After Katrina: Let Us Be Doers and Not Askers - Economic empowerment in the aftermath …

by: Azarijah

Now that the urgency and compelling moment in New Orleans have passed, there are news stories beginning to circulate that are designed to facilitate the passing from our consciousness of the New Orleans “refugee”. These stories tell us in the places where the government scattered the African Americans of New Orleans, the open arms and welcome is wearing thin. If the media is any guide, the implicit message is now: “If you are an African American whose home formerly was New Orleans forget about coming back, forget about returning to your familiar places. New Orleans is only a memory now, get used to it, get over it, and get on with your life.”
The United States is about money. While the powers-that-be may pay a courtesy call to a clamor for rights, it will only be rhetorical, not substantive. If the call for rights, fairness, and consideration is to have any strength and character we must act on it. We must turn sentimentality into action. If there is to be any weight to our demands for a meaningful African American participation in planning, developing and profiting from the phoenix that will become the restored New Orleans, then we African Americans must show up at the table with more than our hands out and our hope in the humanity of our fellow man. We must show up with more than a list of demands for a handout of 5% of this or 10% of that. In short, we must show up with capital. Let us approach New Orleans with the billions we could raise easily enough by asking a million or two million African American Americans to invest their tax refunds from 2005 in the rebuilding of African American communities in New Orleans. Instead of asking for contracts, we could make our own contracts. Instead of begging for housing to be made available for returning African Americans, we could build the housing that would be made available to our people. Money talks in America. Money is power and will compel those who would attempt to exclude us or to appease us with a few set asides to engage us. Not in dialogue (who needs talk now) but in active participation in the redevelopment of an American jewel. Aren't we yet tired of ASKING, ASKING, and ASKING?

It has been more than two months since Katrina rampaged the Gulf Coast and unintentionally destroyed the heart of African American culture, history and linkage to the Big Easy. While the hours and days that followed the disaster brought intense media attention and uncharacteristic outcries for the government to get up off the mat and do something, it also overtly revealed the mass poverty--the outcome of the market economy. But as the heightened attention from the mainstream media has begun to diminish, the focus on the government’s incompetence and un-preparedness in responding to natural disasters is waning. The calls for accountability are being lost as other issues distract our attention. Yet, our people remain “refugees” in our own country.

In the meantime, we are effectively being excluded from the real decisions about the future of New Orleans. Once again they attempt to relegate us to invisibility. One more time we are excluded as though we do not exist as if we have no aspirations, as though we are simply voices, lacking physical substance, without conscience can be easily ignored. But this time we cannot afford to not pay attention. We cannot allow ourselves to be distracted by other events, to be rendered beggars for scraps.

This mantra is repeated over and over and over. We are told landlords are jacking up rents, tearing up existing leases, and using the Katrina disaster as means to constrain the return of the poorer displaced citizens of New Orleans.

Insurance payoffs for those who had policies will enable them to rebuild. But the poor or marginal middle class who own no real estate probably have no insurance to cover even replacement. They will receive no rebuilding assistance. Landless, how will they return to a city that will price them out of its housing market? Once the African American is effectively denied the opportunity to restore residency in the city, what will happen? Will our investment in the city, its history, its links to the past, its position as a fulcrum of American culture be lost? More importantly, what happens to the individuals and families that will have to live with the knowledge of their forcible eviction at the hands of this compassionless government that in every other disaster has enabled people to return to their lives. Even after Rita and Wilma, neither Texans nor Floridians are being told: “You can’t come home”!
Yet, what is the response of African American “leadership”? President Bush throws down a promise for $200 billion to rebuild the Gulf, makes reference to rebuilding Trent Lott’s house “so he can sit on the porch”. Then he does his reprise of the Iraq re-building thing: Secret contracts, non-competitive contracts, suspension of Davis-Bacon wage rules (since re-canted) so that his favored crews can benefit from OUR tax dollars, while we are shut out and told to be patient, trickle down will come. But our lawmakers and leaders espouse the same tired old recipes about fairness and consideration, wait-and-see. If the Bush administration were inclined to be fair and considerate wouldn't that response be in evidence?
There is a call for a new Orleans Citizen Bill of Rights. This is a good start, but only a start. Let us never forget: the U.S. is about money. If we African Americans are to expect to be important players in the rebuilding of New Orleans we must be more than voices of conscience, we must demand more. There are African American city planners, engineers, developers, and builders. City building is not the province of Caucasians. There are African American suppliers, equipment providers. There are talented African Americans in every knowledge and skill category that will be needed to restore the Crescent City and to make it a place where ALL Americans have an opportunity to live. Yet how will this talent be brought into the picture and allowed the opportunity to participate fully in the redevelopment of the Big Easy and surrounding region? How will African Americans have any surety that we will also be able to profit from the rebuilding? How will we ensure that what was once a majority African American city will become so again as the redevelopment gets under way? How will we be able to affect the development process so that the number of New Orleanians below the poverty level is significantly less when redevelopment is completed than it was before Katrina humbled the city?
Asking and pleading with the Bush administration or with Governor Blanco will not answer these questions. Nor will showing up with an empty bag and a hand out ensure what should be a MAJORITY are at the decision making table. Let us not forget, the majority of the population of New Orleans before Katrina struck was African American. Let us start from this reality. Any representation in any dealing related to the redevelopment of New Orleans should reflect the pre-Katrina population demographic. Secondly, we African Americans must, finally, begin to put our money where our mouth is. The U.S. is about money. Everything in this system revolves around money, responds to money, and respects money. To thus ensure our meaningful participation in and profit from the rebuilding of New Orleans we must approach it with substance and money so that our words and our talent have a practicable effect.

Many of us have donated money, clothes, food and water to various charitable organizations to help those who have lost so much as a result of the disaster. If we African Americans can be so generous and magnanimous as to assist in the wake of a natural emergency, can we not also be self interested enough to continue our help so we do not lose our place in New Orleans? So that we do not abandon our people to the fate the government has already consigned them? We have had the Million Man March and the Millions More March. Let us get a million of us to invest in an urban redevelopment fund to give substance to our words, our calls and cries for justice for the African Americans of New Orleans.

Instead of asking, we will be able to say: “You know what? We will just go do this ourselves!” At that moment, African Americans will take responsibility for our own economic development and empowerment. Let us focus on New Orleans as being that moment. Let us take the helm to help determine the fate of our New Orleanian brothers and sisters instead of allowing the malevolent force to dictate what we can or can't have.