Is A Second Katrina on the Way?
By Nancy R. SmithThe First Katrina: The Poor Become Visible I was talking with a friend recently who observed that in our church's emphasis on dealing with racism and white privilege, we talk a lot more about racism than we do about privilege! While the death, displacement and suffering of thousands from the devastation left by Katrina in New Orleans undoubtedly has a racist component, our economic class system is exposed in no uncertain terms. I’ve tried to reflect on my own assumptions, based on my own position of relative privilege in society. Here are my personal results, which are in no way all-inclusive: Many of the poor had no means of transportation to evacuate before the hurricane hit. If we were told to evacuate, my husband and I could get in our own car and start driving. Many of the poor had no money because they lived from paycheck to paycheck. The first of the month was just a few days away. If we had to evacuate, we could draw from our checking or savings account. Many of the poor had no place to go outside of New Orleans. If we couldn’t find friends or family to stay with immediately, we could afford to spend a night or two in a motel.
If we who are white and privileged were more sensitive to our economic privilege, we would not be so quick to ask, “Why didn’t they evacuate before the hurricane hit?” Katrina has clearly shown us the system of economic class that is prevalent throughout our society (not just in New Orleans). New Orleans Detective Lawrence Dupree is reported to have said that some of the people they were trying to rescue with a helicopter were so poor they were worried about having no money for a “ticket.” They thought they would be charged to be rescued. What questions did you ask about “those people," and what assumptions did you make, that were based on your own economic privilege? The Second Katrina: Reconstruction = Gentrification? Now there is a substantial risk of victimizing the poor all over again. In "Let the People Rebuild New Orleans" in The Nation, Naomi Klein writes: Many survivors told me that the reconstruction was victimizing them all over again. A council of the country's most prominent businesspeople had been put in charge of the process, and they were handing the coast over to tourist developers at a frantic pace. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of poor fishing people were still stuck in sweltering inland camps, patrolled by soldiers with machine guns and entirely dependent on relief agencies for food and water. They called reconstruction "the second tsunami." I am appalled that no-bid construction contracts are going to large firms such as Bechtel and at least one subsidiary of Halliburton, not to local businesses. The government has also waived Einvironmental Protection Agency regulations and affirmative action requirements for the contractors. On September 8 President Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon Act which requires that contractors pay the prevailing wage. Then the Department of Homeland Security said it would not apply sanctions to contractors in the area who hire people who lack proper documentation. Even if this was originally meant to help those who had lost all their personal records in the hurricanes, the result is an influx of undocumented workers from Mexico with the poor competing with each other for work, while the big contractors reap the profits. Incentives should not be given to the big contractors, but as Barbara Bernier writes in FindLaw's legal commentary, incentives need to go to the poor and overwhelmingly Black residents [who] have been cast to the far reaches of America -- in the largest black migration since the 1927 Mississippi Flood. More than twenty states have taken in New Orleans residents; many will never return. Bernier goes on to point out that now the same poor people face the possibility -- and perhaps even the probability (because of the Supreme Court's ruling earlier this year in Kelo) -- that their homes (if they own a home) will be: officially designated as blighted, torn down, and turned over to private developers - who seek to replace them with buildings in which the old residents cannot afford to live, or malls in which they cannot afford to shop. The likelihood that New Orleans will never again have the cultural and racial and ethnic variety it had before is echoed by HUD secretary Alphonoso R. Jackson, who said that New Orleans will "not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again." See the Washington Times article by Brian DeBose. The article continues: Two weeks after Katrina, the Congressional Black Caucus issued an eight-point action plan that calls for residents to get the first right of return to the area, that New Orleans residents get first choice of construction jobs and rebuilding contracts and that voting rights be protected. Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO is calling for an “America Needs a New Direction” initiative. For more articles on this subject, see: Write to your Senators and Representatives! For more about this author, click About Us. To send us your comments: Click FEEDBACK | 
