Well, Not Everyone's Being Forced Out Of New Orleans

[Nbadan]

Old-line families plot the future
Thursday, September 08, 2005
By Christopher Cooper, The Wall Street Journal


NEW ORLEANS -- On a sultry morning earlier this week, Ashton O'Dwyer stepped out of his home on this city's grandest street and made a beeline for his neighbor's pool. Wearing nothing but a pair of blue swim trunks and carrying two milk jugs, he drew enough pool water to flush the toilet in his home.

The mostly African-American neighborhoods of New Orleans are largely underwater, and the people who lived there have scattered across the country. But in many of the predominantly white and more affluent areas, streets are dry and passable. Gracious homes are mostly intact and powered by generators. Wednesday, officials reiterated that all residents must leave New Orleans, but it's still unclear how far they will go to enforce the order.

The green expanse of Audubon Park, in the city's Uptown area, has doubled in recent days as a heliport for the city's rich -- and a terminus for the small armies of private security guards who have been dispatched to keep the homes there safe and habitable. Mr. O'Dwyer has cellphone service and ice cubes to cool off his highballs in the evening. By Wednesday, the city water service even sprang to life, making the daily trips to his neighbor's pool unnecessary. A pair of oil-company engineers, dispatched by his son-in-law, delivered four cases of water, a box of delicacies including herring with mustard sauce and 15 gallons of generator gasoline.

Despite the disaster that has overwhelmed New Orleans, the city's monied, mostly white elite is hanging on and maneuvering to play a role in the recovery when the floodwaters of Katrina are gone. "New Orleans is ready to be rebuilt. Let's start right here," says Mr. O'Dwyer, standing in his expansive kitchen, next to a counter covered with a jumble of weaponry and electric wires.

Post Gazette (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05251/567892.stm)

General Honore is delivering supplies to these 'refugees' and has already said that active-duty personal will not be used to enforce the Mayor's mandatory evacuation. Still, doesn't this give the impression of there being two Americas - one for the poor and the other for the rich.

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

Still, doesn't this give the impression of there being two Americas - one for the poor and the other for the rich.

Considering he said he won't evac anyone (black or white, damn you're an asshole trying to manipulate words like this), I'd say no.

[Extra Stout]

Old-line families plot the future
Thursday, September 08, 2005
By Christopher Cooper, The Wall Street Journal



Post Gazette (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05251/567892.stm)

General Honore is delivering supplies to these 'refugees' and has already said that active-duty personal will not be used to enforce the Mayor's mandatory evacuation. Still, doesn't this give the impression of there being two Americas - one for the poor and the other for the rich.In the sense that only the people in grave danger of disease and death are being forced to leave? Whatever. :rolleyes

It would be far easier to make the point that the high ground in New Orleans was reserved for the rich, as was the most robust public infrastructure, while the poor lived in the bottom of the bowl. However, it would be difficult to blame President Bush directly for that, so I can see why you didn't go there.

[The Ressurrected One]

I believe General Honore is black or of African-American descent... What does this say about his position?

[ChumpDumper]

I believe General Honore is black or of African-American descent... What does this say about his position?He's below someone else....

[Marcus Bryant]

:spin

At least try to come with something fresh, twit.

[The Ressurrected One]

He's below someone else....
It appears he's in fucking charge, to me.

[ChumpDumper]

It appears he's in fucking charge, to me.Yes, king of the US is he.

[Jelly]

Dan,
how can you stand living in this country?

[whottt]

I believe General Honore is black or of African-American descent...

He's a Louisiana Creole all the way....he's like the prototypical creole.

[Nbadan]

In the sense that only the people in grave danger of disease and death are being forced to leave? Whatever.

Many of the bars in the French Quarter were hardly touched by the flood waters, and some have had power for days, but still no fresh water, yet they are being forced to relocate.

[Nbadan]

Considering he said he won't evac anyone (black or white, damn you're an asshole trying to manipulate words like this), I'd say no.

Whose trying to manipulate words? I said Honore is quoted as saying that active-duty troops would not be used for mandatory relocation, but that doesn't exclude the NG and federal, state and local law enforcement.

Mandatory extractions are coming.

[AFE7FATMAN]

[QUOTE

Mandatory extractions are coming.[/QUOTE]

Lets just make sure that for once "EVERYBODY means EVERYBODY"

and when we rebuild NO lets give the $ to Habitat for Humanity
and let them rebuild homes.

For those that still have income/the means to do it on thier own
well maybe a low interest loan.
"Those that chose to live near the water
will at some point live in the Water"


I hope we don't simply rebuild the apartments for the slum landlords.

Business folks will rebuild on their own, We could help the small business folks, i.e. the Mom and Pop operations.

[boutons]

The New York Times

September 9, 2005

Holdouts on Dry Ground Say, 'Why Leave Now?'
By ALEX BERENSON

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 8 - Ten days ago, the water rose to the front steps of their house. Four days ago, it began falling. But only now is the city demanding that Richie Kay and Emily Harris get out.

They cannot understand why. They live on high ground in the Bywater neighborhood, and their house escaped structural damage. They are healthy and have enough food and water to last almost a year.

They have a dog to protect them, a car with a full tank of gasoline should they need to leave quickly and a canoe as a last resort. They said they used it last week to rescue 100 people.

"We're not the people they need to be taking out," Mr. Kay said. "We're the people they need to be coordinating with."

Scattered throughout the dry neighborhoods of New Orleans, which are growing larger each day as pumps push water out of the city, are people like Mr. Kay and Ms. Harris. They are defying Mayor C. Ray Nagin's orders to leave, contending that he will violate their constitutional rights if he forces them out of the homes they own or rent.

"We have food, we have water, we have antibiotics," said Kenneth Charles Kinler, who is living with four other men on Marais Street, which was covered with almost four feet of water last week but is now dry. "We're more or less watching the area for looters."

Mr. Nagin has said the city is not safe for civilians because of the risk of fire and water-borne diseases. There was no official word on Thursday about when the police would start to evict residents forcibly, but officers have been knocking on doors to plead with people to leave on their own.

"Unless you have enough food or water for three weeks, you're a walking dead man," Sgt. George Jackson told holdouts on the northern edge of the city on Thursday afternoon.

To reduce the risk of violent confrontation, the police began confiscating firearms on Thursday, even those legally owned.

To be sure, many of the thousands of people remaining in New Orleans want to leave, especially in neighborhoods where the water continues to stand several feet deep. Hundreds of people a day are being ferried to the convention center by National Guard troops in five-ton trucks and then bused outside the city.

Some holdouts may change their minds as their food and water run out. Some appear mentally incompetent or have houses in severely flooded neighborhoods and are staying in the city in the mistaken hope that they will be able to go home in a few days.

But thousands more do not fall in any of those categories. They are sitting on dry ground with all their belongings and plenty of provisions. They say they want to stay to help rebuild their city and maybe earn some money doing it, because they have animals they are afraid to leave behind, or to protect their property or simply because they have always lived here and see no reason to move their lives to a motel room in Houston or San Antonio.

Billie Moore, who lives in an undamaged 3,000-square-foot house on the city's southwestern flank that also stayed dry, said she did not want to lose her job as a pediatric nurse at the Ochsner Clinic in Jefferson Parish, which continues to function.

"Who's going to take care of the patients if all the nurses go away?" Ms. Moore asked.

When police officers arrived at her house to warn of the health risks of remaining, she showed them her hospital identification card.

"I guess you know the health risks then," the officer said.

Ms. Moore and her husband, Richard Robinson, have been using an old gas stove to cook pasta and rice, dumping cans of peas on top for flavor.

"We try to be normal and sit down and eat," Ms. Moore, 52, said. "I think that how we'll stay healthy is if I keep the house clean."

Power remains out in most of the city, and even where the tap water is flowing, it is not drinkable. Bathing and using the toilet are daily challenges. Many residents are siphoning water from swimming pools and fountains.

Some holdouts seem intent on keeping alive the distinct and wild spirit of this city. In the French Quarter, Addie Hall and Zackery Bowen found a unusual way to make sure that police officers regularly patrolled their house. Ms. Hall, 28, a bartender, flashed her breasts at the police vehicles that passed by, ensuring a regular flow of traffic.

On Thursday morning on St. Claude Avenue, a commercial strip in Bywater, east of downtown, about 12 people congregated inside and in front of Kajun's Pub, drinking and smoking. Inside, the bar looked dank, but a fan swirled air overhead and a television set in the corner showed local news, both fired by the bar's portable generator.

"New Orleans has been my home for 20 years," said Kenny Dobbs, who celebrated his 35th birthday at the bar after the flood. "I've been on my own since I was 14."

Like other people, Mr. Dobbs said, he believed that the city had exaggerated the health risks of staying, as a scare tactic. The city simply wants to force people out so that its reconstruction will go more smoothly, he said.

"Why do you think they're evacuating people?" he asked. "So they don't have as much to deal with."

The police and federal law enforcement officials have depicted many of those staying as looters waiting to pounce, though the holdouts said that they were actually protecting their neighborhoods from crime and that their steady presence is a greater deterrent than the occasional police patrol.

While residents and some legal experts question the constitutionality of forced evacuations, those staying have no functioning courthouse in the city to hear their complaints, and no state or federal authorities have stepped in to stop the plan.

In general, residents say the active-duty soldiers and National Guard troops had treated them well. Local police officers, many of them working for almost two weeks straight and having lost families or possessions, have been much more aggressive, Mr. Dobbs said.

Two New Orleans police officers stole $50 and a bottle of whiskey from him last week after finding him on the street after dark, he said.

With police officers and federal law enforcement agents ratcheting up the pressure on residents to leave, the holdouts worry that it is just a matter of time before they are forced out.

Ms. Harris said she did not want to leave. "I haven't even run out of weed yet," she said.

But she knows that fighting with police officers is futile.

"I'll probably bitch and moan, but I'm not going to hole up," she said.

And by Thursday afternoon, Kajun's Pub had closed, and the vehicles previously parked outside were gone.

There was no indication whether Mr. Dobbs and the other people who had been drinking and joking six hours earlier had been evacuated or simply disappeared into the city.

Jodi Wilgoren contributed reporting for this article.

* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[Nbadan]

"I haven't even run out of weed yet,"

:lol


When the Wall Street Journal engages in class warfare, you can usually be pretty sure which side it's on. Not so today. In a front-page headline, the Journal comes pretty close to sneering at some of the swells who have survived Katrina quite nicely, thank you. "Old-Line Families Escape Worst of Flood and Plot the Future," the headline says. "Mr. O'Dwyer, at His Mansion, Enjoys Highball With Ice; Meeting With the Mayor."

Now, maybe you're thinking that Mr. O'Dwyer, whoever he is, doesn't deserve that kind of singling out. And maybe you're right. The Journal doesn't tell us much about Ashton O'Dwyer's worldview -- just that he's hanging out in his palatial home on New Orleans' "grandest street," surrounded by a cache of weapons, the herring with mustard sauce that was delivered yesterday and all those icy cold cocktails.

But the Journal does provide a glimpse into the thinking of some of the other rich white folks who have survived Katrina relatively unscathed. The Journal introduces us to one James Reiss, a man who "helicoptered in" an Israeli security company to protect his New Orleans home from looters. When the city is rebuilt, Reiss says, it should be a very different place than it was before. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," Reiss tells the Journal. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."

We'll let the Journal handle the translation. What Reiss means, the paper says, is that "the new city must be very different ... with better services and fewer poor people."

Salon (http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/09/08/journal/index.html)

[AFE7FATMAN]

I don't think the Mayor of NO or the American Public would go for an ALL WHITE/Rich Town but than again some places in America are trying. (Sarcasim)

[Nbadan]

It's not about black or white, its about rich or poor. It's called Disaster Capitalism and it's also going on in Tsunami struck areas of Asia...

The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
by Naomi Klein


Now the bank is using the December 26 tsunami to push through its cookie-cutter policies. The most devastated countries have seen almost no debt relief, and most of the World Bank's emergency aid has come in the form of loans, not grants. Rather than emphasizing the need to help the small fishing communities--more than 80 percent of the wave's victims--the bank is pushing for expansion of the tourism sector and industrial fish farms. As for the damaged public infrastructure, like roads and schools, bank documents recognize that rebuilding them "may strain public finances" and suggest that governments consider privatization (yes, they have only one idea). "For certain investments," notes the bank's tsunami-response plan, "it may be appropriate to utilize private financing."

As in other reconstruction sites, from Haiti to Iraq, tsunami relief has little to do with recovering what was lost. Although hotels and industry have already started reconstructing on the coast, in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and India, governments have passed laws preventing families from rebuilding their oceanfront homes. Hundreds of thousands of people are being forcibly relocated inland, to military style barracks in Aceh and prefab concrete boxes in Thailand. The coast is not being rebuilt as it was--dotted with fishing villages and beaches strewn with handmade nets. Instead, governments, corporations and foreign donors are teaming up to rebuild it as they would like it to be: the beaches as playgrounds for tourists, the oceans as watery mines for corporate fishing fleets, both serviced by privatized airports and highways built on borrowed money.

In January Condoleezza Rice sparked a small controversy by describing the tsunami as "a wonderful opportunity" that "has paid great dividends for us." Many were horrified at the idea of treating a massive human tragedy as a chance to seek advantage. But, if anything, Rice was understating the case. A group calling itself Thailand Tsunami Survivors and Supporters says that for "businessmen-politicians, the tsunami was the answer to their prayers, since it literally wiped these coastal areas clean of the communities which had previously stood in the way of their plans for resorts, hotels, casinos and shrimp farms. To them, all these coastal areas are now open land!"

Disaster, it seems, is the new terra nullius.

-----

A special office for this was created last August:

---

Last summer, in the lull of the August media doze, the Bush Administration's doctrine of preventive war took a major leap forward. On August 5, 2004, the White House created the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, headed by former US Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual. Its mandate is to draw up elaborate "post-conflict" plans for up to twenty-five countries that are not, as of yet, in conflict. According to Pascual, it will also be able to coordinate three full-scale reconstruction operations in different countries "at the same time," each lasting "five to seven years."

The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050502/klein/3)

[AFE7FATMAN]

It's not about black or white, its about rich or poor. It's called Disaster Capitalism and it's also going on in Tsunami struck areas of Asia...



Now Dan, Here you go again, and If I agreed with you :oops what would all my "Friends" think :lol

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

Well comrade Dan, back in Mother Russia we just took from the rich and gave to the poor, and look how well that all worked out [/crazy Ivan]

Classism has been around since the beginning of civilized life on this planet, and it always will be.

It's not surprising you root for Al Qaeda though, sounds like you and them have the same interests - the Stone Age.

[Clandestino]

da, tovarish ahf, eto pravda. dan glupi.

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

Nyet, Dan vafli lovit. :lol

[Useruser666]

The reason they are evacuating everyone is simple. The are many disruptions in the basic human services and supplies. Maybe someone does have enough food and water in their home. But happens if their home catches fire? What happens if they get sick or injured? There may not be a 911 system up and running, no fire fighters, no police that are handy, no water from the hydrant to put out fires. Power may not be reliable, nor other utilities. Then there is the fact that the city has been soaked in a mixture of pollutants and other wastes.

The point really is simple. Just get the people out of the area and away from all the dangers they face in the disaster zone. Take them where they can be taken care of and provided for. A place where they can contact loved ones and start trying to bring some order back to their lives.

Why are they doing these evictions now? BECAUSE THEY WERE FUCKING BUSY SAVING PEOPLES LIVES BEFORE!!! Jeez!

[Marcus Bryant]

You know, if some wealthy individuals would like to stay in an unsanitary environment with a rather significant risk of contracting some 3rd world type diseases what exactly is the problem for the envy crowd?

[spurster]

I don't know the whole situation, but a full evacuation sounds like a bad idea to me. It would be better to keep residents in halfway-livable areas. Leaving a house vacant for months (a year?) will cause lots of problems and the police/National Guard can't watch every house 24/7. They should aim to take back the city one section at the time, starting with the sections that did not get damaged.

[Useruser666]

I don't know the whole situation, but a full evacuation sounds like a bad idea to me. It would be better to keep residents in halfway-livable areas. Leaving a house vacant for months (a year?) will cause lots of problems and the police/National Guard can't watch every house 24/7. They should aim to take back the city one section at the time, starting with the sections that did not get damaged.

I wouldn't doubt that's what will end up happening. But I don't fault authorities for ordering a mandatory evac either.