PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

What It Takes: A New Reconstruction
by Mimi Yahn Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2005 at 6:27 PM
meemers@surfbest.net (email address validated)

Article about rebuilding New Orleans that appeared in the December 2005 New People. Third of series by former resident of the New Orleans area.

It’s no secret that one of the goals of the Republican Party is to privatize government. Ronald Reagan boasted about it, GW Bush has made a career of it. From the war in Iraq to FEMA, the Bush Administration has gradually contracted billions and billions of dollars out to private corporations—many of whom are cronies of Bush and Cheney—in order to eliminate government services and public accountability. From prisons to schools, from wars to the water we drink, most of modern life has become a profit-driven enterprise, our everyday lives dependent on the decisions of wealthy corporate execs who get away with murder by buying and selling politicians and judges.


But as bad as things have gotten, we at least still have public government; from the local to the federal levels, governments are still, in principal anyway, put in place by our votes. And as corrupt and beholden to corporate interests as governments may be, we still hold the potential, rusted though it may be, to change them through our votes, to throw the bums out and elect progressive people into office.


We are, however, in danger of losing even that last privilege of a democratic society.


New Orleans is our canary, the place where privatization is spreading like the mold, where billions of our public dollars are being spent to allow private corporations to rake in massive profits by taking over public services; where the local government is collapsing and disappearing into the void of Bush’s new, privatized world order.


Our tax dollars are not being given to the local government to aid them in rehiring the thousands laid off or in rebuilding the city or even to provide essential services like education, medical care, food, shelter and electricity. Instead, the money’s being given to private corporations like Halliburton and Bechtel, and the city of New Orleans is being handed over to the private sector.


Other examples of this massive privatization include:


<>Although remnants of the New Orleans Police Department continue to exist and patrol the city—for better or for worse—dozens of private security firms have been hired by government and wealthy citizens to provide extralegal, armed security forces. In at least one incident, private security forces opened fire on local residents; neither local police nor Army personnel were interested in investigating the incident and it’s not known how many civilians were killed.


<>Mayor Ray Nagin’s Bring New Orleans Back Commission has asked the Urban Land Institute (ULI) to help them develop a “housing master plan.” ULI is the real estate industry thank-tank responsible for the gentrification and destruction of the St. Thomas/Irish Channel neighborhood; their “redevelopment plan” brought in Wal-Mart, eliminated most low- and moderate-income housing in the area, and forced the relocation of thousands of poor Blacks to the lower Ninth Ward and other impoverished neighborhoods.


<>In November, the Orleans Parish School Board voted to charterize all public schools because there’s simply no money to even open the schools. But rather than provide funding for public education, the Bush Administration is offering $20.9 million for charter schools, so the public schools are being turned into charter schools in order to get some funding. In addition, Bush has recently begun a backdoor privatization of public education by allocating $488 million so that children displaced by Katrina can be enrolled in private—not public—schools. Though the schools in New Orleans have long been a disaster, charterizing the schools is like sending in Rita to solve the problems created by Katrina.


<>By now, the entire world knows about the failure of our government to do anything about the corpses floating on the flood waters (after failing to save lives in the first place). In fact, it was two weeks before the retrieval of bodies began. The reason for the unconscionable delay was that the government agency in charge of handling emergencies—FEMA—is no longer in charge of handling emergencies; private corporations are. In the case of setting up morgues to handle bodies, the company FEMA hired is Kenyon International Disaster Services which, under new government regulations, was not allowed to retrieve a single body until each one was blessed by a chaplain. Jimmy Swaggert himself couldn’t have dreamed up a more corrupt theocracy.

Last month, the editor of New People, Marie Skoczylas, posed a critical question to all of us: What Does It Take?


In her editorial, she pointed out that, despite endless revelations about official lies and treasonous acts at the highest levels of our government, despite increasing terrorist attacks around the world, the skyrocketing casualties in Iraq, and massive, vocal opposition to the war by the rest of this earth’s citizens, we Americans have failed to stop the war and failed to stop the most corrupt, most venal and most destructive administration in our nation’s history. At the anti-war march in DC in September, I met a British woman who told me the entire world has been asking that very same question about Americans.


What does it take? Has America become a nation of half-witted automatons, only concerned with the latest download or blockbuster movie? Have we given up on democracy and active engagement in exchange for the safety of a senescent passivity crammed with consumer goods and no demands on our atrophied conscience?


I think the answer to our nation’s inaction is a bit more complicated. There are, for sure, a number of Americans who have replaced their brains with flags, but for the rest of us, I think we’re simply overwhelmed. There’s just so much gone wrong, one hardly knows where to start, and even if we do make a start somewhere, what’s the point? We’ve got no say in anything, we don’t know enough about anything, and we don’t have any power to change anything.


Wrong. On all points. We do have a say, we do know enough, and we do have the power. We’ve just forgotten it all because the last time we, as a nation, rose up to question authority, to use critical thinking skills and to understand that democracy is all about our actions was over forty years ago, and the intervening years have not been kind to the forces of good and social justice.


So what does this all have to do with New Orleans?


The collapse of government in New Orleans could bring about the first privatized city in our nation’s history. But it could also bring about something entirely different.


The collapse of government has created a political space for grassroots organizers to step into and build a new social order. And they have. Common Ground, the coalition of dozens of progressive, grassroots community, environmental and labor groups, has stepped into that political space. They are not only calling for the creation of a new, egalitarian society, but they are building it. They have set up schools and medical clinics, are providing legal and economic assistance, housing, food, clothing, and they are organizing the cleanup and rebuilding in areas like the Ninth Ward.


The void created by the collapse of local government isn’t unique in US history, but the last time it happened on such a scale was the Reconstruction Era that followed the Civil War. The society that was created by the collapse of government in New Orleans and other parts of the South was as close to an egalitarian democracy as this country has ever come. But the Southern White landowners cut a deal with the US government, and federal troops were sent in to put down Reconstruction. Meanwhile, the rest of our nation was too deeply entrenched in racism to care about our troops crushing the new, multiracial progressive society.


Today, however, the political and social climate is a little different. Most of the country was disgusted by Bush’s blatantly racist disregard for New Orleans, and today, most of our nation is searching for some way to bring about a change to the disastrous course we’re on.


Now we have a way, we have something that we can do that will make a difference and put us on a new and progressive course. Common Ground is calling on the entire nation to come down to New Orleans to help with the cleanup and rebuilding, and to lend support to the creation of a new, egalitarian progressive society. Not since the Civil Rights Movement has there been a nationwide mobilization on this scale.


Common Ground has also issued a call to anti-eviction activists from around the country to come down and help stop the mass evictions taking place right now. From public to private housing, huge numbers of people are being thrown out of their homes, individually and in groups. Not surprisingly, our government refuses to provide any financial or housing assistance for people losing their homes; instead, our government is handing out billions of dollars to private corporations to bulldoze those homes and rebuild New Orleans into an upscale gated community and “destination resort” with mega-casinos and low-paid servants.

In three days from the time I’m writing this (on November 18th), I leave for New Orleans. I’ll be there for two weeks, volunteering with Common Ground to help in the cleanup and rebuilding in the Ninth Ward. I’m going down as part of the CodePink contingent, but hundreds of other groups and individuals will be there, as well.


I’m going down as much for humanitarian reasons as for political reasons. This is the time to stand with my sisters and brothers in New Orleans as they create the society we all have dreamed of. This is the chance to stand up to the surrogate forces sent in by our corrupt and murderous federal government. I know if my sisters and brothers lose this battle, we will all lose next. We will be privatized, marginalized, disappeared.


I know that we, as Americans and as citizens of the world, are being presented with an opportunity to act, to do something that has the potential to change everything; it is one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities—for us as individuals and us as a nation.

To learn more about Common Ground, go to: http://www.commongroundrelief.org



Mimi Yahn is a Pittsburgh-area writer, feminist, human rights activist and singer/songwriter. She is the musical director of the Pittsburgh Raging Grannies, publisher of the Swiftian Report, and a member of the IWW and the National Writers Union. She and her husband moved to Pittsburgh several years ago from New Orleans.
©2005 Mimi Yahn