October 2006 Archives

Governor Blanco and the Louisiana Recovery Authority are sitting on billions of tax dollars that rightfully belong to us and should be put to work rebuilding our lives and communities.

We demand

- Affordable housing

- Total replacement of privately owned homes

- Compensation to all renters for their losses

- Rent control

Saturday November 18th
State Capitol
Baton Rouge, LA 

Click here to download flyer 

The Home for the Holidays coalition is putting out a call, nation-wide for volunteers to gut houses in the New Orleans’ 9th Ward.

Our goal is to help every family signed up for assistance to have their home gutted by the New Year!

Cleaning and gutting out flood-damaged homes is vital to the health and viability of a recovering New Orleans.  This is the first step towards rebuilding for homeowners.

The Home for the Holidays coalition is asking you, your family, your friends to come volunteer with us, to help bring the families of the 9th Ward back to New Orleans.

The Home for the Holidays coalition is a project of All Congregations Together, the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund and Common Ground Relief.

Click here for more information at New Orleans Home for the Holidays

Click here to download the flyer 

La. lawmakers cite AP insurance analysis

NEW ORLEANS — An Associated Press analysis showing white homeowners were three times as likely as minorities to appeal insurance settlements after Hurricane Katrina points to a deep racial imbalance and the need for greater outreach, officials said Wednesday.

Using public record laws, the AP analyzed more than 3,000 insurance complaints filed with the Louisiana Department of Insurance in the year after Hurricane Katrina. It found that 75 percent had been filed by homeowners living in predominantly white neighborhoods.

Even though the storm disproportionately affected poor blacks, many residents of minority neighborhoods said they were not aware that they could seek state help.

"You shouldn’t have to be an insurance company lawyer to figure out the facts and the options," said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., whose own family in New Orleans suffered extensive losses from the storm. "There is no excuse for anything but full disclosure, clear guidance and swift reimbursement of losses when coverage exists."

State insurance officials said they took extreme measures to alert as many homeowners as possible to their options. If homeowners were dissatisfied with their insurance company, they could ask the Louisiana Department of Insurance to attempt to get a better deal.

Since Katrina and another hurricane, Rita, roared ashore more than a year ago, more than 8,000 complaints have been filed; about 3,000 have been closed.

Outreach measures included television and radio ads broadcast locally, as well as newspaper advertisements. Many of the messages, however, never reached thousands of minority homeowners living in FEMA-funded hotel rooms in Houston, Atlanta and beyond.

"It’s a matter of outreach and of the extreme displacement of our families," said Cynthia Willard-Lewis, a city council member whose district includes part of the predominantly black Lower Ninth Ward. "The No. 1 problem is the fact that homeowners were not here to hear the message."

Former Texas Insurance Commissioner J. Robert Hunter said government outreach programs need to be tailored to the disaster at hand.

"If I know that half my people are in Houston, I should do something over in Houston," he said.

Hunter, administrator of the National Flood Insurance Program from 1971-80, said the racial divide is a long-standing problem. Whites, he said, tend to be more plugged in to the system and less afraid of challenging an unfair settlement.

"It’s quite usual for a white person to know the system _ and to know how to take the next step," he said. "It’s been my experience that when you have a situation where a lot of people are getting hurt and you go out there, you find it’s the people who know the system that are mad and act out. The others are mad but don’t know what to do and are scared not to accept what’s offered to them. They’re much more apt to just take ‘No’ for an answer."

A spokeswoman for the Insurance Information Institute said insurers did the best they could to let homeowners know about their options. Loretta Worters, a vice president for the New York-based trade group, said the word might not have gotten out to all homeowners.

"Unfortunately, there were situations sometimes where people didn’t hear about it," Worters said. "It was a difficult, unprecedented situation."

By FRANK BASS and RUKMINI CALLIMACHI Associated Press Writers © 2006 The Associated Press

Many of you have already pressured the Louisiana legislature to make housing affordable for low-income people. While we won a small battle, the war continues. Now it is important to direct our lobbying efforts at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Please take immediate action to demand that HUD protect public housing and make low-income and affordable housing in New Orleans and Louisiana possible.

Despite their recent defeat within the state legislature, conservative members of the legislature persist in trying to pressure HUD to waive various aspects of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) enforcement statutes that seek to provide housing to low-income families. If these statutes are waived the vast majority of low-income renters displaced New Orleanians won’t be able to come home as there will be no housing stock in the city that they could reasonably afford.

Similar forces in the region are also pressuring HUD to destroy the existing public housing stock in New Orleans. There are 5,100 units of public housing in New Orleans’ that were occupied before Katrina, many of which were barely damaged by the flood. These units could and should be used to house its prior occupants, and where possible, to serve as transitional housing to New Orleanians seeking to return home immediately.

If we don’t act in force, we will allow the neo-conservative forces within HUD, like the Bush appointed Secretary of HUD, Alphonse Jackson, to implement the neo-liberal agenda of privatizing and eventually eliminating government services for the poor and neglecting its responsibility to provide housing for internally displaced people.

We must not allow HUD to relax its existing housing protections for low-income families, nor destroy the public housing stock in New Orleans. The People’s Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Coalition (PHRF/OC) calls on everyone who supports the right of return to call, fax, and email HUD National Secretary Alphonse Jackson and other top HUD officials to demand the following:

That no waivers be granted on the low-income requirements of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds to the State of Louisiana, Governor Kathleen Blanco, and the Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA).

That HUD demand that Governor Blanco and the LRA appropriate a percentage of the CDBG funds held by the LRA
– proportionate to the percent of internally displaced people who were renters – to renter transition and recovery programs including assistance for moving costs, deposits, and rent assistance.

That all of the public housing units in New Orleans be reopened immediately. That there be no demolition of any of the public housing units in New Orleans.

Call, email or fax the following HUD officials:

National Secretary
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Telephone: (202) 708-1112
TTY: (202) 708-1455

Assistant Secretary
Housing/Federal Housing Commissioner
Telephone: (202) 708-2601

Pamela Patenaude
Assistant Secretary
Community Planning and Development
Telephone: (202) 708-2690

Kim Kendrick
Assistant Secretary
Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity
Telephone: (202) 708-4252

New Orleans Field Office Director
Telephone: (504) 589-7201
Fax: (504) 589-7266
TTY: (504) 589-7277
Email: LA_Webmanager@hud.gov

Will it really benefit you?  Make you whole?  Put money in your pocket?

The Louisiana Recovery Authority’s Road Home Program is a complete fraud, which will not get you home. In fact, it is set up so the developers and speculators can take your property. This program is especially devastating for poor and working class New Orleanians who rent. Governor Blanco’s Road Home program doesn’t give renters any money, and leaves homeowners with barely anything that they need to rebuild their lives and homes in New Orleans.

What does the Road Home Program Do?

The Road Home Program advertises that Homeowners are eligible for up to $150,000 grants to repair your home. The rub is the grant is based on the pre-Katrina value of your home minus any insurance proceeds minus any FEMA grants;… minus penalties for not having flood insurance;… minus penalties for moving out of the state if you sell your property; thus leaving homeowners with not enough funds to rebuild.

For example, if you are a retired home owner with property valued at $75,000.00 before the storm; had no flood insurance and no insurance receipts, you would have a 30% penalty or minus $22,500 which would leave you with $52,500. Now certainly $52,500 won’t rebuild a home when the average rebuilding rates are above $125, 000.

Does the Road Home Program provide help for renters?

No, not at all. Renters are not eligible for Road Home funds. Renters were the majority in New Orleans and they get nothing to make them whole or to reimburse them for their losses. This is a gross injustice and must be rectified. How are renters expected to return home?

What we need:

A resident return program with guiding principles of justice and equity is needed. This includes renters along with homeowners. Renters should be able to return to a fair housing network; not inflated rent prices due to gentrification after the flood. Those with paid off mortgages should have their homes replaced.

What PHRF asks for:

• Renter compensation for losses
• Decent affordable housing
• City Ordinance for rent control
• Funds for total Replacement of privately owned homes

Help us in the struggle for all residents renters and homeowners.
Attend weekly meetings on how, together we can stabilize rent for working class people.
Ask PHRF how you can assist us with the November 18^th March against Governor Blanco.
For further info call (504) 301-0215

NEW ORLEANS, September 3, 2006

For a week surrounding the Anniversary Commemoration of the Great Flood, members of the International Commission of Inquiry (ICI) traveled from New Orleans to Biloxi, horrified and amazed at the level of destruction and abandonment of whole neighborhoods. They listened and shared tears with those still traumatized by the crimes that agents of the government committed against tens of thousands of Black New Orleanians. 

I lost everything I had except my life.  I’m a retired school teacher in Biloxi. They send $250 billion overseas and $3 billion here.  Where is it!  Sitting in our stinking governor’s office. If the President was here now, I’m in a mood now, I’d bust him in the mouth… 

As she hugged people who had gathered at the Katrina Media Center in a Baptist Church on Main Street, in Biloxi, MS,   Edenice Sant’ana de Jesus emphasized, “We—like you— are bound by an umbilical cord to Africa”. A founder of the Workers’ Party, the Unified Black Movement and Black Women’s Organization in Brazil, she explained the mission of the Commission: “We’re here to gather testimony about your experience with Katrina.  To figure out how is it possible that in the richest country in the world, this [referring to the total destruction she had witnessed and tales of horror she had heard] could happen…We stand here in the tradition of our great thinkers, like Malcolm X and Steven Biko—who have taught us to keep fighting for self-determination….I call on my ancestors and yours to build a strong bond among us that can force the government to meet our needs and human rights.” 

My name is Tatiana. I am seven years old. When the hurricane came it was bad.  My mother who had twins in her belly got sick.  I was scared they almost died and the police was being very mean to the boys. 

Tiyani Lybon Mabasa, one of the founders of the Black Consciousness Movement that was led by Steven Biko and current president of the Socialist Party of Azania, explained why he had traveled from South Africa to serve on the Commission. “ Because of the United States, the conditions of Black people are difficult all over the world.  This is why I’m not talking as an outsider. The struggle here is not different from the struggle in Africa. We all are subject to the injustices of colonization.” 

After four days of hell in the Superdome, they forced the men and women into separate lines to board the buses.  When we questioned why we had to separate from our children, the National Guard drew their guns on us…. Then a woman in the crowd who couldn’t breathe handed her baby to me because I’m tall. I was about to board the bus, but the National Guard wouldn’t let me return the baby. 

Chucho Jesus Garcia, founder of the Afro Venezuelan Network and Elegua Youth Organization, also participated in the Commission.  After days of bearing witness to peoples’ suffering, he told the crowd gathered in Congo Square in New Orleans to commemorate the Anniversary of the Great Flood, “We have a great weight on our shoulders to struggle for justice in this modern slaveship. Today’s 21^st century slavery, is rooted in capitalism, and like 17^th century slavery pulls us away from our homes and families. It is our responsibility to continue this struggle and we will carry it out.” 

I’m somebody’s father. I’m somebody’s brother. I’m somebody’s husband. We formed a rescue team.  We rescued 200 people, but the authorities never asked our name. We got no respect…I thank you gentlemen and lady for coming down and being part of our pain.  It’s like we don’t exist except for working and paying taxes. 

Sammy Hayon, an Egyptian-born French trade unionist, was the fourth member of the Commission. At each gathering he emphasized that the devastation he had witnessed a year after the Storm was not “natural”, but rather the product of a system that has no respect for human life. 

Origins of the International Commission of Inquiry for the International Tribunal

On December 8^th and 9^th, 2005 hundreds of Internally Displaced People from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita gathered in Jackson, Mississippi in a Survivors Assembly to demand accountability, reconstruction and restitution from all levels and departments of the US government. Their demands were in response to the government’s deliberate abandonment of hundreds of thousands of Black people in the aftermath of Katrina.  Katrina was a category 5 hurricane that hit the Gulf Coast of Mississippi on August 29, 2005 and left over 2,000 dead or missing and over 800,000 without homes, jobs or help. Those forced to leave their homes comprise the largest and most inhumane internal displacement of Blacks since the end of the 19^th Century following the Civil War. 

The Survivors Assembly was facilitated by the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Coalition (PHRF-OC), the Mississippi Disaster Relief Coalition (MS-DRC), the Black Activists Coalition on Katrina, and over 50 coalition partners from a broad range of political, religious, and social sectors in North America.  On December 10, 2005 over 5,000 survivors and their supporters marched on City Hall in New Orleans demanding the right to return with dignity to their homes and their communities. 

From these voices came a call to put the US Government on trial for its Katrina-related crimes against humanity.

Since the Storm, members of the National Conference of Black Lawyers and others have been collecting testimony of Katrina survivors and witnesses. But the arrival of the International Commission of Inquiry’s visit to New Orleans — hosted by the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Committee (PHRF-OC), the Black Activist Coalition on Katrina, and the U.S. Human Rights Network—  was the first, fact-gathering effort by international experts for the International Tribunal on Katrina. 

Bearing Witness and Investigating

We was like a disease or something to them. [the National Guard] They would pass us—we were starving, our kids had their tongues hanging out from thirst—but they wouldn’t help us or even talk to us.  When they finally gave us some water and MRE’s, they threw them at us like we were dogs. We had to get down on our knees to pick up a bottle of water….Something needs to be done with our Black people.  We can’t let them do this to us again. 

In addition to meeting with individuals in Biloxi and New Orleans who witnessed crimes and abuses by government agents, the ICI extensively toured the devastation and also met with organizations and experts working to ensure the rights of internally displaced people.  Shana Griffin from INCITE and founder of the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic, documented how Black women who are heads of households face the biggest obstacles of any displaced people in coming home. Monique Harden, co-director of Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, explained to the ICI how environmental racism—long epidemic in the Gulf—denies people their human rights, including the right to return. The US government must take responsibility for cleaning up all toxic sites—which disproportionately affect Black people.  Representatives from the Coalition for Workers’ Justice and a group of Brazilian workers in New Orleans reported to Commissioners the many ways workers—especially undocumented workers are denied their human rights. 

War against Black People

They were shooting in the air as we ran across the bridge trying to get to dry land, “You niggahs and monkeys are not gonna get across that bridge, believe you me.” But I ran any way because I knew my grand kids and I would die if we had to turn around and go back to those rising waters….Men were carrying older people. Baby,  we were gonna get across….They treated everybody in Orleans Parish like we were criminals…After we crossed, they held us at gunpoint for 12 hours under the bridge…I’m a grandmother with a heart condition but they didn’t care. 

Robert Bolden came by the PHRF office in his work clothes. A tall muscular man in his fifties, Mr. Bolden is proud that he has always provided for his family, never drank or used drugs and was never arrested.  He sobbed as he relived his time at the Convention Center. 

They set us up and forced us to go to the Convention Center rather than cross the bridge to dry land. My mother has a house in Algiers.  It was dry, I could have stayed with her…They told us there would be buses at the convention Center to take us to safety, but the buses didn’t come for days…It was pitch black inside, no electricity and you could hear people crying for help, but there was nothing we could do. I don’t know why they treated us like this…  

Finally, as they were herding us on to the buses, the police asked me “what kind of drugs do you do?” I said “none”.  He ordered me on my knees.  But I don’t get on my knees for no one except for God. I tried to reason with them.  I didn’t do nothing to deserve that treatment.  So four or five of them beat me on my legs and knees, so I had to get down. They left me on the ground… If I don’t break a law, then treat me the same as the president. They maced me too and the mace burned for days.  There was no water to wash the stuff off with. My legs still hurt, but I have no health insurance to get them checked….America actually treated us like that…The president has been here 13 times. He’s only worried about Bourbon Street. He don’t care about poor people. 

Geneva, who – with 17 family members— clung to her New Orleans East roof from 7:45AM Monday to sometime Wednesday, when a boat finally took the sick and the babies off. It took months for all the family members to find each other.

The boat took us to a truck and the truck hauled us like we were dogs to the Convention Center…The US has to recognize what they have done to us. We were left to die… 

Next Steps 
The National Conference of Black Lawyers, the International Commission of Inquiry and staff from the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF) will continue taking testimony, investigating records and interviewing advocates and experts. 

At the same time, staff of the PHRF will facilitate a process that provides support and the opportunity for survivors and witnesses of crimes by state agents to participate in further planning of the tribunal.  They need support in processing their grief.  They also need justice. June Brown bitterly demands, 

We lost everything. Can you repair my grandson’s mind! You got money to repair my son’s mind! 

To date, ICI, the National Conference of Black Lawyers and PHRF staff have collected testimony from some 30 witnesses. It is a wrenching process. Those involved are convinced that witnesses need a support/action group that provides them the structure to turn their grief and anger into action—action that shapes the Tribunal and the demands for justice that the Tribunal process will unleash. 

The organizers of the International Tribunal on Katrina call on all organizations, individuals, and elected officials in the United States and around the world to sign on as endorsers of the International Tribunal on Katrina, and to contribute time, resources and funds to organize this call for justice.

Also, if you would like to testify or have documents, please contact PHRF-OC, 1418 N. Clairborne #2, New Orleans, LA 70116, (504) 301-0215 or email info@peopleshurricane.org or email Chokwe Lumumba at clumumba@aol.com. 

By Arlene Eisen. Contact arlenesreport@yahoo.com

Click here to download article 

The People’s Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Coalition (PHRF/OC) thanks everyone who contacted or attempted to contact the Louisiana State legislature to demand that they take action to protect displaced renters and allocated resources to bring them home and help make them whole. Your efforts helped to ensure a small victory.
Yesterday, the State legislature approved several measures within the Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA) plan that will provide potential support to renters in Louisiana (see article below at the following link
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/capital/index.ssf?/base/news-4/116011674578540.xml&coll=1&thispage=1).

However, this measure is only a partial victory. We still have a major fight ahead of us to ensure that a major portion of the recovery funds go directly to renters, who compose more than 60% of New Orleans population, and are directly controlled and appropriated by the masses of those displaced.

So, again thank you. We will be calling on all of you to take further actions over the course of the next several weeks and months against Governor Blanco, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the City Council of New Orleans. We will also be calling on all of you to help us build the “Where is the Money” mobilization against Governor Blanco and the Louisiana Recovery Authority on Saturday, November 18th in Baton Rogue. This mobilization is to demand:

1. That at least 20% of the LRA funds be appropriated to renter transition and recovery programs, including assistance for moving costs, deposits, and rent assistance.
2. That rent controls be implemented in all of the Hurricane affected areas of the state.
3. That rent stabilization be implemented in all of the Hurricane affected areas of the state.
4. No demolition or reduction in public housing in New Orleans. That public housing in New Orleans throughout the state be opened immediately.
5. That transitional housing be created and opened immediately.
6. That all homeowners receive full compensation for their homes, or if their homes were destroyed, be completely rebuilt by the government due to the faulty design and failure of the levees.