In New Orleans the score is Superdome 100 percent versus ZERO for renters in the ninth ward. According to CNN, 62 percent of the dome renovation cost of 185 million dollars was provided by FEMA. This same agency has declared that it has nothing for permanent rental housing.
Come, let us all celebrate Monday night football. For me it is the greatest of all American games. It cannot be documented but back in my hometown neighborhood I was known as one of the exceptional sandlot quarterbacks of the fifties. Football is wonderful and basketball is okay too. I welcome a basketball arena in my Brooklyn district but the monstrous luxury housing complex attached to it is not economic development; it is real estate exploitation of imminent domain. A clearer and more efficient example of economic development is the New Orleans Superdome originally built without destroying housing for middle and low-income residents. One year after Katrina we have all together cheered for the return of football to New Orleans. At the same time all decent Americans must mourn for the removal of half of the Black population of this unique city.
The federal government has declared that it will not provide permanent housing for returning evacuees who are renters. A decision has also been made to abandon a portion of the public housing that was not flooded and to never build any new public housing in New Orleans. Why have the bricks, mortar, and steel to house the poor become so widely demonized? Perhaps this is the wrong question. It's not the buildings. It is the people who are hated.
Ethnic cleansing across the oceans in Darfur has been rightly denounced by most of the civilized world. My prediction is that the White House October surprise before the general election will be a very aggressive initiative against the genocide in Darfur. Regardless of the wrong reason, let us applaud doing the right thing in Sudan. Meanwhile, this generation of Americans must seriously contemplate the fact that our grandchildren will be ashamed of us for the official ethnic cleansing we are permitting in New Orleans.
The cold-blooded destruction of the ninth ward and other pockets of the Black poor in New Orleans is sanctioned by every level of government and by the business community. The magnificent renovation of the Superdome is outstanding evidence of the fact that the Katrina recovery is not blundering along at a snail's pace. American ingenuity and know-how have triumphed for this major priority project. The helplessness in the housing arena on the other hand is not accidental or inevitable. No, the refusal to provide housing, employment, health care, and a public school system for Blacks in New Orleans is a bold venture in heartless urban planning. Before the eyes of all the world, against a backdrop of chattering sentimental commentators, non-profit executive bleeding hearts, and partisan political silence, blatantly visible on the Internet and the television screen, American ethnic cleansing is being executed.
When we truly care about projects or people, Americans and our Washington leaders are world champions in innovative generosity. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Ted Turner and the Google Guys, with their mega-billion-dollar approach to world philanthropy, are trailblazing unique and unprecedented chapters in the history of civilization. Official legislative actions with taxpayer dollars have also been amazingly generous:
•To promote democracy and defeat ethnic cleansing in the Balkans our government, over the last decade, has contributed ten billion dollars.•For the families of the victims of the World Trade Center terrorism the average award was 1.3 million dollars per family for a total of seven billion dollars.
•To protect our farmers from the fluctuations of the free market last year, the subsidy appropriation was 17.3 billion dollars.
•An additional bonus of 3.5 billion dollars for the farmers was added to a hurricane relief bill to protect them from routine drought.
•Federal loans and subsidies to the distressed airline industry following the 9-11 attack totaled eight billion dollars.
•For permanent rental housing for returning New Orleans evacuees the government subsidy is now zero.
As a result of this star-spangled Scrooge approach half the Black population of New Orleans will be cleansed. Blacks who have been a political nuisance to whites--Democrats and Republicans--will no longer clog the wheels of Louisiana politics. What Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis together could not accomplish shall now be fulfilled. What confederate guerilla atrocities could not destroy will now be obliterated.
To stop this in-your-face sanitized, televised ethnic cleansing the American people, decent public opinion, the Judeo-Christian conscience, must rise up and just say NO! Congress has already appropriated the necessary funds. The Congressional Black Caucus spelled out the imperative to consider housing for poor evacuees as a right--not a discretional consideration of FEMA. By executive order or administrative directive, this ghastly ethnic cleansing atrocity can be throttled. Let the mandate go forward:
By any available means--public housing, section eight subsidies, non-profit organization grants, etc. --five years of housing must be provided to each evacuee family returning to New Orleans. Evacuees must be informed of this right to rental housing no later than October 30, 2006.
Americans must stand firmly against ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, in Darfur, and in the shadow of the Superdome in New Orleans.