Baghdad on the Bayou: Cyril Neville Talks About the Threatened Projects and Losing the Home He Loves

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By Georgianne Nienaber (about the author) Page 2 of 2 page(s)

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Despite the fact that 200,000 residents, of all colors, are still displaced, HUD is authorized to spend $762 million in US taxpayer funds to tear down 4600 public housing apartments and replace then with 744 units. The math is easy. Where are the rest of the families supposed to go who occupied the 84 percent of the housing units that will not be rebuilt? Neville is convinced that the loss, through depopulation, of the “gumbo” of New Orleans will leave an empty, soul-less shell of “urban development”—a city designed and planned for the wealthy.

Where will the displaced poor live? No one seems to have answered that question, but they will not be in New Orleans, since the 1000 “market rate” apartments that are slated for construction will cost $400,000 each.

Calliope was home to 1,400 working class African-American households before the floods of August 2005. Many—perhaps a majority—were headed by women. The brick project sprawls over almost 60 acres and contains 1,546 individual dwellings. Calliope is noteworthy for its status as the largest tenant run housing development in the United States. It is also infamous for violence, murder and drugs in recent years.

The story of Calliope has played out over the other projects slated for demolition and it is no wonder there is a sense among the displaced that the City of New Orleans is using the “shock doctrine” of disaster capitalism to depopulate low income housing, thereby making room for new development. After Katrina’s floods scattered the poor throughout the country as so many seeds in the wind, the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) posted paper notices saying residents were not allowed to move back. In a twist of linguistic irony, HANO hired the Las Vegas firm “Access Denied,” to install 16 gauge steel plates over windows and doors at Cooper and other projects. The excuse for this largesse was “protection” from looters and thieves. Reports in the Times-Picayune and other local publications quoted residents who said robberies occurred with key access and that thefts happened AFTER Mayor Ray Nagin urged people to return.

Jill Soffiyah Elijah, the deputy Director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School, went far beyond condemning gentrification. “It is our view that the US Government has committed crimes against humanity, particularly in relation to its failure to maintain functional levees that should have protected the City of New Orleans,” Elijah said in summary statements after hearing 30 hours of testimony given by hurricane survivors and experts in August 2007.

Racial discrimination, vigilantism, and violations of human rights involving the rights to adequate housing and education were the most egregious findings of the international tribunal. Among others, the ACLU of New York, the Mississippi Disaster Relief Coalition, and the National Lawyers Guild joined representatives from nine countries at the hearings.

Affordable housing, jobs that pay a living wage and quality healthcare and education are constant hot-button issues post-Katrina. Amnesty International southern regional director Jared Fuer has gone so far as to state that "To demolish affordable housing without sufficient remaining low-income housing stock is not only irresponsible, but a violation of international human rights standards."

Kali Akuno of the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund charges studies prove that flood survivors with home insurance have not received compensation or aid. Rents and utilities have increased, while wages remain the same. Rentals once priced at $600 to $700 have increased on average to about $1,600. Restoration of the infrastructure in hard-hit neighborhoods such as the Ninth Ward, Gentilly and Gretna is lagging and in some places non-existent. Many homes are facing winter without water or gas service.

Cyril Neville quotes from the book, The Second Battle of New Orleans by Liva
Baker, and lists A.P. Tureaud as one of his heroes. Tureaud was a black Creole lawyer who peacefully but relentlessly fought for civil rights and integration in Louisiana. The subtext of the iconic reference to the 100 year effort to integrate Louisiana’s schools as the “Second Battle of New Orleans,” can certainly be applied to the current reconstruction crisis. The Second Battle of New Orleans is being waged this week and Cyril Neville thinks that heroes like A.P. Tureaud “are what New Orleans needs today.”

To drive the point deeper, Neville quoted James A. Colaico’s book, Frederick
Douglass and the Fourth of July Oration, "When the happiness of some is pursued to the detriment of others, the general welfare standard of the Preamble (of the Constitution) is violated.”

On the twelfth day before Christmas the Constitution will be tested, and New Orleans will face a decidedly different future if bulldozers roll through the projects as scheduled.

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Georgianne Nienaber is an investigative environmental and political writer. She lives in rural northern Minnesota, New Orleans and South Florida. Her articles have appeared in The Society of Professional Journalists' Online (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.