only two states that do not restore voting rights when someone has paid their debt to society!)

However, what we got was another set of Jim Crow machinations. Hmmm....let's see 50% of the folks who do NOT have voting rights are African Americans.....Do we see a pattern of racism?

WAPO has the story.

Reflections on Hurricane Season 2005, Part Four

Here is my Fourth article generated by my recent tour of the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Louisiana to inspect 2005 hurricane damage and what has been done in the aftermath. This series was published at OpEdNews.com in the Spring, but I want to continue to bring Mosquito Blog readers up to date, because government on all levels is still agressively working against the basic interests of many of the disenfranchised in New Orleans, particularly Blacks. There is tremendous injustice going on and charges of racism are rife, but skewed ideology and private business sector avariciousness are equal suspects here.

It will be interesting to compare the pathetic government efforts at recovery in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans to how government will now react in southern California to the wild fires devastation. Stay tuned for that.

In this report I have now waded into the heart of hurricane devastation in New Orleans, the Lower Ninth Ward, where I found government relief efforts practically invisible, and only some hearty volunteers and social activists present there to help the victims of Katrina survive day to day.

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May 8, 2007

Welcome to the Lower Ninth Ward, Where Tragedy and Hope Meet

By Mac McKinney

Along the Gulf Coast, Post Katrina, Part 4: The Lower Ninth Ward

















Devastated house in the Lower Ninth Ward

After wandering through Orleans Avenue (which was recounted in Part 3) on this increasingly warm and sunny Friday the 13th, I headed on to downtown New Orleans, somewhat disoriented by the unfamiliarity of the streets after some 28 years, but I finally found myself on the end of St. Charles Avenue. I stopped at the nearby St. Charles Bar and Pool Room and ordered a Hurricane, which I sat sipping through a straw like a slow milkshake while I watched an old Gunsmoke episode on the nearest screen. I figured I could use a good shot of rum to get me through the rest of what would surely be a taxing afternoon.

I started walking up busy St. Charles, taking photos, diverting momentarily over to Camp Street, where, surprisingly, I came across the Zen Center of New Orleans, unaware that the city even had a Zen temple. It would take the compassion of Buddha, I thought, to heal all of New Orleans. I walked through Lafayette Square, photographing the statue of school children with John McDonogh, the philanthropist, also unaware that the plight of the public school system would be brutally brought home to me soon in the Lower Ninth Ward.

I eventually reached Canal Street, where I bought some trinkets and took more photographs. You could never guess, looking at downtown New Orleans, that a major hurricane had devastated the city some 20 months ago. Repairs had been relatively quickly and efficiently made, even though parts of downtown had been flooded up to four feet high, as a hotel clerk explained to me. She also told me the easiest way to get to the lower Ninth: drive east on Poydras, right on Claiborne, and just keep going until you cross over a big drawbridge.

So that's what I did. However, once upon S. Claiborne and merged onto N. Claiborne, I was so struck by significant damage right on this major boulevard that I parked and took more photographs. Why, I thought, hadn't such an amazing eyesore as the one shown below been leveled after so long by the city? But again, this was in a predominantly Black district. Is that answer enough?

















An eyesore along N. Claiborne Avenue

After about a ten minute drive I was rolling over the large and rusty looking draw bridge spanning the Industrial Canal, the canal whose levee system had been breached in three places, two of these breaches directly flooding the Lower Ninth, a levee system that investigators have emphasized was one in name only.

As I got off the bridge, I pulled into a close by gas station, jumped out and asked a fellow gassing up to his truck if I was actually in the Lower Ninth right now, which he confirmed. "Where can I find the major damage?" I asked, explaining that I was here to take photos.

"Just turn right at the light two blocks up or take the next right here and start looking," he replied, "The damage is everywhere."

So I turned right, or north, and began what became a two hour plus sojourn up and down the still devastated streets of the Lower Ninth Ward, where some 25,000 people once lived, worked, played and worshipped. On the northside at least, very few people have moved back in. You see a few operable-looking cars parked in front of a few houses, as opposed to the hundreds of abandoned cars all over the place. On the southside, less badly hit, several thousand people have moved back in I am told, and I did see more people out and about, although, due to time constraints, I focused primarily on the northside, where I barely saw a person all afternoon, except for a few city workers, several homeowners, and a handful of contractors, that is until I went by the Common Ground Community Center later on.

You can visit my photo album on the Lower Ninth Ward, by the way, at any time by just clicking here. You can view the photos singly or as a slide show. You don't have to sign in either. There are 176 photos, so take your time.

Almost every house on the northside looks abandoned and damaged, with windows half or all the way out and the front door usually open or loose on its hinges. Some of the front doors or facades had X's on them, ominous reminders of the horrific days of the flooding, when rescuers were putting X's on a house to indicate that it had been checked for people or pets. But many if not most houses had no X. Does that indicate they were never checked?

Gone, obviously, are all the bodies. Gone too are the egregious piles of putrid garbage that had accumulated throughout the Lower Ninth as the floodwaters abated. Determined crews of volunteers dressed in Tyvek suits and respirators came in, from both the Lower Ninth and beyond, to eliminate them. None of this was organized by the city, mind you, despite Mayor Nagin's wonderful-sounding rhetoric, the city acting more like an absentee landlord in a detective series than any kind of leader in the rebuilding efforts here, which just reinforces the viewpoint some residents hold that the city only wants to drive off the black community, so that realtors and carpetbaggers can seize all their property. Or is it just the inertia of bureaucracy and regulations that paralyzes government?

Schools and Churches

In March of 2006 students and organizers also "raided" (since it was off-limits) the Martin Luther King Elementary School on the southside. To quote from an article by Kerul of Common Ground Collective:

New Orleans --In an historic act of solidarity, around 85 students and organizers from across the country risked arrest today by entering Martin Luther King Elementary School in the devastated Lower 9th Ward. Outside the school, a crowd of around 300 gathered wearing Tyvek suits and respirators, holding hand painted signs and chanting to oncoming traffic. In an ongoing effort to rebuild New Orleans, residents of the Lower Ninth Ward requested that these supporters clean the school out....

After raking the leaves and debris littering the entrance to the school, the crowd of volunteers pounded their tools on the pavement, as police observed from across the street. The students made their way into the building, and began sweeping and scooping piles of mud and debris from the lobby, carefully avoiding personal effects and sensitive items, such as plaques and framed pictures that had fallen from the walls in the storm. Among odd findings, an 8 inch dead fish was found in the stairwell leading up to classrooms.

Of the 117 public schools operational before Hurricane Katrina hit, only 20 are open. No plans exist to open schools in the Ninth Ward, giving residents no opportunity to rebuild their community. (March 16, 2006, source)

Unfortunately, over a year later, the school has not reopened, prompting protests. Instead the school has been "moved" uptown, in name only and as a charter school, to the former site of Edgar P. Harney Elementary School in Central City, which does absolutely nothing to help the repopulation and rebuilding of the Lower Ninth. The Louis Armstrong Elementary School, also on the southside, has likewise not reopened. Charter schools, I might add, are looked upon as the Messiah for a new educational paradigm, but the jury has not even formed on this count.

















Joseph Hardin Elementary. Louis Armstrong has yet to reopen on the southside

Things are even worse on the northside, where the Joseph A. Hardin Elementary School has never even been gutted. I can attest to that after stumbling across the school as I drove down St Maurice Avenue. It seemed so disheveled, with weeds and twisted chain-link fencing marring the entrance, that I grew curious and started exploring the premises, soon realizing that no one, apparently, has bothered to do much of anything to this neighborhood tragedy. An overwhelming pathos struck me as I gingerly stepped through semi-dark rooms taking pictures. You'll see what I mean when you look at my photo album. Room after room was trashed, with the ceiling panels falling down, insulation hanging, the overhead trim rusting, trash and desks and books strewn all about, yet, thankfully, there was not a lot of structural damage visible. Can this school be salvaged? I would say yes, but there has to be the will to do so. And unless the schools are all cleaned up and rebuilt, how can the Lower Ninth Ward be revived?

















The lobby of Hardin Elementary in April, 2007

There is a similar problem with the churches on the northside. The two I saw and photographed, the Holy Family Spiritualist Church and The Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church, have both been gutted, thank God, but they still await reconstruction, and for the Ward to be revived, the houses of worship must also be revived.

I continued to drive about, stopping to take photos every few blocks or so. There were crazy juxtapositions such as a boat atop a rusted out truck, fairly intact houses right next to completely shattered ones, a tour bus sitting in a weed-grown lot right next to a house, parked as if it was the family car. After rambling though most of the northside, I finally doubled back toward the direction I had started from, driving south on tree-lined Tennessee Avenue, but then turned right a block, then left again onto Deslonde Street, where I could immediately see some activity in the distance ahead.

Common Ground Collective

The bright color blue caught my eyes as I approached, this anomaly gradually transforming into a house covered with a blue tarp that extended out over the large driveway and, past that, another, corner house whose siding had been painted the same blue tint. This was the ward headquarters, so to speak, of Common Ground Collective, a truly amazing volunteer organization that I can't do justice to in this piece alone, only delineating it here.


















Common Ground Community/Distribution Center in the Lower Ninth Ward

Common Ground was founded in the tumultuous days after Katrina struck by social activists Brandon Darby, Scott Crow, King Wilkerson and Malik Rahim with a treasury of $50 and the awareness that, to quote from a March 2, 2006 Alternet article by Billie Mizell, "they could do a better job at helping people than the government of the most powerful nation in the world. Their small monetary investment has grown; the collective now has hundreds of members who have fed, housed and provided medical care for nearly 20,000 people (many more than that in the year since this was written-Mac).

"How did they do it? They went to the houses that were standing and asked the people who were still around, "What can we do to support you?" What they kept hearing: You can't rebuild a community that's buried under tons of garbage. So they started by picking up trash and decomposing animals, and then moved on to putting tarps over homes.

"They began to envision a relief organization radically different from those that had come to Louisiana in Katrina's aftermath. They wanted to bring together people of every background, race and economic level -- doctors working alongside garbage men working alongside cooks working alongside lawyers working alongside kids, all for one common goal. Space in a local mosque was secured for their headquarters, and soon, monetary assistance started pouring in and volunteers started lining up. A medical clinic was opened, and Red Cross immediately began pointing people in need to Common Ground. (Yes, the Red Cross turned the sick away in droves, instead sending them to a tent run by kids and volunteer nurses.) A legal aid clinic was established to offer immediate assistance to those trying to rebuild their lives and to put pressure on the authorities to focus on relief and rebuilding." (source)

Common Ground eventually divided into two separate organizations: Common Ground Relief and Common Ground Health Clinic. Quoting from Wikipedia:

"Common Ground Health Clinic had its beginnings when four young street medics, who had heard Malik Rahim's plea for support, showed up in Algiers a few days after the hurricane. They began riding around on bicycles asking residents if they needed medical attention. Locals were apparently surprised to be approached in this way, since no representatives of government agencies or of the Red Cross had appeared up to that point. The medics offered first aid, took blood pressure, tested for diabetes, and asked about symptoms of anxiety, depression, and other disease.

"After forming as a more cohesive organization, Common Ground began recruiting volunteers to help rebuild homes and provide other free services in the Lower Ninth Ward.... Thousands of people have volunteered for various lengths of time, creating an unusual social situation in the predominantly black neighborhoods, since most of the volunteers have been young white people from elsewhere. An ABC News Nightline report described the volunteers as "mostly young people filled with energy and idealism, and untainted by cynicism and despair, and mostly white, [who] have come from across America and from countries as far away as Indonesia."

"In addition to providing free food, water, cleaning supplies, protective gear, diapers, and health and hygiene goods, Common Ground has offered legal assistance, day care, tutoring, soil and water testing, and Internet access. Although much of their housing remediation work has been in the Lower Ninth Ward, they have a larger station across the Industrial Canal in the Upper 9th Ward of New Orleans." (source)

So I stopped here and started asking a few questions. Since it was already late afternoon now, I didn't ask many, and later decided I would come back Sunday to ask some more. I then walked to the corner and started talking to a handful of people sporting "I Love New York" tee-shirts. They were all church volunteers from New Jersey, and apparently the corner of Deslonde and N. Derbigny in front of Common Ground was a sort of volunteers' rendezvous point. Countless volunteers from around the globe must have met on this same corner since Katrina hit.

When I cam back Sunday I interviewed Jesse and Dan, two hard-core volunteers who had given up their normal lives and homes to serve the people of the Lower Ninth Ward. Jesse explained how they realized, as the Katrina tragedy unfolded, "that there was something from our government that should have been done, but wasn't, so we stepped in and will help as long as needed."

Both felt that the city of New Orleans was not only not helping, but clearly trying to drive people out of the Lower Ninth while maintaining a PR façade. Consequently a lot of Common Ground's efforts are in the legal arena, educating residents about and protecting them from government and private business ill-intent and dishonesty. A hotline was created for residents to report police corruption and brutality.

Jesse himself explained how he had been cold-cocked and beaten up by five of New Orleans' finest after he accidentally wandered into a melee that the police were starting to break up. Jesse explained how there was really a terrific community fellowship and an old, old culture in the Lower Ninth Ward. Generation after generation of families have lived here and everybody on a street knows everybody else. So what a compound tragedy it will be if this community is not revived.

I asked about the levee system, because I had noted how low it looked to me. Jesse anecdotally described how if one is a good jumper, you can stretch your arm up, leap up and barely touch the top of the levee in certain places. Not very encouraging. That is why, ultimately, New Orleans needs an entirely new engineering project to offer this invaluable city flood and surge protection to suit the challenges of the 21st Century. But that would take a massive New Deal Era TVA-style project, something totally beyond the thinking and capability of the atomistic, corporate-minded Bush Administration.

To add injury to insult regarding the levees, Jesse and Dan conveyed how Mississippi River cruise ship lines were attempting to build docking facilities on the far northern end of the Lower Ninth on a natural hurricane barrier called the Cypress Triangle. This would destroy much of this natural defense against flooding and put residents at even greater risk. To compound matters, they also want to construct dangerous and garish high-voltage towers in the ward, an example of the utter callousness and folly of corporations untethered from social needs. The Army Corps of Engineers' proffered advice to residents in light of all the above is: Put your houses on stilts.

Returning to Friday afternoon timewise, after talking to volunteers, I hopped back in my car and drove over to the southside to survey the damage there. I saw much of the same, but with less destructive intensity, and there were more signs of life, functioning houses here and there, neighbors talking, more cars and trucks driving about, so this was a hopeful sign of progress.

By now it was late afternoon with the sun low on the horizon, so I slowly turned back onto N. Claiborne Avenue and up and over the draw bridge, headed for a look at the French Quarter, which I soon discovered looks completely recovered from Katrina, a stark, stark contrast to what I had just witnessed.

I left the Lower Ninth Ward with competing emotions flowing through me. On the one hand, the enormity of the destruction was unnerving and depressing. On the other hand, the spirit of love, selfless service and dedication among the volunteers I met was absolutely inspiring. If this spirit is contagious enough to spread throughout America, then New Orleans and the Lower Ninth will survive and flourish. But if the current paradigm of privatization, "halliburtonization" as some call it, prevails down here, then the Devil will get his due.

The Joys of the Bush Paradigm in Iraq

What have we wrought?














Outside a morgue in Baquba, Iraq, family members cry near the body of a 17-year-old girl killed during a raid by Iraqi forces. It has been five years since the authorization of US military force in Iraq.
(Photo: Reuters) (source: Truthout.org)

The Buddha said over two thousand years ago that hatred will never vanquish hatred. Only love can vanquish hatred. This is an immutable law of the universe.

America, collectively, went into Iraq with hatred and racism in its heart. Underneath all the fine rhetoric was a deep lust to strike out and punish, if not destroy, a people we have never had any real awareness of, substituting instead decades of Hollywood stereotypes about evil, violent, thieving, lascivious Arabs. These stereotypes, although more subtle than the Nazis' fragrant stereotypes against the Jews, have been every bit as deadly. America has actually transferred this traditional Western and Germanic/Anglo-Saxon anti-Semitism against Jewish peoples, dating back hundreds of years, for a self-righteous anti-Semitism against the Arabs, because, if you even know, Arabs and Jews are both considered Semitic peoples. They were both cut from the same cloth geographically and ethnically. Moslems and Jews even share the same ancestral "grandfather", Abraham.

So if educated Americans have ever wondered how in the world the sophisticated German people could have gone along with the Nazi agenda, with the massive crimes against humanity, with the endless passion for war, violence and torture, all we have to do is look at ourselves for the last six years and how we have leisurely walked down the seductively negative path of fear, violence and loathing. We have now perpetuated a Holocaust in Iraq, with anywhere from half a million to over a million dead, with some two million plus Iraqis in external exile, another two million in internal exile. Hundreds of thousands are sick, wounded, depressed, deranged, unemployed or in prisons, overt or covert, some of which still practice torture beyond prying eyes.

This is America's self-expression in the world today, massive death and suffering, compliments of the traditional Right-wing, the corporate Merchants of Death, and the Trotskyite-style Neocon fanatics. They will inevitably say in their alienated, sophistic ways, "So what, who cares, they're sub-human, and enemies of Christ or Jehovah or the American Century anyway."

But it does matter, because now this is their and our Karma. And what goes around comes around. So how will America work its way out of such terrible crimes? Is this even possible, to offer contrition at this point and try to make amends?

Even worse, America has made itself less and less human by dehumanizing others, so cruelty and inhumanity will follow us home, so to speak. Our social and political interactions within America will coarsen and harden, indeed they already have. The faux Social Darwinism of the 19th Century has returned with a flourish - the survival of the fittest, the richest, best armed and most unscrupulous.

And then we have the walking wounded. For those who have literally shot and killed or tortured Iraqis, particularly women and children, they now have their demons and ghosts inside of them permanently, no matter how they try to repress this black hole through liquor and drugs and self-denial. And we have thousands of GIs or ex-GIs carrying this burden.

This is why I don't go and beat my neighbor and burn his house down in a fit of paranoia or sadism, because I know it will all come back on me, sooner or later, no matter how invincible I think I might be. The human ego, no matter how arrogant it is, is not running the Universe. A God of Truth and Justice is. And it isn't any different for nations.

Pity the nation.

Reflections on Hurricane Season 2005, Part Three

Welcome to Orleans Ave, New Orleans, or what's left of it

















A house on Orleans Ave demolished by Katrina

Here is my third article generated by my recent tour of the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Louisiana to inspect 2005 hurricane damage and what has been done in the aftermath. This series was published at OpEdNews.com in the Spring, but I wanted to bring Mosquito Blog readers up to date, because, as I write, the government is moving to completely shut down and level the still functional housing projects in New Orleans. This move is not about helping the Katrina survivors. This is about cynical politics and greed.

In this report I have finally made it into New Orleans, specifically Orleans Ave, which becomes, when you turn right instead of left toward the French Quarter, a glaring eyesore, to the physical eyes as well as the soul.

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Along the Gulf Coast, Post Katrina, Part 3: Orleans Avenue, New Orleans

On Friday, April 13, 2007, after surveying hurricane damage in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, I high-tailed it up to Interstate 10 and headed due west. An hour plus later I was passing the state line into Louisiana and soon bearing down on Slidell as I-10 gradually curved south. Even before Slidell I began to get glimpses of Katrina's wrath out of the corners of my eyes as I sped on - torn up trees, piles of debris or damaged buildings in the distance. By time I had passed Slidell and was hitting the Huey P. Long Bridge, all kinds of questions were percolating in my head – how many towns and cities were hard-hit, how many people displaced; how much had been repaired; what have been the overall costs? And on and on.

As I drove over Lake Pontchartrain and gradually began the downward descent on the southern end of the bridge, the image of the far shore rising out of the vast blue lake waters rammed home to me just how fragile and isolated New Orleans is, and how low. You gained the distinct impression as you reached shore again that you were almost dropping into the lake, and in a sense you are, because, of course, the Crescent City is actually below sea level. And when you realize how the city and parish are bordered on the north by the lake, and east and south by the Gulf of Mexico, that is vulnerable indeed.

At last the skyscrapers of downtown New Orleans began looming into view, introducing some verticality into the geography, as if that was somehow reassuring as the next hurricane season approaches. I was getting more excited now, because I hadn't been to New Orleans since 1979, when I was on leave from the military, and had truly missed the place, which I had found magical and romantic.

Finally, I slowed down and began signaling left to take the exit for Vieux Carré (Old Square), the original French term for the French Quarter. Down I went, until the off-ramp suddenly drops you right onto Orleans Avenue, which runs parallel to better known Canal Street, which takes you smack into the French Quarter. But I had flown in here before, not driven, so I was disoriented. Should I turn left or right? My instincts told me the French Quarter was to the left and what I was really interested in was to the right, because I hadn't come down here to party, but to investigate the aftermath of Katrina. So I turned right.

A fortuitous decision. I hadn't driven two blocks before I was muttering Jesus under my breath. And I hadn't driven but several more before I was parking the car and grabbing my camera. My worst fears were materializing, based upon reports I had read, that the Polyanna depictions of New Orleans on the mend were greatly exaggerated. Now reality was staring me in the face, an entire, devastated neighborhood pretty much left to its own devices, as well as actually sabotaged, I would learn over time, from full recovery by the powers that be.

















Another victim of Katrina

So I began walking around taking pictures. At the time, I didn't even know the controversial story about the Lafitte Housing Project, so it was fortunate that I happened to take a few incidental photos of the Project apartment houses, so I could include them in this photo-essay. I otherwise ignored the Lafitte complex, because it was in pretty darned good shape, although boarded up and peppered with NO TRESPASSING signs. In the back of mind I wondered why, if so many citizens had been displaced or relocated, hadn't these been reopened to ease the suffering and return some of the exiled?
















The Lafitte Housing Project, with minimal hurricane damage, but locked-up anyway

What Orleans Avenue immediately reminded me of was sections of Naples, Italy that I had visited way back in 1980 while in the Navy, for there were still parts of Naples that had never been rebuilt after enduring all the carnage of World War II, as American forces wrestled Italy from German control. So in Naples, you incidentally walked up on a bombed out building every now and then and stared.

Well, I was staring now at street after street that looked like they may each have received a few rounds from Howitzers too. That there was this much damage still visible after some 20 months was shocking and embarrassing, embarrassing for a nation that claims to be the greatest super-power in history. A few trucks, work crews and sledge hammers could remove many of the hideous eyesores marring the neighborhood in a few weeks. Is City Hall, the State of Louisiana and FEMA incapable of something so basic, simple, and inexpensive? Or is something else going on here?

To understand what I am talking about, please visit my photo album on Orleans Avenue by clicking here. You can view the photos singly or as a slide show. You don't have to sign in. Here are a few more of the album shots:

















The abandoned Carver Medical Clinic

















An abandoned grocery store
















A massive, abandoned laundry plant behind Orleans Avenue

Why hasn't the Carver Medical Clinic been reopened? Why haven't the local grocery stores been repaired? These are core necessities. To Hell with making the owners jump through insurance and legal hoops! Subsidize them and get the establishments reopened, and reopen the Lafitte Housing Project as well to repopulate the neighborhood, even if only temporarily reopened.

But there are agendas at work here. The poet Edward Sanders has a great online article about this in a piece explaining why and how he wrote his latest book of poetry, Poems for New Orleans (click here to read). To quote him:

What happened in New Orleans and the Gulf after Katrina is fairly widely known- the ineptitude of FEMA, the callousness of Bush, Karl Rove and the White House, the privatization of much of the recovery- which resulted in massive excess pain for the victims, and profits aplenty for the sharks that grabbed control of, or siphoned off cash from, the recovery.

The Bushies and their ilk fervently believe in turning over as much of our government as they can get away with to the so-called "private sector." Thus, the running of the war in Iraq was considerably "privatized," or halliburtonized, with U.S.-paid mercenaries and companies in key positions in the prosecution of the war. The neocons, in the same mode, tried to privatize as many government functions as possible in the post-Katrina recovery in New Orleans and the Gulf.

In New Orleans in particular, the halliburtonized recovery has been a post-disaster disaster. It's a complicated story, but its essence is that the "Privatizing" of post-Katrina reconstruction and assistance has led to enormous bottlenecks, anger, despair and frustration. (Reference)

So New Orleans' citizens have had to fight two battles, the first against the horrors of Katrina, the second against the "halliburtonization" of the recovery, to adopt Sanders' term. After the American Civil War they called this latter phenomenon "Carpetbagging", taking advantage of disaster to disenfranchise and rob the citizens of the South. This is going on today at the hands of greedy, hateful and unconscionable individuals and organizations, be they insurers, realtors, contractors, speculators, politicians or ideologues.

Sanders had this to say about irresponsible politicians in particular:

Historian Doug Brinkley called it "Lethal Ineptitude" the way Bush, Homeland Security honcho Chertoff, FEMA political hack Brown, Louisiana Governor Blanco, conservative republicrat New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, and others, dripped malice & do-not on New Orleans and the Gulf.

Mayor Ray Nagin, in particular, seems to be a disciple of the kind of privatization-batty neocons who helped ruin the Chilean pension system after the overthrow of Salvador Allende. He is the halliburtonizers best friend. Governor Blanco of Louisiana is not much better, especially in her caving into the forces of unregulated rip-offs by the insurance companies. (ibid)

Now one can begin to understand why Orleans Avenue still looks the way it does. Things would apparently be even worse if the citizens of New Orleans hadn't been fighting back. Too many of them have roots in New Orleans going back generations, too deep to let themselves get screwed over by silver-tongued politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen.

For example, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) wants to demolish all the major housing projects in New Orleans, claiming that in between hurricane damage, old age and crime infestation, they have got to go, to be replaced by "mixed-income" remodeling, an urban renewal strategy anchored in HUD's Hope VI grant program, which has had only a mixed record nationally where it has been implemented. That the Bush Administration and Republican apparatiks are eager to bring HUD's plan to fruition is obvious. Who can forget Rep. Richard Baker's callous statement in the aftermath of Katrina that, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

A veteran advocate of public housing in New Orleans, Endesha Jaukali, has this retort to HUD's plans:

Mixed income is a pie in the sky illusion...What you're going to do is mix poor people and middle income people right on out of here. (from "New Orleans Housing Fiasco" by Anya Kamenetz click here)

It has been my own experience in Norfolk, Virginia that when the poor and lower middle class are dispossessed and displaced from an area, what fills the void is condominiums and luxury apartments affordable only by the upper middle class, the rich or corporations, the latter two buyers often from outside the area. The displaced are further marginalized, some to the point of homelessness and despair.

So Jaukali and others have launched a class action lawsuit against government agencies to stop the demolition of the projects:

The current class action suit alleges racial discrimination and violation of the 1937 Housing Act, which requires public hearings before demolition of any public housing. HANO (the Housing Authority of New Orleans) has used everything from steel shutters to barbed wire fences and armed guards to keep residents from reoccupying their former units. Resistance has taken many different forms. Since June, for example, the St. Bernard development has had a "Survivor's Village," a tent city of 20 or so residents on the neutral ground outside. Juakali says he modeled the Village on the 1968 Poor People's Campaign, which built a tent city on the Washington Mall. (ibid)

There has also been civil disobedience at the Lafitte. For example, on August 28 of last year, this transpired:

At 2pm today Gregory "DJ" Christy, a resident of the Lafitte housing development, joined by more than 70 supporters entered his apartment with the intention of reoccupying it for the first time since August 2005. 9 supporters of Christy were arrested in the attempt to reopen public housing. All 9 have been bailed out of the Orleans Parish Prison....

Christy's apartment was opened by a group of activists including C3/Hands Off Iberville, the United Front for Affordable Housing, and other community activists. Legal observers from the Common Ground Collective were onsite to monitor the police response. Using a ladder to scale to the second floor window, the activists climbed in, walked downstairs into Christy's unit, and opened the heavy steel door from the inside.

After the door was removed Christy entered his apartment along with several more supporters. Housing Authority police were on the scene when the door fell. City police arrived shortly after preventing others from entering or leaving the apartment. While these 7 were occupying the apartment more than 70 supporters rallied outside. (by Darwin BondGraham, click here)

But as you can see from my photos, unfortunately the Lafitte is still locked up. However, continuous protests have caused authorities to backtrack some, HUD temporarily reopening some housing units in the city to allow some of those scattered to the winds to return. Congress has also weighed in to slow down the demolition plans, and the legal showdown over the class-action lawsuit is scheduled to take place this November. But the hard-pressed citizens of Orleans Avenue, not to mention the rest of the city, especially the Lower Ninth Ward, can use all the support they can garner nationally and internationally in the meantime. Here is a list of organizations that Edward Sanders has come up with that you, the reader, can contact if you feel inspired to help in some way. See his full article for more info on each one:

1. Common Ground Collective
2. Neighborhoods Partnership Network
3. People's Hurricane Relief Fund
4. Rethink (Google them)
5. DNIA, dniaofneworleans@yahoogroups.com (to email)
6. St. John #5 Baptist Church, 635 Hamburg St New Orleans, LA 70122, (504) 288-3272
7. Greater New Orleans Foundation
8. ACORN
(from http://www.woodstockjournal.com/neworleans.html )
Please help the citizens of New Orleans recover their dignity, fundamental rights and heritage. And again, to see the photo album, you can also click here.

Loose Lips Sink Fascist Ships

From the English Sunday Mail, Sept 30, 2007:

British MPs were shocked when White House foreign policy adviser Debra Cagan told them: "I hate all Iranians." When confirming the comment one of the six MPs said: "She is very forceful and some of my colleagues were intimidated by her muscular style." (For full article, click here)

Red leather coat, Iron Cross-type jewelry, slicked-back hair and aquiline features, White House foreign policy advisor Debra Cagan looks like a cariature of a Gestapo agent from the 1940s, except she should have a black coat on to totally replicate the stereotype. Actually red and black were the Nazi colors. How interesting that she attires herself like this and has asides about hating all Iranians. This just reaffirms what I have been saying for several years, that the forces running our government have pretensions to be the Fourth Reich, and have substituted the hatred of Arabs and Moslems, indeed all the perceived inferior races, Blacks included, for the Nazi hatred of Jews, Gypsies and Slavs. This is the subtext going on beneath much of the official rhetoric.

The War on Terror is, in the psychological depths, a crusade against Islam and anchored in racial hatred of other races centered in the Middle East and Western Asia. You have only to research some of the ditties being sung in US Army and Marine Corps Boot Camps for this to be rammed home to your consciousness. It was a similar situation in Vietnam. Gooks then, Sandniggers now, both wars fueled by race hatred.

Ironically, Iran is Persian and of Aryan stock historically, the same Aryan ancestry that the Nazis idealized into blonde, blue-eyed Nordics.

Police Harrassment in Norfolk VA

If you are white and still believe that racism is a "thing of the past" I invite you to watch this video. This is something that occurs time and again throughout America in black communities. I have never witnessed such an event in a white neighborhood. People should not have to tolerate such behavior from public servants who are supposed to be our "peace keepers."

Police actions such as these tarnish what the police should stand for. We always hear how citizens should "respect" police officers. When police officers act like bullies it creates fear and anger....not respect.

It should be noted that it was a hot day....for citizens to be stuffed into a car with the windows up and no air conditioning is abusive if not torture. It is even more infuriating when the citizens are "law abiding" and stopped for no reason (except the color of their skin and the neighborhood they live in.) Police are often asked to arrest people who leave their pets in a hot car with the windows rolled up.



I hear that the last Norfolk City Council was "very interesting." Members of the black community were there to complain about the police harassment. Members of the white community also showed up wearing guns on their hips. It seems that the Norfolk police harassed a white man in Norfolk who was wearing a gun on his hip. (Virginia law now allows a handgun to be carried as long as it is not concealed.) The white man with a gun brought others to "support" him at the meeting. It is said that Norfolk City Council was never "adjourned" but that the city council members simply got up and left...leaving angry citizens both black and white. The citizens remained and had a citizens discussion about the Norfolk Police Force and their "bosses" the Norfolk City Council.

Maybe in the next council race some "real citizens" who actually live in the city of Norfolk will step forward to run for the City Council. It would be refreshing to see the citizens of Norfolk instead of developers and big business corporations represented for a change.

H/T to Alma Kessling and Alton Robinson, two Norfolk citizens who care about their city and its people.

Video: Looking Into the Heart of Darkness

Here is a very disturbing video that is a snapshot of just one GI and his inadvertently testifying to crimes against humanity in Iraq. Click on the title of the article or (click here).

Multiply his mindset and actions by a couple of hundred thousand and you will get a good idea of the magnitude of death and destruction the American military has visited upon the Iraqi people, whom we profess to be liberating. Obviously, another darker, psychological agenda is at work here.

This is what happens when ethics are abandoned in the military. The slow slide into Hell is assured after that. The destruction of the innocent is like a curse, setting in motion the self-destruction of those men and their institutions who perpetuate these crimes. General Douglas MacArthur understood this, and had this to say:

"The soldier, be he friend or foe, is charged with the protection of the weak and unarmed. It is the very essence and reason for his being. When he violates this sacred trust, he not only profanes his entire cult but threatens the very fabric of international society. The traditions of fighting men are long and honorable. They are based upon the noblest of human traits - sacrifice."

-General of the Army, Douglas MacArthur, 1946, confirming the death by hanging sentence imposed by a United States military commission on General Tomayuki Yamashita, convicted of failing to prevent Japanese Imperial troops under his command from committing massacres and outrages against prisoners of war and civilians in the last stages of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines.

This is why the American military must clean house rapidly as well as protect and distance itself from the diseased degeneracy of the White House and its inhabitants who have led us to this horrific point in our history.

George Allen has alot of questions he needs to answer!

Here's a letter from the marine veteran, University of VA law Student who was attacked by George Allen's goons the other day....I wish Allen was going to be appearing in my neck of the woods....I hope that other Virginians will show up and ask Allen why he won't release his bar application and open the book on why he was arrested when he attended UVA. Was it a hate crime? Was it an assault? Was it worst than this? "Many" are thinking that his divorce records are closed due to domestic violence.

So if George Allen is going to be the "open book" he says he is...then he needs to open the books and let Virginians take a look at the book for themselves.....

Too bad the media failed to accurately report this major "macaca" incident of Allen's campaign. The attackers were NOT simply supporters showing up for the event. They are in George's inncer campaign circle...I saw two of these guys at other campaign appearances in other parts of the state.....But Virginians won't forget what happened....

Letter from Mike Stark

The following is a letter to NBC29 from Mike Stark, the man who was tackled for a comment he made at Senator Allen's campaign stop in Charlottesville on Tuesday.

My name is Mike Stark. I am a law student at the University of Virginia, a marine, and a citizen journalist. Earlier today at a public event, I was attempting to ask Senator Allen a question about his sealed divorce record and his arrest in the 1970s, both of which are in the public domain. His people assaulted me, put me in a headlock, and wrestled me to the ground. Video footage is available here, from an NBC affiliate.

I demand that Senator Allen fire the staffers who beat up a constituent attempting to use his constitutional right to petition his government. I also want to know why Senator Allen would want his staffers to assault someone asking questions about matters of public record in the heat of a political campaign. Why are his divorce records sealed? Why was he arrested in the 1970s? And why did his campaign batter me when I asked him about these questions.

George Allen defends his support of the Iraq war by saying that our troops are defending the ideals America stands for. Indeed, he says our troops are defending our very freedom. What kind of country is it when a Senator's constituent is assaulted for asking difficult and uncomfortable questions? What freedoms do we have left? Maybe we need to bring the troops home so that they can fight for freedom at George Allen's campaign events. Demanding accountability should not be an offense worthy of assault.

I will be pressing charges against George Allen and his surrogates later today. George Allen, at any time, could have stopped the fray. All he had to do was say, "This is not how my campaign is run. Take your hands off that man." He could have ignored my questions. Instead he and his thugs chose violence. I spent four years in the Marine Corps. I'll be damned if I'll let my country be taken from me by thugs that are afraid of taking responsibility for themselves.

It just isn't the America I know and love. Somebody needs to take a stand against those that would bully and intimidate their fellow citizens. That stand begins right here, right now.

W. Michael Stark

Allen is Running Away From His Constituents?

Mosquito was LOL reading on Daily Kos how Mike Stark, a UVA student, asked George Allen a pertinent question given Allen's history and his recent Macaca rant.

Stark asked The question, "Have you ever used the word nigger?"

Allen answered, "Oh, c'mon... sheesh..."

Stark also asked Allen to explain why he had a confederate flag and a noose hanging from the tree in his law office.

Allen's said, "Listen - just let me do this here, and then I'll answer your question about the flag and the noose."

Then his campaign staff had the hotel manager ask the law student to leave.

Allen then cancelled the rest of his day's events.

How is Allen going to campaign in Virginia if he won't answer questions from his constituents?

Allen is running all right....from his constituents. This is not a good sign.

Maybe we should collect footage from around the state of Allen avoiding his constituents. We could title it, "See Allen Run."