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Back in October and November of last year, I did a lot of talking about some business in St. Bernard Parish, a Parish near New Orleans. You can find my previous update and links to all my writing on this topic here.
In a nutshell, St. Bernard is 81.6% white, and the housing is mostly single-family homes. Some developers are trying to build apartments that will be more affordable to low-income individuals, a group in that area in which blacks are overrepresented. Well, white city leaders have a PROBLEM!!! with this, and have gone to great lengths to prevent the building of this affordable housing, including lengths of dubious legality, which can be found at my link above.
So construction on the apartments finally started, but then:
A roiling battle over four mixed-income apartment buildings in St. Bernard Parish reached a boil Friday, with Parish President Craig Taffaro ordering a halt to construction after the developer’s attorneys forced the case out of a state judge’s hands and back into federal court.
Within hours, however, U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan called foul, ordering parish officials to “purge themselves of contempt” by today at 5 p.m. or begin paying $25,000 per day in fines, then $50,000 per day after Tuesday.
For some reason, Taffaro had ordered this halt “three days after the Parish Council repealed two ordinances that restrict mult-family and rental properties.”
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development fair housing enforcement officials have said they would block federal money coming into the parish — and possibly to Louisiana as a whole — if the parish did not rescind the ordinances. HUD officials said the laws discriminate against African-Americans who are disproportionately in need of such housing in the New Orleans area.”
People, what the hell is going on here?
From Prose Before Hos:
Democracy In Action!?
Approximately a dozen teachers, teen mothers and their children were arrested and taken away by Detroit police while staging a peaceful sit-in protest at the Catherine Ferguson Academy in Detroit on Friday April 15th. Eight students, along with their children and some faculty members of the Catherine Ferguson Academy of Detroit, MI began the sit-in at the end of the school day in protest to Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb’s announcement to close the school for pregnant and parenting teens. The decision to occupy was made after many other attempts by students, staff and supporters to have their voices heard by EFM Robert Bobb through letter writing and petition campaigns, to no avail.
Detroit Public Schools emergency manager Robert Bobb today announced plans to close at least eight schools this year and next, with 18 other classroom buildings slated to become charters or close as well.
Altogether, 45 classroom buildings in the district could be converted to charter schools under Bobb’s plan, which he calls “Renaissance 2012.” Bobb said the changes are aimed at reducing the district’s $327 million legacy deficit, stemming enrollment declines and improving student achievement.
From My Fox Detroit:
“Police came and they’re like, ‘You’ve got to go. You’ve got to go,’ said [student] Tiffany Baldwin. “We just stood there and they just arrested us one by one.”
…Baldwin’s three-year-old daughter was there, and she says she would do it all again if it meant saving the school that helped save her.
“I’m glad I took part in this. I’d do it a hundred times more to help the cause,” she said.
From Labor Notes:
Bobb dropped another bomb last Friday, issuing 5,466 layoff notices—one for every teacher and staff member in the district. The notices do not constitute final layoff decisions, and many teachers may ultimately keep their jobs.
…Some 70 charter operators interested in opening schools in Detroit met with Bobb on Thursday—the same day the teacher layoffs were announced.
…”There’s no question that when the charter movement started, a big piece of it was to try to avoid unionization,” [AFT Michigan’s David] Hecker said. “It isn’t just the financial piece of it,” he added, “a big part of the movement was always to try to avoid having to work with staff in a collaborative way through collective bargaining.”
Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%:
Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office. By and large, the key executive-branch policymakers on trade and economic policy also come from the top 1 percent. When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift—through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price—it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.
Oligarchy? I’m just asking.
Okay, so this is pretty cute…
Created by Encounter.
“I’m not calling Trump a racist. But he ought to quit quacking before people start believing he’s a duck.,” [Goldie Taylor] wrote.
“It’s ironic that Ikea looks on the U.S. and Danville the way that most people in the U.S. look at Mexico,” [union organizer Bill] Street said.
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