Book Excerpt: Standing Up to the Madness
News Analysis: As New Orleans demolishes public housing units, grassroots efforts among African-Americans have sprung up to rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward.
April 15, 2008
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[An excerpt from Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times, by Amy Goodman and David Goodman (Hyperion, 2008)]
Malik Rahim, a barrel-chested 59-year-old man with long gray dreadlocks that arc down his back and chest, stands on a street corner in what remains of the once vibrant African-American New Orleans neighborhood known as the Lower Ninth Ward. A veteran community organizer and the former defense minister of the New Orleans chapter of the Black Panther Party in the early 1970s, Rahim has thrown his share of punches and survived many battles, as well as time in jail. All of which has been good training for the epic struggle he is now engaged in: fighting for the right of poor and working-class residents of New Orleans to return home after being uprooted by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.
We arrived in New Orleans on the second anniversary of the hurricane. President Bush had also come on this day to applaud the revival of New Orleans. But that revival skirted the places where poor people live. "The city didn't do nuthin' to save this," says Malik in disgust, waving a burly arm over the devastated landscape of the Lower Ninth Ward. Hurricane Katrina, the costliest and one of the deadliest hurricanes in American history, was not just a natural disaster. The catastrophe began with water, wind, and flooding on August 29, 2005. Today, the disaster continues for the poor and working-class people of New Orleans as they contend with "another hurricane called racism, greed, and corruption," says Malik.
When the long-forecasted hurricane drowned a great American city, the richest country in the world simply abandoned its poorest residents. President George W. Bush took in the show from his ranchette in Texas, then flew to California for a chuckling photo op with a country singer. "Heckuva job, Brownie" was the back-slapping praise he dished for his inept director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who didn't even realize that thousands of flood survivors were huddled, terrified and starving, downtown in the Morial Convention Center.
As the hurricane roared through the Gulf states, Vice President Dick Cheney swung into action to ensure that oil pipelines came before people: Cheney's office ordered a Mississippi town to immediately restore electricity to the Colonial Pipeline Co., a company that pumps gasoline and diesel from Texas and the Gulf Coast to the Northeast. The repair delayed efforts to restore power to two rural hospitals and a number of water systems in Mississippi. It was a telling indicator of the White House's priorities in the Gulf.Two shameful weeks later, the president touched down in the darkened flooded city that was temporarily illuminated to serve as a backdrop for his speech. "Throughout the area hit by the hurricane, we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives," pledged the president. "We want evacuees to come home, for the best reasons—because they have a real chance at a better life in a place they love." Then New Orleans was plunged back into darkness—one that endures in countless ways for tens of thousands of its residents.
The Lower Ninth Ward was home to about fourteen thousand people before Hurricane Katrina, nearly all of them African-American. The former cypress swamp was settled in the mid-1800s by freed slaves and has a long history of political activism; in 1960, the all-white schools bordering the Lower Ninth became the first in the Deep South to open their doors to blacks. Malik offers to show us around the neighborhood—what's left of it. He estimates that fewer than five hundred residents have returned to the Lower Ninth.
It looks as if a marauding army has swept through. Neat, orderly blocks divide up the low-lying flat plain, but there are few houses still standing, and even fewer people. We peer out on block after block of barren, overgrown lots. The detritus of life is strewn about: a stairway to nowhere here, a car buried in debris there. Malik drives us over to King Solomon Baptist Church, one of three churches that served the community. Where once hundreds of parishioners flocked each Sunday, weeds now lick the sides of the red metal building. A snare drum stands in the main aisle, as if abandoned middrumroll. Pews caked in a quarter-inch of dried mud stand in orderly rows facing the pulpit, as if patiently waiting for the preacher to begin his homily. Outside, a water line about seven feet high still rings the building.
"With all the churches in America, why couldn't some church adopt this one?" asks Malik, stepping through the church's shattered front door. "Where's the Christian love?" Across the street, the Alfred Lawless High School sits devoid of students or sounds. During Hurricane Katrina, some 4,500 people sought shelter here. The brick exterior of the building is intact. In another blow to the community, the entire complex is now slated for demolition. It is uncertain whether the school will be replaced. We drive on. In a bizarre move, the city has taken great care to mow and maintain the grass median strips in the roads. But the places where people once lived have been left to grow over with swamp grass. We see a few houses in various states of gutting and reconstruction. But mostly, houses just sit empty.
"How much rebuilding do you see here?" bellows Malik, like an impassioned preacher. "How many hammers do you hear? Two years later, do you hear any activity?" What effort there has been in this historic neighborhood has gone to wiping it out. In 2007, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin instituted an Imminent Health Threat Demolition ordinance that gives residents just thirty days' notice that their homes are slated for demolition. To the tens of thousands of New Orleanians scattered across the country, the city's meager notice—a letter sent to the last known address (often the empty home), a sticker attached to the property, mentions on a city Web site and in the Times-Picayune newspaper—is clearly inadequate. Heaping salt on the wounds, liens are placed on properties for the cost of the demolition, setting the stage for the displaced owners not only to lose their houses, but to have to forfeit their property to the city. The hurricane displaced people. Now the government is erasing their past and preempting their futures, one demolition at a time.
"People been here over one hundred years. Then some outsider come in and say they don't matter. The city coulda come up with tractors and maintained this place. They spent more on demolishing houses than maintaining the area," fumes Rahim.
At one point during our walk around the ghostly empty neighborhood, a military Humvee drives through tall grass, and two camo-clad young Louisiana National Guardsmen jump out. They explain that they work with New Orleans police to patrol this area. The two of them had recently served tours in Iraq. Now they are on to their next battlefront—the African-American neighborhoods of New Orleans. Malik avoids eye contact with the white soldiers as they tell us that the Louisiana National Guard—nearly half of which was in Iraq during the hurricane—was originally brought in to stop the violence following Katrina. They claim flood refugees tried to hijack evacuation buses just to go to McDonald's. "That's a bunch of bullshit," spits Malik as we walk away a few minutes later. He says it is one of many racist myths about how black people ran amok after the storm. "As for us being more violence prone—who's more violent than the military?"
Malik then shows us to a corner of the Lower Ninth Ward abuzz with life. A few houses are busily being rebuilt. A sign in front of the houses declares, "Roots run deep here." A small home sits alongside a white shed with a blue tarp for a roof. Inside are racks of used clothing, as well as tools that local residents can borrow for free to renovate their homes. Strains of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis waft out of the open-air shed into the languid bayou. Other signs dot the front yard: "We're keeping our neighborhood." "You can be involved!" And one for the sightseers who cruise by each day: "Tourist Shame on You Driving By Without Stopping and Paying to See My Pain—1,600 died here."
This is the headquarters of Common Ground Relief, a collective of volunteers working to assist residents in rebuilding their homes, providing medical care, basic supplies, and legal assistance. By late 2007, Common Ground had assisted 170,000 people, according to Malik. It is part of a growing grassroots movement that is fighting on behalf of the thousands of residents who have been pushed out and shunned as New Orleans is redeveloped. People are demanding that their homes be restored, public schools be reopened, and public housing be unlocked. Two hundred years ago, New Orleans was the scene of the largest slave rebellion in American history. That spirit of resistance lives on, as African-American communities are locked in a battle not just for survival, but for justice.
Abandoned . . . and Fighting
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it took days for the world to fully comprehend that the richest country on earth had abandoned and even turned on the citizens of one of its great cities. It took Malik Rahim only a few hours to size up what was happening. "This is criminal," he wrote in a message that flew around the Internet. "If you ain't got no money in America, you're on your own."
One side effect of the government's non-response was that the American media, which had been led on a short leash by the military in Iraq for the previous two years, suddenly floated free of Bush administration handlers and broadcast raw images of suffering from the darkened, flooded city. This is what unembedded journalism looks like. But racism colored both the media coverage and relief efforts.
In Rahim's neighborhood of Algiers, which was not flooded, he watched as armed white vigilantes roamed the neighborhood in pickup trucks, menacing and shooting at African-Americans. New Orleans after Katrina resembled an armed camp—and black people were the prisoners. Rahim observed bitterly right after the storm, "If a white person was taking something, he was taking food for his family. But if a black was taking something, he was looting." In the days following the hurricane, Democracy Now! reported live from the devastated area. Two weeks after the storm, Malik pointed out a dead body that had been rotting on the sidewalk, ignored by the authorities who were passing by all day. "I wouldn't care if it's Saddam Hussein or bin Laden. Nobody deserve to be left here," he said, gently moving a piece of corrugated metal to cover the corpse. "This is what is frightening a lot of people into leaving."
"We done talked to everyone from the army to the New Orleans Police to the state troopers to—I mean, we done talked to everybody who we can," said Malik, waving his hand in front of his face in a futile effort to repel the stench of decay. "It's two weeks—two weeks—that this man been just layin' here." As if on cue, every level of occupying authority appeared on the scene—but no one did anything. Democracy Now! asked soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas, who were standing nearby, if they could pick up the dead body. "I don't think we can pick it up, but we can call the local authorities to come pick it up," replied the commanding officer. Just then, Louisiana State Troopers cruised by. Could they pick up the dead body? "You need to talk to our public information officer, ma'am," replied the officer with a sarcastic smile, refusing to reveal his name. To every question and attempt to get help, he repeated the same answer, five times in all, like a broken record. Then a New Orleans Police cruiser pulled up. Would they move the corpse? "I have no comment on that, ma'am. You have to call one of the press guys. Sorry. Thank you." And the officers drove off.
The soldiers watched all this from the roadside. One said he was from California and had returned from Iraq five months earlier. How did Iraq compare with New Orleans? Capt. Matthew Cohen replied, "It's great that we can kind of come out and actually help Americans." Rahim fought back against official neglect in the way he knew best: He organized. Taking a page from his days as a Black Panther—when the party established drug-free zones in the housing projects, did cleanups, and fed as many as five hundred children each morning—he confronted racism and poverty by preaching a message of self-reliance and black pride, and by providing social services. "Self-sufficiency has been a policy that's guided me all of my life," he tells us. "Because you could never be a true man if you are dependent on others for your livelihood." Faced with the stunning reality that he and many of his neighbors would have to survive on their own, Rahim published his phone number on the Internet with a plea for "calls from old friends and anyone with questions or ideas for saving lives." It was a desperate shot in the dark. But he knew that no one was coming to save them. Meanwhile, he armed himself to defend against the white vigilantes who were on the loose. When one of the vigilantes threatened to burn down his house, Malik told him he would go down fighting. "It ain't no fun when the rabbit got a gun," he warned one of them.
Within days, two large white guys were at his door. "We're looking for Malik," said one. Figuring they might be vigilantes, Malik reached for the weapon by his door. "I figured if they gonna pull out a gun, I was gonna kill 'em," he said. What happened next stunned him. "My name is Bear, and I'm with Veterans for Peace," declared one of the men. Rahim, himself a Vietnam vet, had been on a peace mission to Iraq with this group of anti-warriors. The old soldiers exchanged bear hugs. Then they made a plan and got to work. Within days, Veterans for Peace brought truckloads of supplies. "That was the first supplies we got. They brought us generators, boats. That helped us to survive through Katrina and [Hurricane] Rita."
