People refusing to leave were just referred to as SQUATTERS!

[justiceischeap]

Rick Sanchez on CNN is doing a report called "Refusing to Leave." I cannot believe he used the word squatter... These are their homes.

edited for reporters name.

[HEyHEY]

1. Yeah, that is certainly incorrect

[Robert Oak]

2. write CNN

http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form4.html?5

that's clearly a plan to remove people from their property...
something is very very wrong.

[justiceischeap]

8. My email

I cannot believe Rick Sanchez just referred to the remaining residents of New Orleans as squatters. Haven't these people been through enough? Why denegrate them in this manner? How does one "squat" in their own home? A hurricane hit my area 2 years ago and I was without utilities for 9 days, did that make me a squatter? I'm not saying my situation was anything near as harrowing as these folks in the Gulf Coast but come on, do not disrespect them any more than they have already been disrespected.

[DoYouEverWonder]

3. The can't call them refugees anymore

so they needed a new derogatory word.

[MountainLaurel]

4. Doesn't this sound like a first step

Into permanent removal of native NO residents? Someone mentioned the idea of a rebuilding effort that would exclude many of the poor, minority residents. Has the media already started thinking of these folks as trespassers?

[SoCalDem]

6. No more poor folks in the Big Easy.. They are so..last week

:(

Developers will build a less densely populated Stepford Disney town ..Poor people have been scattered..they are not going to come back..

[PublicWrath]

13. ejection of NO residents

It has been suggested that the real reason Bush held up aid and rescue while pressuring Blanco to accept martial law conditions is that then the Feds would be able to make all aftermath re-structuring decisions and be the ones to decide who gets those huge rebuilding funds. In the process they can decide which neighborhoods will be bulldozed and replaced with yuppieville real estate developments, office parks, etc.

A few days ago when the Army Corps of Engineers announced that it could take up to 80 days to drain NO, I thought to myself that they wanted to make certain as many lower-income neighborhoods as possible could be condemned. They will try to keep all evacuees out of certain areas even after draining, on the line that the area is still contaminated or that the buildings are too unstable to be entered.
That way they won't have inconvenient 'former' residents to make a fuss when those 'dozers show up.

[Neocondriac]

5. from refugees to squatters.....

...how does this detached verbage make it to the msm so fast? It's wispered late at night.

[Robert Oak]

9. press releases from the government making a request

They request that the media use certain terms.

Obviously one of them is this campaign on the media to claim that
areas of NO, which are not underwater or flooded, are too dangerous
and this smells so bad of a profiteering land grab and forcing existing property owners out.

[Nikki Stone 1]

7. Remember the recent Supreme Court eminent domain ruling?

We are all basically renters now, even if we own our own homes.

[Robert Oak]

10. yup and let's watch this bs being used in NO n/t

[ProfessorGAC]

11. Squatting In One's Own Home?

Hmmm! That's an interesting way to spin the facts. Just redefine the terms, i guess.
The Professor

[ForrestGump]

12. Nope, not their homes

Not any more.

I suspect we're about to see one of the larger and most blatant thefts in US history, certainly of the last century or so.