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“The rich, giving part of their enormous earnings [to create universities], became known as philanthropists. These educational institutions did not encourage dissent; they trained the middlemen in the American system—the teachers, doctors, lawyers, administrators, engineers, technicians, politicians—those who would be paid to keep the system going, to be loyal buffers against trouble.”
-Howard Zinn
A People’s History of the United States
“Just a reminder that the year is 2009, and white people talking to black people is still a controversial issue in the Republican party.”
Phillip Morris at the Cleveland Plain Dealer has written a very apropos column on Anthony Sowell and the eleven women he murdered.
And as the unmistakable smell of rotting human flesh enveloped the neighborhood around Sowell’s house, a community shut its eyes and held it’s nose, while Sowell kept making his run to the beverage store.
The registered sexual predator in their midst made little effort to conceal the horrors that police say he perpetrated on women, but a neighborhood — and a city — blithely ignored the parade of women walking into Sowell’s home without ever walking out.
It appears that a serial killer was able to kill with abandon and confidence in a congested neighborhood because he knew that no one would bother to come looking.
The killer knew that on his streets, a black woman can simply disappear. No questions will be asked. He arrogantly told one of his victims, who managed to escape, that no one would come looking for her because she was a “crack bitch.”
This reminds us of the vast differences between what happens when a white woman, or an owning class woman, disappears versus a black woman, or poor woman. Not only were these women murdered, but no one was even seriously looking for them after they died. Even when relatives did note their absence, authorities declined to look into the matter. What’s the worth of a drug-addicted poor black woman? It should be the worth of a human being, but we have unmistakable tiers for determining who is worthy of society’s resources and emotional investment. Our own memories serve as evidence: when we think of missing women we heard about in the news, who comes to mind? Who’s searches made the media?
Newsweek recently had a story on this exact topic. It discusses a situation in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, where ten women have been killed and several more are missing. Their profiles are strikingly similar to the women killed in Cleveland. All black. All poor. Most with a history of drugs.
“If it was someone of a different race, things would have been dealt with the first time around; it wouldn’t have taken the fifth or sixth person to be murdered,” says Andre Knight, a city-council member and president of the local NAACP chapter. “All these women knew each other and lived in the same neighborhood; this is the sign of a potential serial killer. When it didn’t get the kind of attention it needed, it made the African-American community frustrated.”
In Rocky Mount, the police only recently warmed to the thought of a serial killer, perhaps because a killer hasn’t been handed to them on a silver platter as Anthony Sowell was (though there is a local sex offender who was charged with one of the murders in October). Work hours and community resources would have to be expended to determine the existence of a serial killer and locate hir. Not worth it if the killer only strikes poor black victims. The community of Rocky Mount had better hold onto their resources for something more important. Sports stadium, anyone?
Sowell was, unfortunately, quite smart, and knew things like this. He struck upon a ‘winning’ formula, which probably also stroked his ego for its boldness, its audacity. He preyed on women whom he knew society valued little. He didn’t even bother to hide his deeds. He killed women and in some cases just left the bodies where they lay, allowing the stink of his murders oppress the entire neighborhood. Everyone knew something or someone had died. And collectively, they accepted it with few questions. He knew they could smell it. When they did nothing, surely he felt that the neighborhood was complicit.
This case is really a story about complicity. Anthony Sowell did the raping and murdering. But so many others made it possible for him to do so. Don’t they deserve any credit for their work? The prison system, the police system, our “war on drugs”, drug dealers, the community, the city leaders, the economic system, institutional racism?
The number of people complicit in these rapes and murders of black women is staggering.
UPDATE: Someone who agrees with me:Cleveland, You Know You F&@ked Up, Right?
Hallelujah! Of course it was money that finally convinced the racist City Council in this Louisiana Parish and not a sense of justice, but whatever. The result is that St. Bernard Parish will not hold a referendum to try banning multi-family (read: affordable) dwellings. This ban would naturally have targeted, SURPRISE! blacks and poor people of whichever race.
From the Times-Picayune:
After pressure from federal housing officials and a pending lawsuit in federal court, the St. Bernard Parish Council on Tuesday officially rescinded an item on this month’s special election ballot that would have given voters the chance to permanently ban large apartment complexes in the parish.
The move came on advice from the parish’s lawyers, who last month told the council that they believed the potential apartment ban would jeopardize federal financing for recovery projects and hurt the parish’s appeals of its ongoing fair housing lawsuit.
There is a lot of backstory to this, which you can discover by reading my previous posts on this topic: I, II, III, IV, and V.
“People tell me I live in a project. Well, this project’s finished. I live in a home.”
Totally not news: the Human Rights Campaign continues to center the experiences of white middle-to-upper class gays while claiming to exist for the good of all LGBT people. Their tagline is: Working for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equal rights. But if that were the case, why are they so focused on the agenda of a certain class, race, and gender subset of the community?
New York LGBT activist and blogger Kenyon Farrow has an opinion about this.
One quote:
[A recent] study showed that black gay and lesbian couples had higher poverty rates than their black straight counterparts, and three times higher than white gay couples. White gay male couples with jobs and no children had higher incomes than all compared groups – even heterosexual couples.
Last night, I rode my bike home from an event a couple miles from my house.
It was nearly 2 am and I had some concerns about drunk drivers. I turned down a driveway passage that leads between some public housing complexes near my house to avoid the cars racing up and down the major roads.
As I was riding through the central courtyard, I noticed a group of rather large men, dressed all in black, standing together at one end.
As I passed them, they took note of my presence and started shouting at me. They yelled out “HEY!” several times and demanded that I stop and talk with them.
It took me zero seconds to decide that would be a piss poor idea and to peddle all the faster. Usually ignoring such attention from men and leaving the area quickly is enough.
Not this time. I realized one of the men was literally chasing me. I was overwhelmed with fear. I didn’t even want to imagine what a cluster of five men hanging out in a dark corner at 2 am and shouting at women would want with me. My whole body went cold and I peddled as fast as I could, aiming for the bright lights of the nearest busy street.
I heard one of the men shout “Police!” and thought maybe a police officer was coming to the rescue.
Oh how wrong I was.
Because these men were the police.
That realization did not make me feel any better. I quickly assessed my options and decided to stop before any guns were drawn. Though I experience white skin privilege, the police in my neighborhood are so accustomed to abusing the marginalized communities here that I believed white privilege wouldn’t overcome their “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality.
The five police officers approached and surrounded me. Up close I could see that their dark clothing was black or navy uniforms with policey-decorations on them. They were all white, which I thought was odd for this majority-POC neighborhood. They demanded to know what I was doing in “the projects”. I responded that I was riding my bike home, and that the complexes were between my starting point and destination. They told me that this is a “high crime area” and that I “shouldn’t be around here”. I informed them that that was unreasonable because I live “around here”. That sounding deeply implausible, the leader demanded my ID and accused me of fleeing the police. He and three officers went a few paces away and huddled, speaking in low tones, for the next 15 minutes. One officer was left to monitor me.
I was thoroughly frightened and confused. I had only planned on a quick 10-minute bikeride from hanging out with friends to my home. Being shouted at, chased, and surrounded by a group of five big-bodied men… it hadn’t really occurred to me as a possibility. I expressed my confusion at this turn of the events and questioned my detention. They told me to wait.
Eventually, the leader of the group stalked up to me and in a raised, aggressive voice informed me that I was charged with disorderly conduct and riding a bicycle on the sidewalk. He informed me that I had known all along they were police, that I had shouted insults at them, and that I had deliberately tried to flee them.
This was, of course, news to me. I explained that when I pass noisy groups of men who shout at me in dark passages in the wee hours, it is simply a matter of survival that I get out of the situation, and that any woman in my place would do the same. He repeated that I had known they were police and had intentionally committed this crime.
He handed me the tickets and I got out of there fast. I have never felt so unsafe in my own neighborhood. I have never been harassed in this manner in my neighborhood before. I feel thankful that I came out of the situation with my life. That may be my white privilege. Around here, as around the country, police have a reputation for murdering black people. They murdered one man earlier this summer for the crime of being on his porch and telling a disguised under-cover cop to stop loitering on his property. He was killed in his own front doorway.
Some other reflections:
1. All this shouting and chasing and harassing was in the courtyard of a large housing complex full of families. I am talking hundreds of people. How safe can they feel when police officers are loitering outside of their homes screaming at the top of their lungs at every passer-by? Especially when this community, being low income and of color and partly immigrant, is already subject to excessive amounts of police harassment?
2. My own white privilege was revealed to me as I came to realize that this is what my neighbors experience every day, and that I usually escape it. It’s possible that the same darkness that prevented me from seeing the police uniforms prevented them from seeing my skin tone. They may have planned on harassing a public housing resident of color, and I just blundered into the situation by assuming that I can go wherever I want without police harassment. The fact that I never realized how police interactions interlace the daily lives of my neighbors is a wake up call for me.
3. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THOSE OFFICERS? How dare they harass a woman who is traveling alone at night in an isolated location away from any busy roads (where there would be witnesses and the potential to call for help)? Are they out of their minds? How can they be so blind to their male privilege and the legitimacy privilege of possessing state power? Could they really not see why the situation they chose to create was a terrifying nightmare-scenario for their victim? How in the world is public safety achieved by men shouting at and chasing women in the night? I have never felt so unsafe in my neighborhood as I do now. My neighbors haven’t ever done anything to make me feel unsafe, and so until now I had no fears. The behavior of these men was so egregious that I believe it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find similar instances perpetrated by the supposedly dangerous inhabitants of the public housing buildings.
4. Essentially, my crime here is that I was biking while female. I acted as any rational women would react in this situation. For my natural behaviors of simply trying to survive on the street, I actually have to be a defendant in court.
5. I want to state clearly that this is an intersection of institutional and state classism and racism, and that I will not be accepting comments to the effect of “Oh you’re so naive to live near public housing and/or to think good on your neighbors.” Those comments would be classist and racist and that’s not what this post is here to talk about. Why would I be the “naive white girl” to live near these apartments, but the residents are “hardened black criminals” simply for residing inside the same apartments I live next to? The location of your home does not define you as a criminal or not, nor does your skin color nor your poverty. I guess I should say “should not” instead of “does not”. We all know that people of color, public housing residents, immigrants, and poor people are criminalized simply for existing as such.
Puke.
Share your stories of police harassment if you like. NO RACISM & NO POOR-BASHING.
I can only hope for the safety of these housing activists and their impoverished communities. Mazwi, the first speaker, is one of the Abahlali members whom I met at a poverty camp here in the States. He is a very young man, and yet as you can see in the video he has the fire in him!
Please refer to my previous post on this matter, Shack Dwellers Attacked – People Have Been Killed to find out how you can get involved.
There will be a protest in London at 6pm today outside of the South African’s Trafalgar Square embassy. Find out more at London Coalition Against Poverty.
Also, here’s a statement from the NGO Children of South Africa on the attacks.
Below is a solidarity statement from Slum Dwellers International.
TODAY from Durban, South Africa:
Kennedy Road Development Committee (KRDC)
Emergency Press Release, Sunday 27 September 2009
Kennedy Road Development Committee Attacked – People Have Been Killed
Last night at about 11:30 a group of about 40 men heavily armed with guns, bush knives and even a sword attacked the KRDC near the Abahlali baseMjondolo office in the Kennedy Road settlement. The movement was holding an all night camp for the Youth League but the camp was not attacked but the people at the camp were intimidated and threatened.
The men who attacked were shouting: ‘The AmaMpondo are taking over Kennedy. Kennedy is for the AmaZulu.” Some people were killed. We can’t yet say exactly how many. Some are saying that three people are dead. Some are saying that five people are dead. Many people are also very seriously injured. The attackers broke everything that they could including the windows in the hall. They destroyed 15 houses before launching their attack. They were knocking on each door shouting ‘All the amaZulu must come out’ and then destroying the shacks. As far as we know two of the attackers were killed when people managed to take their bush knives off them. This was self defense.
The Sydenham police were called but they did not come. They said that they had no vans but they didn’t radio their vans to come. This has led some people to conclude that this was a carefully planned attack on the movement and that the police knew in advance that it had been planned and stayed away on purpose. Why else would the police refuse to come when they are being called while people are being openly murdered? When the attack happened one officer from Crime Intelligence was there in plain clothes.
The rest of this press release is below the fold.
This is heart-breaking. I recently met some leaders from Abahlali baseMjondolo at a poverty camp in the States. They are back in South Africa now. I am worried about their safety.
Read this amazing solidarity letter.
Sign a petition to South African President Jacob Zuma to end the violence.
I was thinking about the St. Bernard Parish Housing Discrimination Saga while at work today. Or should I say, while I was bathing in cash from the huge payments I’ve been getting from Provident to write this. ;) And I was mulling over how several commenters at the above thread expressed anger at St. Bernard Parish being labeled racist, or at the label of racist being applied to themselves individually.
To wit, Amy wrote: “I am not NOT talking about race or what not. I am talking about Low-Income housing that people are on welfare and expect to get everything for free.”
Amusingly, lsder said: “In My Honest Opinion, The only racist people are the people screaming it.”
Yet in a later comment wrote: “answer two questions for me, who sold the black people into slavery(not who purchased slaves) who freed the slaves? “
And then we have the immediately-banned Kay:
I am so sick of the race card always being played. What is funny it is the blacks who are always using it. The Blacks are their worse enemy. Look at the stats, who does the killings….blacks, who screams about race……blacks. Turn on the TV an the first thing you hear is about the murder or murders of someone……who is the suspect……..a black person.
While still arguing for an outcome in this housing battle that would have racially disparate effects and undeniable racial implications, these particular commenters claim that they are not racist and have some other motive in mind that is 100% divorced from race. Which in a situation where a white majority is making it nearly impossible for a black minority to live amongst them, is a hard argument to make.
Por ejemplo Jude (the guy who figured out I make the BIG BUCKS being a social justice blogger) escribe:
if you had any common decency you would be demanding that this developer place these apartments in a place where there is a hospital, services, and a tax base that could provide needed services. This blog isn’t about what’s best, or the right thing to do, it’s about jumping into a fight that you know little to nothing about and sadly people are going to pay for it with their lives. It’s too bad you don’t get it, but then you are probably being paid not to
Yet while his concern that low income blacks have the best possible housing built for them is one that I share, somehow I can’t bring myself to believe that the resistance to public housing in SBP is due to the fact that whites are concerned it won’t be good enough for blacks.
Perhaps my skepticism (besides it being a natural Czech trait) is due in part to comments like George Crossman’s: “Wow, all these wasted words and time on this, the bottom line is when the blacks moved to village square [demolished public housing] it ruined st bernard parish there is statistical proof of it.”
So I sez to myself, what kind of statement could a white St. Bernard Parish resident make that would make me not doubt their sincerity when they say they are not racist, or even, as some commenters have said, only have the best interest of blacks at heart?
Here’s what that would look like to me:
1. I assembled a community group who met with concerned blacks about what kind of housing would best suit the poor black community’s needs.
2. I arranged a meeting between the Parish Council and black leaders in St. Bernard.
3. I lobbied the Parish Council to ask Provident to build several smaller public housing units scattered throughout the Parish instead of simply one giant building.
4. I met with local housing advocates and asked for their opinions on affordable housing and preventing housing discrimination in St. Bernard.
5. I read up on the Fair Housing Act and the history of racial discrimination in housing in the US.
6. I organized some people to survey low income residents in St. Bernard and established a task force to implement their suggestions.
7. I took an anti-oppression class.
8. I located the former residents of the Village Square and wrote to the newspaper about their current situation and solutions to improve it.
9. I looked at recent cases where cities, parishes or counties experienced similar housing problems and learned x, y and z from their examples.
10. I learned to question common stereotypes about poor people, recipients of government aid, and blacks.
11. I volunteered my time to work in low-income communities on neighborhood beautification projects.
12. I talk with my neighbors about the harm racial discrimination brings to St. Bernard Parish.
13. I accepted that St. Bernard Parish has a terrible history of racial discrimination and decided to make sure history doesn’t repeat itself, starting with myself.
14. I learned what terms are considered offensive by minorities in my community and have stopped using them.
But I have not heard anything like this. Instead, I have heard decades-old arguments that whites use when forcing shitty situations onto blacks and trying to wash their hands of the racist label.
So if anyone is wondering what it would take for me to believe white St. Bernard residents sincerely have the best interests of the black residents and former residents of SBP at heart, something like the above would convince me.
Anyone have any other positive anti-racist suggestions for steps forward in SBP?
This thread will be strongly moderated for racist language, personal insults, and threats. Sadly, after my previous St. Bernard post, this has now become a problem.
“Every society is judged by how it treats the least fortunate amongst them.”
-Thomas Douglas
UPDATE: Anti-racism =/= racism against whites. Do we really have to play that game? Try reading Color Blinded by Whiteness.
“The dispossessed of this nation—the poor, both white and Negro-live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against the injustice, not against the lives of the persons who are their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which the society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty.
…There are millions of poor people in this country who have very little, or even nothing, to lose. If they can be helped to take action together, they will do so with a freedom and a power that will be a new and unsettling force in our complacent national life.”
-Martin Luther King Jr.
“Nonviolence and Social Change”
Trumpet of Conscience (1967)
Looks like St. Bernard Parish isn’t alone in the blatantly racist housing practices department.
Westchester Adds Housing to Desegregation Pact
Huh, Westchester is one of the wealthiest suburbs in America. Interesting.
Hmmm, I love the crisp smell of racism in the morning.
Best comment at the NYT: “Why should a community have to import poverty, of whatever color? If people, with or without color, have the money to buy a home there, fine, but to say that a group of affluent people should be “punished” for being Affluent While White by having poor and probably culturally incompatible people dumped on them is absurd.”
Oh, the burdens one must bear, when one must live in proximity to the poor! Oh, it is so terrible to be forced to look at the distasteful dwellings and personages of the dusky-complexioned! Quelle peine!
I have to say something about this craziness. I will tell the story of racist housing policy in St. Bernard Parish, LA below, and hope to follow up down the line, as the story develops. What follows would be hilarious if it weren’t so… nefarious.
St. Bernard Parish is located to the south of New Orleans. Whereas New Orleans is 67% black, St. Bernard Parish just a few miles away is only 7.6% black.
Hurricane Katrina severely damaged both St. Bernard Parish and Orleans Parish (whose boundaries are identical with New Orleans city). In St. Bernard, nearly all of the housing where black and low-income renters lived was destroyed, eliminating much of the already tiny black population.
Now, the white residents of St. Bernard are fighting an all-out battle to prevent blacks from returning or migrating over from New Orleans, where there is also an affordable-housing shortage. The Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, which has been fighting against racist housing policies, has a detailed timeline of the battle.
It officially started when Craig Taffaro Jr. (pictured), president of the St. Bernard Parish Council, introduced the infamous blood-relative ordinance, which states that property owners can only rent to their blood relatives. The ordinance passed in 2006. Before the storm, whites owned 93% of the housing stock. (reference) We can see pretty easily the effects of such an ordinance.
The Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center (GNOFHAC) sued the Parish for racially discriminatory housing practices and won. The Parish settled, and then enacted an ordinance banning multi-family housing, i.e. most rental housing, affordable housing and most forms of public housing.
The same judge, U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan, who is apparently awesome, found St. Bernard to be in contempt of court and ordered that the ban be repealed, as it also violated the Fair Housing Act. She also ordered St. Bernard to pay fees, costs and damages to GNOFHAC. So the Parish went ahead and repealed the ban, simply switching it for a year-long moratorium on multi-family building.
Provident Realty Advisors then applied to the Parish to build affordable housing projects. After a public hearing rife with racist statements both implied and open, their application was denied. After GNOFHAC took the Parish to court again, Judge Berrigan found them in contempt of the court order and hit them with more fines. She also had this to say:
Based on the factual record and judged under a clear preponderance of the evidence, the Court finds that defendants’ conduct since March 25, 2009, by subverting the re-subdivision process, has a discriminatory effect on African-Americans and therefore violates the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. §3604(a), and the terms of the February 2008 Consent Order.
Does St. Bernard Parish get it yet?
DUH, of course not. As a matter of fact, the Parish Council is seeking a ballot referendum that would force any developer seeking to build a development with more than 12 units to have their plans approved by a public referendum, which the developer would also have to pay for. How soon will this be voted on? “In order to get the measure on a Nov. 14 ballot, the parish would have to pass the ordinance and get approval from the state Bond Commission and the secretary of state’s office before Sept. 29.”
Meanwhile, Judge Berrigan is fed up with St. Bernard’s delays in approving Provident’s development application and has granted a THIRD motion of contempt against them just last Friday, saying:
Defendants are hereby enjoined from interfering or withholding approval of Provident’s re-subdivision applications. Provident’s re-subdivision applications are deemed approved.
…If the defendants fail to meet any of the various deadlines without advance notice and good cause shown for their failure, a daily sanction beginning at $5,000 for the first day, and increasing to $10,000 each day thereafter per each individual missed deadline will be imposed.
New Orleans, Louisiana, this 11th day of September, 2009.
Booyah St. Bernard Parish Council and racist inhabitants.
This story is developing. So is my analysis. More to come.
Learn more:
From GNOFHAC: Timeline of the Lawsuit
The Root: Keeping St. Bernard Parish White
Facing South: Fight heats up over discriminatory housing laws in New Orleans area
Read the coverage at the Times-Picayune, starting here: St. Bernard Parish Council housing plan drawing fire
Scathing Times-Picayune Op-ed: Housing bias in St. Bernard Parish is proving costly in the long run
Scathing Times-Picayune Editorial: Legally and Morally Wrong
TAKE ACTION!
You can donate to the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center here.
And you can respectfully and without making inappropriate threats contact the St. Bernard Parish Government here to let them know how you feel about this situation.
Cross-posted at Womanist Musings.
“Are you not afraid that the poor man put into the dock for snatching a piece of bread from a baker’s stall will not, one day, become so enraged that stone by stone he will demolish the Stock Exchange, a wild den where the treasure of the state and the fortune of families are stolen with impunity?”
La Ruche populaire (“The Working-Class Press”), November 1842
by Bill Quigley & Davida Finger
0. Number of renters in Louisiana who have received financial assistance from the $10 billion federal post-Katrina rebuilding program Road Home Community Development Block Grant – compared to 116,708 homeowners.
0. Number of hospitals in New Orleans providing in-patient mental health care as of September 2009 despite post-Katrina increases in suicides and mental health problems.
1. Rank of New Orleans among U.S. cities in murders per capita for 2008.
1. Rank of New Orleans among U.S. cities in percentage of vacant residences.
2. Number of Katrina cottages completed in Louisiana as of beginning of 2009 hurricane season under $74 million dollar federal program.
33. Percent of 134,000 FEMA trailers in which Katrina and Rita storm survivors were housed after the storms which are estimated by federal government to have had formaldehyde problems.
35. Percent of child care facilities re-opened in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina.
35. Percent increase of demand in 2009 at emergency food programs in Orleans and surrounding parishes, “an increase pinned on the swelling ranks of under-employed and rising food, housing, and fuel costs.”
50. Ranking of Louisiana among states for overall healthcare.
52. Percent increase in rents in New Orleans since Katrina.
52. Percent of federal rebuilding money allocated to New Orleans that has actually been received.
60. Percent of children in New Orleans public schools who attend public charter schools.
88: Percent of the 600 New Orleans residents who will displaced by proposed new hospital complex who are minorities.
160. Number of units which will be public housing eligible in the new St. Bernard area after demolition and rebuilding. St. Bernard was constructed with 1400 public housing apartments. Only a small percentage of the 4000 families in public housing in New Orleans before Katrina will be allowed to live in the new housing being constructed on the site where their apartments were demolished.
27,279. Number of Louisiana homeowners who have applied for federal assistance in repair and rebuilding after Katrina who have been determined eligible for assistance but who have still not received any money.
30,396. Number of children who have not returned to public school in New Orleans since Katrina. This reduction leaves the New Orleans public school population just over half of what it was pre-Katrina.
63,799. Number of Medicaid recipients who have not returned to New Orleans since Katrina.
65,888. Unoccupied addresses in New Orleans. This is 31% of the addresses in the City and nearly as many as Detroit, a city twice the size of New Orleans.
128,341: Number of Louisianians looking for work.
143,193. Fewer people in New Orleans than before Katrina, according to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center estimate of 311,853, the most recent population estimate in Orleans.
9.5 Million. Dollar amount of federal Medicaid stimulus rejected outright by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal which would have expanded temporary Medicaid coverage for families who leave welfare and get a job.
98 million: Dollar amount of unemployment federal stimulus dollars rejected by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal that was available to bolster the unemployment compensation funds to assist 25,000 families in Louisiana.
900 Million: Dollar amount paid to ICF International, the company that was hired by the State of Louisiana to distribute federal Road Home rebuilding dollars.
?. Current vulnerability to storm-related flooding. The Army Corps of Engineers continues work to provide protection from a storm surge that has a 1 percent chance of occurring any given year. However, Katrina was a stronger storm than the system under construction is designed to protect against. Because no updated indicators exist on land loss, coastal restoration and mitigation of flood risk due to human engineering, tracking recovery is, at best, challenging.
Davida Finger is a social justice lawyer and clinical professor at Loyola University New Orleans. Bill Quigley is a human
rights lawyer on leave from Loyola now serving as legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights. A version of
this article with sources is available if you write to the authors c/o quigley77@gmail.com.
I did a random and uncharacteristic thing. The context was that I was explaining to a friend how there are plenty of verses in the Bible uplifting the poor, exhorting charity, and condemning wealth that we should use to combat the twisted I-got-mine-screw-you theology of the Religious Right.
Then I sat down and spent my entire Saturday night researching just those kinds of verses in the Bible.
So below you will find some of the gems, which I pulled out because of the incisive or ferocious language or because of their poetic beauty. The Bible can indeed be used for good, as I hope these verses will demonstrate. I grew up Christian, and my first inklings of social justice concepts came from reading Bible verses such as these. Though I am no longer Christian, I still find them inspiring.
Below the fold, you will find a massive compilation of verses that deal with poverty, charity and wealth.
Job 20:15
He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again: God shall cast them out of his belly.
Job 36:19
Will [God] esteem thy riches? no, not gold, nor all the forces of strength.
Psalm 9:17
[T]he needy shall not always be forgotten: the expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever.
Psalm 39:6
Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro:
He bustles about, but only in vain;
he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it.
Psalm 72:4
He will defend the afflicted among the people
and save the children of the needy;
he will crush the oppressor.
Proverbs 23:5
[R]iches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.
Proverbs 30:14
There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men.
Proverbs 31:7
Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.
Ecclesiastes 5:12
The sleep of a laborer is sweet,
whether he eats little or much,
but the abundance of a rich man
permits him no sleep.
Matthew 19:24
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
James 2:6
Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats?
James 5:1
Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
A hella lot more verses below! The majority come from the King James Bible, except where noted. I went with the New International version whenever the language of King James got too obscure for me. Read the rest of this entry »
I will simply re-post their announcement plus a picture:
THE SHACK DWELLERS MOVEMENT IN NEW YORK – SCHEDULE
WEDNESDAY, 19th AUGUST, 2009
Meeting with members of DOMESTIC WORKERS UNITED
Founded in 2000, Domestic Workers United [DWU] is an organization of Caribbean, Latina and African nannies, housekeepers, and elderly caregivers in New York, organizing for power, respect, fair labor standards and to help build a movement to end exploitation and oppression for all.
TIME: 11:00AM – 1:00PM
LOCATION: Domestic Workers United office,1201 Broadway, Suite 907 – 908, New York, NY 10001.
PH: (212) 481-5747
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19TH, 2009
Shack Dwellers Movement from South Africa at the Brecht Forum
DEAR MANDELA (15 min, 2009), a documentary work-in-progress about South Africa’s Shack Dwellers Movement, will be screening at the Brecht forum as part of the Visual Liberation Film Series, curated by Red Channels.
TIME: 7:30PM
ADDRESS: 451 West Street (that’s the West Side Highway) between Bank & Bethune Streets
DIRECTIONS:
A, C, E or L to 14th Street & 8th Ave, walk down 8th Ave. to Bethune, turn right, walk west to the River, turn left
1, 2, 3 or 9 to 14th Street & 7th Ave, get off at south end of station, walk west on 12th Street to 8th Ave. left to Bethune, turn right, walk west to the River, turn left.
THURSDAY, 20th AUGUST, 2009
Panel Discussion & Screening at the Poverty Initiative
Please join the Poverty Initiative at Union Theological Seminary for an evening of discussion and film about Abahlali baseMjondolo (the Shack Dwellers Movement) of South Africa. Two of their leaders, Mazwi Nzimande and Reverend Mavuso Mbhekiseni, will be attending the Poverty Initiative’s Poverty Scholars Leadership School. They then are spending a week in New York sharing experiences from their work and lives, meeting with Poverty Scholars organizations and building relationships of solidarity with similar movements here. There will be a screening of DEAR MANDELA (15 min, 2009), a documentary work-in-progress about the Shack Dwellers Movement, directed by Dara Kell & Christopher Nizza. The evening will also include a discussion with Poverty Initiative leaders about how to build deeper connections across continents.
7:30pm – 9:00pm in Room 205 at Union Theological Seminary, Room 205, New York, NY 10027
LOCATION: Union Theological Seminary is located at 121st Street and Broadway near the Columbia University campus. Take the 1 subway to 116th Street/Columbia University and walk north to 121st Street. When you enter the main entrance at Union Theological Seminary, the guards at the security desk will be able to direct you to Room 205.)
Abahlali baseMjondolo is the largest social movement of the poor in post-apartheid South Africa. The movement’s key demand is for ‘Land & Housing in the City’ but it has also successfully politicized and fought for an end to forced removals and for access to education and the provision of water, electricity, sanitation, health care and refuse removal as well as bottom up popular democracy. Amongst other victories the Abahlali have democratized the governance of many settlements, stopped evictions in a number of settlements, won access to schools and forced numerous government officials to ‘come down to the people’. For more information, visit http://www.abahlali.org
The thought that it is “downright evil” to provide health care to the poor?
Linking health care coverage for the poor to Nazism?
“Keep your government hands off my Medicare”?
“True fascism… is happening in this country today”?
“Hitler…called his program the final solution. I kind of wonder what we’re going to call ours”?
And then there’s this, which also leaves me dumbstruck:
During the town hall, one conservative activist turns to his fellow attendees and asks them to raise their hands if they “oppose any form of socialized or government-run health care.” Almost all the hands shot up. Rep Green quickly turned the question on the audience and asked, “How many of you have Medicare?” Nearly half the attendees raised their hands, failing to note the irony.
At another point, a small business owner who supported health reform asks the audience how many people in this room “do not have health insurance of some kind.” Only one hand seemed to be raised. “I think the people who are objecting,” she noted, “are the people who have insurance.”
Check this out. Many New Orleans public housing residents experienced displacement and homelessness because of Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed some public housing and the city’s subsequent demolition of several of the lightly damaged public housing (to make way for private development or mixed income residences with a fraction of space dedicated to affordable housing).
Residents of public housing are beginning to organize to demand their rights. An awesome organization to check out is Mayday New Orleans. Below is one of their recent actions, where you see what happens when they try to go apply for jobs. The nerve of these people!
There are other videos on their Youtube channel.
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