Back Inside New Orleans

[buzzsaw_23]

Back Inside New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty Thursday, Sep. 15, 2005 at 12:47 PM

What actually happened in New Orleans these past two weeks? We need to sort through the rumors and distortions. Perhaps we need our version of South Africa's Truth And Reconciliation Commission. Some way to sort through the many narratives and find a truth, and to find justice.

I spent yesterday inside the city of New Orleans, speaking to a few of the last holdouts in the 9th ward/bywater neighborhood. Their stories paint a very different picture from what we've heard in the media. Instead of stories of gangs of criminals and police and soldiers keeping order, there were stories of collective action, everyone looking out for each other, communal responses.

<snip>

The only way that New Orleans will be reconstructed as even a shadow of its former self is if the people of New Orleans have direct control over that reconstruction. But, our community dislocation is only increasing. Every day, we are spread out further. People leave Houston for Oregon and Chicago. We are losing contact with each other, losing our community that has nurtured us.

<snip>

The people of New Orleans have the will. Today, I met up with Andrea Garland, a community activist with Get Your Act On who is planning a bold direct action; she and several of her friends are moving back in to their homes. They have generators and supplies, and they invite anyone who is willing to fight for New Orleans to move back in with them. Malik Rahim, in New Orleans' West Bank, is refusing to leave and is inviting others to join him. Community organizer Shana Sassoon, exiled in Houston, is planning a community mapping project to map out where our diaspora is being sent, to aid in our coming back together. Abram Himmelstein and Rachel Breulin of
The Neighborhood Story Project are beginning the long task of documenting oral histories of our exile.

<snip>

Please join us in this fight. This is not just about New Orleans. This is about community and collaboration versus corporate profiteering. The struggle for New Orleans lives on.

http://neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2005/09/5290.php

[DoYouEverWonder]

1. Dangerous has New Orleans may be

with the pollution, bad water and no services, there is still no place like home.

I think a lot of people are going to start to go back and we just need to figure out how to get what they need to them.

It's starting to look like the BushCo Giant Land Grab might not go so well after all.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

2. Wonderful to hear

something positive about New Orleans, something positive about human beings in general.

Thanks so much for this link. I have bookmarked it.